How Donald Trump Amassed So Much
Good Karma

Karma is perhaps the most misunderstood and maligned spiritual law, which is odd because it is so simple—and benevolent. Drama Queen Workshop Principle #1, Life is always fair, pays homage to this law.

In a nutshell, karma restores balance. It appears in Judeo-Christian scripture as “eye for an eye.” It is “what goes around comes around,” or as we say in Drama Queen Workshops, “Whatever you do will be done to you.” Not good, not bad, just balance. If you’ve been kind and generous, kindness and generosity will return to you.

Karma Is the True Law of Attraction

Karma is scarier than hell.Unquestionably, karma is not a Christian belief. Central to Christianity are the mandatory beliefs that 1) God will sadistically torment you throughout all eternity for sins you commit during this bat-of-an-eyelash human lifetime and 2) God would not forgive the guilty unless an innocent son was brutally tortured to death.

Whether traditional or New Thought, Christians worship excess rather than fairness and balance. New Thought Christians, who worship a benevolent god, believe you reap 100 times the material blessings for each buck you’ve given. Traditional Christians believe God’s default response to human error is brutal and excessive punishment. Their god’s behavior is cruel, unusual and unfair. The heinous banishment of Adam and Eve—creatures made of mud and bone, with a brain capacity and decision-making ability comparable with Pinocchio, who was also manufactured from natural materials—and the genocidal Great Flood bear witness.

Christians passionately revere and defend these implausible stories and their depictions of an inhumane god who gives us free will and will torment us forever if we dare to exercise it. They endorse this diabolical behavior as godly, which draws them to the conclusion that vengeful, sadistic punishment and murder must be proper responses to transgressions. This behavior is good—because God, whom they worship, did it.

It is through this cock-eyed lens that can clearly see why, in that great theater of truth, the White House Press Room, Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci would proclaim with a straight face that Donald Trump “has really good karma and the world turns back to him.”

Scaramucci gets the concept. But let us take a look at some of the behaviors that he finds good because Trump—whom Scaramucci and 26% of America’s eligible voters worship—did it:

  1. Sexually assaulting women, by his own account.
  2. Sadistically supporting efforts to force women to give birth against their will.
  3. Ripping parents from their children through deportation, with the heartlessness of a slave master.
  4. Advocating the assassination of terrorists’ families.
  5. Endorsing torture.
  6. Risking the lives and health of more than 20 million Americans, simply because he wants to annihilate the legacy of a black president.
  7. Bearing false witness against his prime obsession, Barack Obama. Repeatedly.
  8. Habitually lacking integrity, exhibited through his unfaithfulness to wives and business partners, and pathologically lying about…whatever.
  9. Inciting his supporters to violently violate the rights and bodies of dissenting attendees at public rallies.
  10. Satanically thriving on revenge; bullying anyone who disagrees with him.
  11. Disrespecting the physical and mental torture endured by John McCain.
  12. Filing multiple bankruptcies to walk away from debt.
  13. Pretending to be a Christian, whatever that means these days.
  14. Pretending to be a billionaire.
  15. Pretending to donate more than $100 million to charity, and establishing a foundation that admitted to the Internal Revenue Service that it violated a legal prohibition against self-dealing
  16. Pretending he was financing his campaign and would be beholden to no one.
  17. Fomenting racial hatred, misogyny and xenophobia.
  18. Acting in ways that caused him to be a defendant in more than 1,400 lawsuits
  19. Pandering to the moneychangers in Evangelical Christian temples.
  20. Divulging classified information to Russian government officials.
  21. Allowing a known foreign agent to control America’s national security, and have access to the nation’s top secrets.
  22. Aggressively attempting to hide the Truth from investigators.
  23. Leveraging his office to enrich his family business.
  24. Putting other entrepreneurs out of business because he refused to pay.
  25. Viciously demeaning his competitors and other members of the human family.
  26. Being willing to win at any cost, even if the cost is our democratic principles.
  27. Establishing a for-profit non-accredited “university” that allegedly defrauded its students, and threatened those students for complaining.
  28. Misleading middle class Americans to believe he was the cure for their ills.
  29. Screaming “America First,” demanding onshore manufacturing while his family’s businesses manufacture abroad.
  30. Willingness to subject another generation to the dangers of coal mining—and countless other acts harmful to God’s children.

Don't let your mortal self amass karmic debt

Some Losses Are Disguised as Wins. Bigly. 

Every soul leaves Home with an angel on its shoulder. Her name? Karma. Nothing we do during our traverse through this physical world or others escapes her notice. Everything we do is a work order, triggering a ricochet that will be pleasant or painful.

We have the opportunity to choose, upfront, what returns. We are more likely to blow that opportunity when we believe that we are bodies that possess souls, rather than souls that temporarily wear bodies.

There are dark forces that want us to believe the former. They want us to believe that God is trillions of light years away, and the only real things are perceptible with the human eye. They want us to believe that material wealth is a gift from God and that manifesting matter is evidence of spiritual achievement. They prefer that we’re distracted by shiny objects so that we do not fulfill the mission for which we came. It keeps us on the karmic wheel so they can mess with our heads. Again and again.

Because we don’t always see the effects of karma while a soul is wearing a particular costume, the forces have convinced us that crimes can actually go unanswered. But just as the clothes students wear to class do not receive diplomas, the human body costumes we temporarily wear are not the recipients of our karma.

Karma is attached to the immortal part of us, the soul who is wearing that costume in this classroom called Earth’s Theater. At the most perfect time and in the most perfect way, karma returns the pain or pleasure we’ve given. On occasion, we’re lucky; it returns while we’re wearing the same costume and we can connect the dots.

We should not take a public job if we want to maintain private secrets. But ultimately, the soul who is currently wearing the human body costume we recognize as Donald J. Trump, Sr. may escape every legal remedy available through man-made jurisprudence and congressional authority. After all, America has amassed a tremendous amount of karma itself that needs to be repaid, perhaps through the dismantling of all it holds dear: its status as a world leader and its facade of equal justice and opportunity for all. Trump could be part of the payment plan. We’ll know soon enough.

There is but One Life—and It Is Eternal

Unlike manmade law, spiritual laws are inescapable. They apply equally and produce the same results for everyone.

In chiding Scaramucci for his hilarious claim that the Karma-Creator-in-Chief has a positive balance in his karmic bank account, CNN’s Jake Tapper reflected the typical misunderstanding of karma, incorrectly asserting that karma “takes place in the next life.” There is but one Life, Jake, and it is eternal.

While some of us believe that is a good thing, others hope life ends when their human body costumes die. They don’t want to held accountable for their actions. But everyone—not everybody—has an eternal date with karma, including the immortal soul currently known as Donald Trump.

If he has a fetish for showers; she will surely fulfill his fantasy. And, like the rule it inspired, it will be unmistakably golden.

Christians reject Jesus's teachings

At the Most-Attended March, Christians Broke Free from Jesus’s Teachings

We’ve been bombarded with coverage of the unprecedented worldwide protests following the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. But the largest march—the one primarily responsible for that ceremony—has received little mention: Millions of Evangelical Christians defiantly declared their independence from Jesus’s teachings, and it’s as if no one noticed.

Christians reject Jesus's teachingsMaybe it wasn’t newsworthy. After all, Christians haven’t been followers of Jesus for centuries. However, they do like being seen carrying a Bible to church, prominently displaying images of a non-Semitic Jesus, and they have a macabre practice of adorning their homes, churches and necks with the weapon that murdered him.

But like grinning all the time, it was inauthentic and exhausting; so they stopped. Throughout campaign season, they openly embraced values that are the antithesis of Jesus’s: hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia. They opted to build a wall around themselves. And rejected Jesus’s directive to care for “the least of these.”

According to Pew Research, 80 percent of self-identified white, born-again/evangelical Christians who voted and 52% of Catholics who voted say they cast their ballot for Trump—the proudly vindictive, misogynistic serial adulterer and KKK-supported cyberbully who urged violence against members of Jesus’s human family at his rallies. Their affinity for him reveals six things about Christians.

1.  Christians don’t ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” 

Our assumptions about Christians defy actual facts. Not only do they reject Jesus’s teachings, they are outright hostile toward them. In elementary school, these Christians would not have voted a think-skinned, petulant kid who reveled in name-calling and poked fun at other kids’ physical appearance as their eighth-grade class president. He’d be considered unsuitable to represent the class. As adult Christians, he is their ideal representative.

2.  Christians don’t have to be followers of Jesus

For years, I have made a distinction between Christlike and Christian: The former describes how a person behaves; the latter merely describes what a person believes. You don’t have to respect, obey or follow Jesus’s teachings to be a Christian. You simply have to hold some core beliefs:

  1. A human being can be conceived without human sperm fertilizing a human egg.
  2. God will not forgive the guilty unless an innocent son is heinously tortured to death; i.e., God is not the unconditionally forgiving father portrayed in Jesus’s “Prodigal Son” parable.
  3. Jesus’s purpose for coming to Earth was to be brutally murdered for sins committed by others—before, during and after his lifetime here.
  4. God will sadistically torture us throughout all eternity if we do not acknowledge that Jesus was murdered for what we did, express gratitude for his murder, and proclaim that Jesus saved us from God’s demonic, unending punishment.
  5. Jesus’s body ascended into outer space without the aid of a projectile, pressurized aircraft or spacesuit.

3.  Jesus’s followers don’t have to be Christians 

Jesus’s followers don’t have to share these beliefs. Punctuating that, I was given a palm card at the Women’s March in Chicago that read, “Love Trumps Fear.” It was distributed by Jews for Jesus—and reminds us that Jesus was born Jewish and dubbed “King of the Jews” by his Roman murderers.

Love Trumps Hate, Love your neighbors as yourself
Jesus’s teachings are at the core of his followers’ beliefs:

  • Love one another, be kind to one another, forgive others as God has forgiven you (John 15:12); i.e. God is the unconditionally forgiving father portrayed in Jesus’s Prodigal Son parable.
  • Love your enemies. Live peaceably with all. Do not be vengeful. (Luke 6:27, Romans 12:17)
  • Treat others as you’d want to be treated. (Luke 6:31, Matthew 7:12, Philippians 2:4)
  • Show compassion for all and help them: the poor, despised, and outcasts. (Matt. 4:24-25)
  • “Be sincere, not a hypocrite” (Matt. 6:1-6)

Followers of Jesus consciously strive to live by these tenets, as evidenced in the massive protest marches in various parts of the world. But for Christians, treating others equitably—or only saying and doing thing to others that you would want said or done to you—is scornfully dismissed as “politically correctness.”

4.  Christians hate political correctness

Political correctness definitionChristians want to say whatever, insult whomever and do whatever they desire to those who don’t look like, act like or think like them and, of course, those who are less privileged. They don’t care that Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40) because they are not followers of Jesus.

5. Christians disrespect or distort Jesus’s lessons on karma

In Luke 6:37 and Matthew 7:1-3, Jesus reportedly admonished us against creating bad karma: “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” he said. “Condemn not, lest ye be condemned.” Translated: Whatever you do will be done to you.

Christians often quoted that admonition to excuse themselves from acknowledging facts about Donald Trump. “The Bible says that we shouldn’t judge!” they proclaimed.

But facts are not judgments: Trump is a serial adulterer. Fact. He has been sued by dozens of small business owners for not paying their invoices. Fact. He was sued by a woman who claimed he raped her when she was a teen. Fact. His foundation admitted to spending $20,000 on a portrait of Trump and $250,000 to settle private legal disputes, in violation of IRS rules. Fact. He’s taken six corporate bankruptcies. Fact. He boasted of grabbing women’s genitals. Fact. He settled a civil fraud claim brought by 6,000 alleged victims for $25 million. Fact.

These are facts, not judgments. But none of these facts cost him Evangelical Christians’ support.

6. God giveth free will; Christians taketh away

Contrasted to Followers of Jesus, Christians want to be the boss of every body, particularly women’s. Evangelical Christians and Catholics, in particular, are obsessed with forcing women to give birth to unwanted children. Many cited this as the reason they voted for Trump, who was pro-choice until it was politically expedient to be pro-birth.

This is not a pro-life issue. Notably, once fetuses breathe on their own, faith leaders and their flocks are not interested in their lives. Perhaps they should stick around to witness the results of their strong-arm tactics:

At least they’re consistent. These are the same folks who willingly endangered the lives and freedoms of God’s Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ, Native American, Mexican and African-American children with their votes—further proving they are not “pro-life,” simply pro-mandatory birth. If you already have a body, they could not care less.

Cameron Harris's fake news story about Clinton was shared by six million readers

Winners never cheat; cheaters never win

Take young Cameron Harris, a recent college grad who, according to this New York Times story, parlayed the $5 he paid for the “Christian Times Newspaper” domain into $22,000, by unscrupulously publishing fake news stories that supported Donald Trump’s narrative.

After Trump claimed during a campaign stop in Ohio that the election was rigged against him, Harris diabolically wrote and published a story claiming that an electrical worker had stumbled upon “tens of thousands” of fraudulent Clinton votes in a Columbus, Ohio warehouse.

Compounding his deceit, Harris added a photo of a guy behind stacks of bins marked “ballot box.” But he didn’t mention that the man and the ballots were in Great Britain. The story was eventually shared by six million people, worldwide.

After Harris was unmasked, he was fired by Maryland lawmaker David Vogt. Chances are, he will be welcomed into another political camp that appreciates his diabolical immorality.

Christians have shown us that the simply want to win. Even if they have to cheat. Whether by concocting fake news or drastically gerrymandering legislative districts to favor their party. When intelligence officials revealed that Russia had manipulated the outcome of the election, Christians weren’t alarmed that America is now a pawn for the Kremlin. They followed their leader beyond disrespecting U.S. intelligence community, and straight into denial.

And finally, the elephant in the room

Christians mouth the words that we are all children of God; but they voluntarily joined the same voting bloc as the KKK. They also knew Trump was being counseled by a reputed white supremacist, and had attracted the enthusiastic support of white nationalists. They’d heard Trump’s blatantly racist challenge to the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency, falsely claiming that Obama was not born in America—another insult to the intelligence officers who vetted him. The government had access to Obama’s late mother’s passport records, which revealed where she was on his birth date.

Beyond normalizing hatred, Trump’s candidacy and electoral victory turned up the volume on hate speech and unleashed hate crimes against other Americans. Apparently, it was simply waiting for a golden calf to set it free. And it fled into Christians’ open arms.

Jesus’s teachings can be our guide

I know many of us have called ourselves Christians all our lives. But if we still share Jesus’s values, we’re Followers of Jesus who choose to stay on the path.

Let’s bid a fond farewell to our Christian comrades, as they march into the Siberian wilderness, following a leader with a gyrating moral compass. May they find what they are looking for—and may we respect their choice, while making every effort to protect our rights and our freedom.

Thanks to them, millions of Americans fear for their safety because of the occupant of the White House. As these Christians march off into the dark side of history,  consciously trampling Jesus’s teachings, immorally attacking humans’ God-given sexual orientation, usurping a woman’s control over her own body and eradicating Christlike democracy, they will have nothing to show for it but calloused feet and bulging karmic debt.

They won their battle, but not their war. Love will forever trump hate.

Christians reject Jesus's teachings

Christians abandoned Jesus’s teachings and very few noticed

We’ve been bombarded with coverage of the unprecedented worldwide protests following the inauguration of Donald J. Trump. But the largest march—the one primarily responsible for that ceremony—has received little mention: Millions of Evangelical Christians defiantly declared their independence from Jesus’s teachings, and it’s as if no one noticed.

Christians reject Jesus's teachingsMaybe it wasn’t newsworthy. After all, Christians haven’t been followers of Jesus for centuries. However, they do like being seen carrying a Bible to church, prominently displaying images of a non-Semitic Jesus, and they have a macabre practice of adorning their homes, churches and necks with the weapon that murdered him.

But like grinning all the time, it was inauthentic and exhausting; so they stopped. Throughout campaign season, they openly embraced values that are the antithesis of Jesus’s: hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia. They opted to build a wall around themselves. And rejected Jesus’s directive to care for “the least of these.”

According to Pew Research, 80 percent of self-identified white, born-again/evangelical Christians who voted and 52% of Catholics who voted say they cast their ballot for Trump—the proudly vindictive, misogynistic serial adulterer and KKK-supported cyberbully who urged violence against members of Jesus’s human family at his rallies. Their affinity for him reveals six things about Christians.

1.  Christians don’t ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” 

Our assumptions about Christians defy actual facts. Not only do they reject Jesus’s teachings, they are outright hostile toward them. In elementary school, these Christians would not have voted a think-skinned, petulant kid who reveled in name-calling and poked fun at other kids’ physical appearance as their eighth-grade class president. He’d be considered unsuitable to represent the class. As adult Christians, he is their ideal representative.

2.  Christians don’t have to be followers of Jesus

For years, I have made a distinction between Christlike and Christian: The former describes how a person behaves; the latter merely describes what a person believes. You don’t have to respect, obey or follow Jesus’s teachings to be a Christian. You simply have to hold some core beliefs:

  1. A human being can be conceived without human sperm fertilizing a human egg.
  2. God will not forgive the guilty unless an innocent son is heinously tortured to death; i.e., God is not the unconditionally forgiving father portrayed in Jesus’s “Prodigal Son” parable.
  3. Jesus’s purpose for coming to Earth was to be brutally murdered for sins committed by others—before, during and after his lifetime here.
  4. God will sadistically torture us throughout all eternity if we do not acknowledge that Jesus was murdered for what we did, express gratitude for his murder, and proclaim that Jesus saved us from God’s demonic, unending punishment.
  5. Jesus’s body ascended into outer space without the aid of a projectile, pressurized aircraft or spacesuit.

3.  Jesus’s followers don’t have to be Christians 

Jesus’s followers don’t have to share these beliefs. Punctuating that, I was given a palm card at the Women’s March in Chicago that read, “Love Trumps Fear.” It was distributed by Jews for Jesus—and reminds us that Jesus was born Jewish and dubbed “King of the Jews” by his Roman murderers.

Love Trumps Hate, Love your neighbors as yourself
Jesus’s teachings are at the core of his followers’ beliefs:

  • Love one another, be kind to one another, forgive others as God has forgiven you (John 15:12); i.e. God is the unconditionally forgiving father portrayed in Jesus’s Prodigal Son parable.
  • Love your enemies. Live peaceably with all. Do not be vengeful. (Luke 6:27, Romans 12:17)
  • Treat others as you’d want to be treated. (Luke 6:31, Matthew 7:12, Philippians 2:4)
  • Show compassion for all and help them: the poor, despised, and outcasts. (Matt. 4:24-25)
  • “Be sincere, not a hypocrite” (Matt. 6:1-6)

Followers of Jesus consciously strive to live by these tenets, as evidenced in the massive protest marches in various parts of the world. But for Christians, treating others equitably—or only saying and doing thing to others that you would want said or done to you—is scornfully dismissed as “politically correctness.”

4.  Christians hate political correctness

Political correctness definitionChristians want to say whatever, insult whomever and do whatever they desire to those who don’t look like, act like or think like them and, of course, those who are less privileged. They don’t care that Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40) because they are not followers of Jesus.

5. Christians disrespect or distort Jesus’s lessons on karma

In Luke 6:37 and Matthew 7:1-3, Jesus reportedly admonished us against creating bad karma: “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” he said. “Condemn not, lest ye be condemned.” Translated: Whatever you do will be done to you.

Christians often quoted that admonition to excuse themselves from acknowledging facts about Donald Trump. “The Bible says that we shouldn’t judge!” they proclaimed.

But facts are not judgments: Trump is a serial adulterer. Fact. He has been sued by dozens of small business owners for not paying their invoices. Fact. He was sued by a woman who claimed he raped her when she was a teen. Fact. His foundation admitted to spending $20,000 on a portrait of Trump and $250,000 to settle private legal disputes, in violation of IRS rules. Fact. He’s taken six corporate bankruptcies. Fact. He boasted of grabbing women’s genitals. Fact. He settled a civil fraud claim brought by 6,000 alleged victims for $25 million. Fact.

These are facts, not judgments. But none of these facts cost him Evangelical Christians’ support.

6. God giveth free will; Christians taketh away

Contrasted to Followers of Jesus, Christians want to be the boss of every body, particularly women’s. Evangelical Christians and Catholics, in particular, are obsessed with forcing women to give birth to unwanted children. Many cited this as the reason they voted for Trump, who was pro-choice until it was politically expedient to be pro-birth.

This is not a pro-life issue. Notably, once fetuses breathe on their own, faith leaders and their flocks are not interested in their lives. Perhaps they should stick around to witness the results of their strong-arm tactics:

At least they’re consistent. These are the same folks who willingly endangered the lives and freedoms of God’s Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ, Native American, Mexican and African-American children with their votes—further proving they are not “pro-life,” simply pro-mandatory birth. If you already have a body, they could not care less.

Cameron Harris's fake news story about Clinton was shared by six million readers

Winners never cheat; cheaters never win

Take young Cameron Harris, a recent college grad who, according to this New York Times story, parlayed the $5 he paid for the “Christian Times Newspaper” domain into $22,000, by unscrupulously publishing fake news stories that supported Donald Trump’s narrative.

After Trump claimed during a campaign stop in Ohio that the election was rigged against him, Harris diabolically wrote and published a story claiming that an electrical worker had stumbled upon “tens of thousands” of fraudulent Clinton votes in a Columbus, Ohio warehouse.

Compounding his deceit, Harris added a photo of a guy behind stacks of bins marked “ballot box.” But he didn’t mention that the man and the ballots were in Great Britain. The story was eventually shared by six million people, worldwide.

After Harris was unmasked, he was fired by Maryland lawmaker David Vogt. Chances are, he will be welcomed into another political camp that appreciates his diabolical immorality.

Christians have shown us that the simply want to win. Even if they have to cheat. Whether by concocting fake news or drastically gerrymandering legislative districts to favor their party. When intelligence officials revealed that Russia had manipulated the outcome of the election, Christians weren’t alarmed that America is now a pawn for the Kremlin. They followed their leader beyond disrespecting U.S. intelligence community, and straight into denial.

And finally, the elephant in the room

Christians mouth the words that we are all children of God; but they voluntarily joined the same voting bloc as the KKK. They also knew Trump was being counseled by a reputed white supremacist, and had attracted the enthusiastic support of white nationalists. They’d heard Trump’s blatantly racist challenge to the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency, falsely claiming that Obama was not born in America—another insult to the intelligence officers who vetted him. The government had access to Obama’s late mother’s passport records, which revealed where she was on his birth date.

Beyond normalizing hatred, Trump’s candidacy and electoral victory turned up the volume on hate speech and unleashed hate crimes against other Americans. Apparently, it was simply waiting for a golden calf to set it free. And it fled into Christians’ open arms.

Jesus’s teachings can be our guide

I know many of us have called ourselves Christians all our lives. But if we still share Jesus’s values, we’re Followers of Jesus who choose to stay on the path.

Let’s bid a fond farewell to our Christian comrades, as they march into the Siberian wilderness, following a leader with a gyrating moral compass. May they find what they are looking for—and may we respect their choice, while making every effort to protect our rights and our freedom.

Thanks to them, millions of Americans fear for their safety because of the occupant of the White House. As these Christians march off into the dark side of history,  consciously trampling Jesus’s teachings, immorally attacking humans’ God-given sexual orientation, usurping a woman’s control over her own body and eradicating Christlike democracy, they will have nothing to show for it but calloused feet and bulging karmic debt.

They won their battle, but not their war. Love will forever trump hate.

How you will leave Earth alive, when nobody does

Death-is-birthMuhammad Ali is among more than 110 celebrities who have exited Earth’s stage since New Year’s Eve 2015. Each gave us a fresh opportunity not only to embrace the reality of death, but to actually understand it.

This is important. And as Ali demonstrated, if we don’t understand Death, we will not successfully navigate Life.

Ali understood both extraordinarily well, so well that he started planning his home-going services ten years ago. It was a beautiful, inclusive and meaningful production that mirrored the spirit of his time on Earth’s stage: powerful, entertaining, uplifting and unconditionally loving.

In her eloquent and poignant eulogy at Ali’s memorial service in his native Louisville on Friday afternoon, his wife Lonnie shared an insight from one of the planning sessions:

When the end came for him, he wanted us to use his life—and his death—as a teaching moment for young people, for his country, and for the world.

Throughout his time here, The Champ taught us by example…

  1. Fearlessly discard anything that no longer serves you—even if it’s your birth identity and the beliefs of your childhood.
  2. Embrace beliefs that resonate with your soul.
  3. Love unconditionally.
  4. Honor Self, honor All.
  5. Don’t let your story end with a defeat.

And with wisdom, he also taught us five additional lessons, in no particular order…

1. Do not fear Death. Plan for it.everyone-leaves-earth-alive

Most of us don’t want to discuss death. It frightens us. When a loved one is near the exit door, we pray—and we ask everyone we know—to pray for them to stay on this side. We do this because we don’t understand what God is. We do it because we don’t understand death. And we do it because we don’t understand that we are asking for God to obey our will and to disrespect the will of a soul who is ready to evolve to another experience.

Every soul who ever visited here has had an exit strategy. Though exceptional, the soul who came here to be Muhammad Ali was no exception to this truth. And he was wise enough to know that Earth is not Home. Not one immortal soul who came here has stayed. That was never any soul’s plan. So, he and his wife Lonnie, along with his closest advisors, began planning every detail of his final services a decade ago. It was two years in the making.

But the actual preparation for his last scene took more than six decades, because he focused on this dynamic Life principle…

2. Protect your soul.

[Ali] awoke every morning thinking about his own salvation. And he would often say, “I just want to get to heaven. And I’ve gotta do a lot of good deeds to get there,” Lonnie Ali

Many believe that heaven is a physical place beyond the 100-200 billion galaxies in the known physical universe, and that we must be saved from the inhumane and unending torture threatened by a wrath-filled, sadistic god who has zero tolerance for human error in those whom He created as sinful.

Why do you think the Divine would even become directly involved with such negative energy?

I ask you to think a higher thought about God. Consider the possibility that God is Love, and that this is not the way Love treats its beloved. Love is fair and just. Life is fair and just. God would not have created it any other way.

Consider the possibility that there is a mechanism in place that enables God to enjoy Life without huffing and puffing, and acting like Satan. That mechanism is karma.

when-curtain-fallsWith karma, God needs to do nothing, yet no one gets away with anything. With karma, whatever you do will be done to you. Karma is why Drama Queen Workshop Principle #1 is: Life is always fair.

With karma, we are not excessively punished for our negative, hurtful behaviors, we are equitably punished by them. We are not blessed for our good deeds, but blessed by them. With karma, the only thing we need to be saved from is the heavy, negative energy that attaches to the immortal soul, the True Self.

This gooey blob of energy attaches to us whenever we do not act with love, and every time we do things to others that we would not want done to ourselves. Its negative energies attract matching negative energies to us. We receive exactly what we’ve given—not more or less.

Ali vigilantly protected his soul. He understood, better than most, that the acts performed on Earth’s stage become the blessings or the burdens of the immortal soul, not the body costume that soul is temporarily wearing. He wanted heaven.

I imagine that he has now discovered that heaven is not a place, but a peace that results from treating others the way you want to be treated. I am thrilled that this peace is now known by the immortal soul who temporarily played the role of Muhammad Ali, a human who saw others through the deeper, wiser eyes of the soul. He urged us to call forth that ability when he said…

3. Don’t count the days; make the days count.

ALI-DAYS1

Each and every day, Muhammad Ali was consciously aware of his outcomes, the consequences of his actions. He was consistently on alert for any negative energy his temporary physical self would attract to his Immortal Self.

According to his wife, Ali apparently wanted to leave here a more evolved version of the soul who arrived 74 human years earlier. He wanted to exit the stage door of Earth’s theater, head high, shoulders back, arms raised in victory and immensely proud of the role he’d played here.

And he wanted the audience on to its feet, screaming for more—because, after all, he was the Greatest of All Time.

 

4. Don’t take yourself seriously.

If you have all eternity to live, and a tremendous grasp on how Life works, why not seize every opportunity available to have some fun? Anyone who observed Muhammed Ali would agree that he was as quick-witted as he was light-footed. He was as much a champ of practical jokes outside of the ring as he was with the knock-out punch inside it. He was braggadocious, outrageously funny, and totally lovable because of it.

wake-up-apologize-dqw

And let’s not forget, he was “pretty.” No one captured Ali’s keen sense of humor better than comedian Billy Crystal, whose ingenious impersonations of The Champ allowed Ali to laugh, perhaps howl, at himself.

As Crystal shared in his hilarious salute at Ali’s memorial service, the first time Ali saw Crystal mimic him, Ali adopted him as his “little brother.” For 42 years, they remained family, and loved each other as brothers. It mattered not that one was Muslim and the other Jewish.

Part of Ali’s greatness was his ability to see past the physical costume to the soul that was animating that costume, the soul that breathed life into those human nostrils. How much joy would he have missed if his Jewish little brother had not been in his life?

How much joy do we miss by shutting out others due to superficialities such as race, religion, gender-orientation or even income? Ali wanted more for us, and so he advised…

5. See the presence of God and the good soul in every man.

Onto the stage at his final service, Ali summoned eight leaders from different faiths whom he loved and who loved him, as evidenced in the rousing tribute from Rabbi Michael Lerner. It dramatically symbolized Ali’s belief in the Oneness of the human family and his embrace of all God’s people.

Ali didn’t have to share the same religious beliefs as his friends; his friends didn’t have to share his. Beliefs can trip us up. They can separate us, limit our vision, prevent us from living our soul purpose, and they can stunt our evolutionary growth.

Beliefs can make us fear death, so I’d like to advance this discussion.

Your Desktop Workshop on… Death

In Drama Queen Workshops, we discuss death as an important and necessary exit strategy. Souls cannot grow if we do not leave. So why does it scare us?

If we were taught to seek our own answers, instead of pressured to blindly accepting others’, we would quickly discover the reason we’re afraid of death: ancient myths that have survived for millennia. Perhaps the best known is Greek mythology’s “Pandora’s Box.”

The mythical Pandora was the first female human on Earth, created by the gods with earth and water. In modern parlance, Pandora was your garden variety mudpie. (Don’t snicker that any ancient Greeks believed humans can be formed from dirt. We all know 21st century folks who not only believe this, but insist that God holds them responsible for what the mudpie did.)

Eve and Pandora comparisons

©2015-2016 DarthCrotalus

As the story goes, Pandora was given a container and told not to open it. Of course, you know what happens when you tell a child, especially a mudpie child, not to open something: Pandora’s curiosity won the day.

When she lifted the lid, Death and other evils burst forth into the world. When she quickly slammed it shut, Hope—which, oddly enough, had coexisted in the dark with evil—was trapped inside. One would think that hope would have pushed everyone else aside at the first chance to break free.  But no. Poor dear.

On that cheery note, we have a riff on that tale: the story of another disobedient woman’s curiosity. Eve also had mudpie DNA, since she was created by extracting a rib from a male who’d been formed with earth and water. In this fantastical story, when Eve defied the Lord God’s order not to eat the Fruit of Knowledge, Death and other evils were introduced into the world.

Aside from the obvious misogyny and the implausible claim that dirt and water are gestational components of human life, the common denominator in these stories is that:

  • God cruelly and unfairly makes the entire world suffer for the mistakes of one person.
  • Death is a punishment imposed by an angry, vengeful God.
  • Death is an evil.

But what if it is not?

Everyone wants to go to heaven; no one wants to die

Everything physical changes, ages and dies. That is by design. Physical life is not eternal, folks. Physical is merely a form of life. Earth is not Home. It is simply the only home our human body costumes know.

people-gone-too-soonWe have merely forgotten that we’re not our costumes. Consequently, we mourn when a character exits Earth’s stage. We cry that they left too soon or were too young to die. We deny the possibility that life and death are purposeful, that every soul who visits Earth comes here for a reason, and that each soul has given itself a timetable for fulfilling its purpose.

Now hear this: Not one soul stays on Earth’s stage too long or leaves too soon. Everyone has an exit strategy.

Death is indisputably inevitable for every physical body. I might add that death is obviously desirable, because not one soul has ever visited Earth with the intention of wearing a human body costume forever.

Remember what The Champ said, and make each day here count.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How you will leave Earth alive when NOBODY will

Death-is-birthMuhammad Ali is among more than 110 celebrities who have exited Earth’s stage since New Year’s Eve 2015. Each gave us a fresh opportunity not only to embrace the reality of death, but to actually understand it.

This is important. And as Ali demonstrated, if we don’t understand Death, we will not successfully navigate Life.

Ali understood both extraordinarily well, so well that he started planning his home-going services ten years ago. It was a beautiful, inclusive and meaningful production that mirrored the spirit of his time on Earth’s stage: powerful, entertaining, uplifting and unconditionally loving.

In her eloquent and poignant eulogy at Ali’s memorial service in his native Louisville on Friday afternoon, his wife Lonnie shared an insight from one of the planning sessions:

When the end came for him, he wanted us to use his life—and his death—as a teaching moment for young people, for his country, and for the world.

Throughout his time here, The Champ taught us by example…

  1. Fearlessly discard anything that no longer serves you—even if it’s your birth identity and the beliefs of your childhood.
  2. Embrace beliefs that resonate with your soul.
  3. Love unconditionally.
  4. Honor Self, honor All.
  5. Don’t let your story end with a defeat.

And with wisdom, he also taught us five additional lessons, in no particular order…

1. Do not fear Death. Plan for it.everyone-leaves-earth-alive

Most of us don’t want to discuss death. It frightens us. When a loved one is near the exit door, we pray—and we ask everyone we know—to pray for them to stay on this side. We do this because we don’t understand what God is. We do it because we don’t understand death. And we do it because we don’t understand that we are asking for God to obey our will and to disrespect the will of a soul who is ready to evolve to another experience.

Every soul who ever visited here has had an exit strategy. Though exceptional, the soul who came here to be Muhammad Ali was no exception to this truth. And he was wise enough to know that Earth is not Home. Not one immortal soul who came here has stayed. That was never any soul’s plan. So, he and his wife Lonnie, along with his closest advisors, began planning every detail of his final services a decade ago. It was two years in the making.

But the actual preparation for his last scene took more than six decades, because he focused on this dynamic Life principle…

2. Protect your soul.

[Ali] awoke every morning thinking about his own salvation. And he would often say, “I just want to get to heaven. And I’ve gotta do a lot of good deeds to get there,” Lonnie Ali

Many believe that heaven is a physical place beyond the 100-200 billion galaxies in the known physical universe, and that we must be saved from the inhumane and unending torture threatened by a wrath-filled, sadistic god who has zero tolerance for human error in those whom He created as sinful.

Why do you think the Divine would even become directly involved with such negative energy?

I ask you to think a higher thought about God. Consider the possibility that God is Love, and that this is not the way Love treats its beloved. Love is fair and just. Life is fair and just. God would not have created it any other way.

Consider the possibility that there is a mechanism in place that enables God to enjoy Life without huffing and puffing, and acting like Satan. That mechanism is karma.

when-curtain-fallsWith karma, God needs to do nothing, yet no one gets away with anything. With karma, whatever you do will be done to you. Karma is why Drama Queen Workshop Principle #1 is: Life is always fair.

With karma, we are not excessively punished for our negative, hurtful behaviors, we are equitably punished by them. We are not blessed for our good deeds, but blessed by them. With karma, the only thing we need to be saved from is the heavy, negative energy that attaches to the immortal soul, the True Self.

This gooey blob of energy attaches to us whenever we do not act with love, and every time we do things to others that we would not want done to ourselves. Its negative energies attract matching negative energies to us. We receive exactly what we’ve given—not more or less.

Ali vigilantly protected his soul. He understood, better than most, that the acts performed on Earth’s stage become the blessings or the burdens of the immortal soul, not the body costume that soul is temporarily wearing. He wanted heaven.

I imagine that he has now discovered that heaven is not a place, but a peace that results from treating others the way you want to be treated. I am thrilled that this peace is now known by the immortal soul who temporarily played the role of Muhammad Ali, a human who saw others through the deeper, wiser eyes of the soul. He urged us to call forth that ability when he said…

3. Don’t count the days; make the days count.

ALI-DAYS1

Each and every day, Muhammad Ali was consciously aware of his outcomes, the consequences of his actions. He was consistently on alert for any negative energy his temporary physical self would attract to his Immortal Self.

According to his wife, Ali apparently wanted to leave here a more evolved version of the soul who arrived 74 human years earlier. He wanted to exit the stage door of Earth’s theater, head high, shoulders back, arms raised in victory and immensely proud of the role he’d played here.

And he wanted the audience on to its feet, screaming for more—because, after all, he was the Greatest of All Time.

 

4. Don’t take yourself seriously.

If you have all eternity to live, and a tremendous grasp on how Life works, why not seize every opportunity available to have some fun? Anyone who observed Muhammed Ali would agree that he was as quick-witted as he was light-footed. He was as much a champ of practical jokes outside of the ring as he was with the knock-out punch inside it. He was braggadocious, outrageously funny, and totally lovable because of it.

wake-up-apologize-dqw

And let’s not forget, he was “pretty.” No one captured Ali’s keen sense of humor better than comedian Billy Crystal, whose ingenious impersonations of The Champ allowed Ali to laugh, perhaps howl, at himself.

As Crystal shared in his hilarious salute at Ali’s memorial service, the first time Ali saw Crystal mimic him, Ali adopted him as his “little brother.” For 42 years, they remained family, and loved each other as brothers. It mattered not that one was Muslim and the other Jewish.

Part of Ali’s greatness was his ability to see past the physical costume to the soul that was animating that costume, the soul that breathed life into those human nostrils. How much joy would he have missed if his Jewish little brother had not been in his life?

How much joy do we miss by shutting out others due to superficialities such as race, religion, gender-orientation or even income? Ali wanted more for us, and so he advised…

5. See the presence of God and the good soul in every man.

Onto the stage at his final service, Ali summoned eight leaders from different faiths whom he loved and who loved him, as evidenced in the rousing tribute from Rabbi Michael Lerner. It dramatically symbolized Ali’s belief in the Oneness of the human family and his embrace of all God’s people.

Ali didn’t have to share the same religious beliefs as his friends; his friends didn’t have to share his. Beliefs can trip us up. They can separate us, limit our vision, prevent us from living our soul purpose, and they can stunt our evolutionary growth.

Beliefs can make us fear death, so I’d like to advance this discussion.

Your Desktop Workshop on… Death

In Drama Queen Workshops, we discuss death as an important and necessary exit strategy. Souls cannot grow if we do not leave. So why does it scare us?

If we were taught to seek our own answers, instead of pressured to blindly accepting others’, we would quickly discover the reason we’re afraid of death: ancient myths that have survived for millennia. Perhaps the best known is Greek mythology’s “Pandora’s Box.”

The mythical Pandora was the first female human on Earth, created by the gods with earth and water. In modern parlance, Pandora was your garden variety mudpie. (Don’t snicker that any ancient Greeks believed humans can be formed from dirt. We all know 21st century folks who not only believe this, but insist that God holds them responsible for what the mudpie did.)

Eve and Pandora comparisons

©2015-2016 DarthCrotalus

As the story goes, Pandora was given a container and told not to open it. Of course, you know what happens when you tell a child, especially a mudpie child, not to open something: Pandora’s curiosity won the day.

When she lifted the lid, Death and other evils burst forth into the world. When she quickly slammed it shut, Hope—which, oddly enough, had coexisted in the dark with evil—was trapped inside. One would think that hope would have pushed everyone else aside at the first chance to break free.  But no. Poor dear.

On that cheery note, we have a riff on that tale: the story of another disobedient woman’s curiosity. Eve also had mudpie DNA, since she was created by extracting a rib from a male who’d been formed with earth and water. In this fantastical story, when Eve defied the Lord God’s order not to eat the Fruit of Knowledge, Death and other evils were introduced into the world.

Aside from the obvious misogyny and the implausible claim that dirt and water are gestational components of human life, the common denominator in these stories is that:

  • God cruelly and unfairly makes the entire world suffer for the mistakes of one person.
  • Death is a punishment imposed by an angry, vengeful God.
  • Death is an evil.

But what if it is not?

Everyone wants to go to heaven; no one wants to die

Everything physical changes, ages and dies. That is by design. Physical life is not eternal, folks. Physical is merely a form of life. Earth is not Home. It is simply the only home our human body costumes know.

people-gone-too-soonWe have merely forgotten that we’re not our costumes. Consequently, we mourn when a character exits Earth’s stage. We cry that they left too soon or were too young to die. We deny the possibility that life and death are purposeful, that every soul who visits Earth comes here for a reason, and that each soul has given itself a timetable for fulfilling its purpose.

Now hear this: Not one soul stays on Earth’s stage too long or leaves too soon. Everyone has an exit strategy.

Death is indisputably inevitable for every physical body. I might add that death is obviously desirable, because not one soul has ever visited Earth with the intention of wearing a human body costume forever.

Remember what The Champ said, and make each day here count.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is forgiveness a matter of life and death?

You accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others--A Course in MiraclesMost of us believe that we’re granting someone a favor when we forgive them. In reality, we’re doing ourselves a favor: We’re freeing ourselves from the grip of any negative energy associated with the incident.

When we forgive others, we also are making a conscious choice to defer to what some call the Law of Reciprocity, the Law of Attraction or karma. We are trusting that in a “what-goes-around-comes-around” world, hurtful behavior will be naturally balanced at the most perfect time and in the most perfect way.

Allowing every soul to receive what we’ve given isn’t punishment or reward; it’s merely balance. It’s divine fairness.

Forgiving others also is a conscious decision to heal ourselves so that we can progress on our path instead of being stuck in someone’s stupid. Forgiving someone does not endorse or excuse their behavior. And it does not let them off the hook. They own their behavior, and they alone will be held accountable for everything they do.

It reminds me of the time I was walking out of my office and a concerned staff member called me back. I’d left my wallet on my desk. My response: “I have way too much work on my plate to add the task of monitoring someone else’s karma.”

As far as I was concerned: If someone came into my office without permission and stole my wallet, oh well. They had just signed a requisition for someone to violate their space and steal from them. It’s what happens whenever we do something to someone else that we wouldn’t want done to us. That’s why the rule is golden.

There’s no better time to be selfish than when deciding how to respond to someone’s harmful behavior. The most selfish thing we can do is to avoid creating any negative karma of our own by trying to even the score. The Divine doesn’t need our help in restoring balance. If there a role for us, something we must physically do, we will be guided. You’ll know that it’s Divine guidance if it is spoken calmly and you feel a sense of peace while hearing it and following the directions. If the words or directions cause you to feel angry or hurt, it’s not the Divine talking, it’s Ego.

Forgiveness does not heal relationships with anyone but yourself, and does not require that you remain in the friendship, marriage or other partnership, job or other organization. Once trust is lost, it takes more than forgiveness to restore it–and restoring trust is the other person’s job, not yours. But while forgiveness cannot necessarily heal a relationship, not forgiving might physically harm you.

Harboring anger and resentment linked to cancer

A study published in the November-December 2012 issue of Cancer Nursing: An International Journal for Cancer Care and cited on the US National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health website suggests a link between forgiveness and illness:

“The observed relations between religious characteristics and attitudes of guilt and forgiveness suggest that a careful examination of the role of religious beliefs and values is relevant in the clinical care of patients with cancer, both in the setting of early and advanced disease.”

Metaphysical lecturer and bestselling author Louise Hay, who claimed such a link in her 30-million copy bestseller, You Can Heal Your Life, focused specifically on cancer 20 years later in her book, Cancer: Discovering Your Healing Power. Hay asserted that resentment, criticism, and guilt create and maintain illness. And she presented forgiveness as the key to resolving diseases such as cancer.

We will not be held accountable for the way others treated us, only for the way we treated them, no matter how they treated us.Now, how do you feel about forgiveness? Inspired you to drop everything and start forgiving everyone who’s ever “wronged” you? There are things that have happened to us that we can’t recall or that we’ve protected ourselves from by stuffing those memories in the farthest reaches of our subconscious minds. If those situations are not healed, they can resurface—sometimes violently.

The situation is further complicated if you believe that you are a soul that is temporarily wearing a body. There could be thousands or millions of situations to forgive that are outside of our conscious awareness. To cover that possibility, I like to say: “I forgive myself for causing harm and I forgive everyone throughout my eternal life who has ever harmed me. I release all anger and negative energy that have chained me to those situations and souls.”

Life has dramatically taught me the transformational power of forgiveness, and I eagerly encourage others to reap the benefits of the practice (and it is a practice). Years ago, I created Forgiveness Coupons for one of my Drama Queen Workshops groups. The coupons were such a hit that I posted them on my website as a free download.

Right now, I’m in the process of a “gut rehab” of my original site, after remodeling it several times over the years. But some elements must follow me to the new domain. Among them, these precious coupons.

As I say in my workshops: “How would we experience the power of forgiveness if no one ever did anything that required it?”

I invite you to download the coupons as many times as necessary. Share them freely. Heal yourself and your loved ones—and as you practice forgiveness, be mindful not to do anything that would trigger self-forgiveness or the forgiveness of others. Balance makes no exception for you, Dear Soul.

Either Jesus was wrong–or we are

bad-mathFor years, I believed that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and that I became a sinner the moment I took my first breath. That’s what I was told. Everyone around me believed it. As far as I was concerned, it was so—until I began to notice that something didn’t add up:

Jesus didn’t simply die; he was sadistically tortured to death. According to the scriptures, he was made to suffer for something others did, just as I was destined to be punished because of something Adam and Eve did. It made me think.

Is God unfair?

If asked if God is unfair, our natural response is, “Of course not!” But do we really believe that?

Yes or no: Is it fair to blame, harm or kill an innocent person for something someone else did? If not, we actually believe that God is unfair.

If we worship someone who treats others unfairly, what does that say about us? To be consistent, if we believe that satanically torturing an innocent man to death is the divine way to solve a problem, then we also must believe that society should jail or execute innocent people for crimes committed by their relatives, friends, co-workers and neighbors. Do we?

No. We live in an if “you do the crime, you do the time” society. Why? It’s only fair.

The truth is, we don’t believe in harming or punishing innocent people, and we don’t know any sane person who does. Yet we love it when God does it.

Would Love do that?

Like most Christians, I was repeatedly told that Jesus’s suffering was an act of godly love. Further, I should be grateful that God loved me so much that He would have Jesus brutally tortured instead of me. And if I didn’t believe that Jesus was tortured, I would be.

I had to wonder: Is it an act of love to torture someone to death? Whether it was for their mistake or someone else’s, is that what Love does?

Furthermore, what kind of person is grateful that an innocent man was executed for a crime he committed? Was I that kind of person? I surely hoped not.

Jesus viewed God differently than we do

The way Jesus viewed God completely contradicts the way the crucifixion story portrays God. Jesus’s view of God is the polar opposite of ours:

Through his Parable of the Prodigal Son, retold in Luke 15, Jesus revealed what kind of father he believed God to be. He related the story of an impatient, greedy son who wanted his inheritance from his father—immediately, thank you very much. Despite the disrespectful “I wish you were dead” implications of his younger son’s demand, the free-willing father bestowed him the inheritance.

How to become a prodigal in a few easy steps

The self-indulgent son and his party pals squandered every cent of the inheritance, quickly transforming this son of wealth into a pauper. He became a laborer on, of all things, a pig farm. He’d hit rock bottom. To this famished heir, even pig feed looked like a banquet.

What next? After treating his father as if he were dead, going back home was out of the question. It was doubtful that he’d ever be forgiven.

But, weighing his options—pig slop or groveling at his father’s feet—he wearily returned home, bracing himself for the verbal or severe physical beating he deserved. He’d be lucky if his father didn’t turn him away or have him stoned to death, as was the custom in those days—and remains so in cultures that are wed to the dictates of their ancient holy books. It is human nature to be vindictive.

We view God as humanly vindictive

What would the next scene look like, if we were writing the story of the Lost Son? How would the father in our story react to seeing the wayward son who had wished him dead and had wasted everything?

My guess is that our scene would start with an angry, judgmental rant, complete with expletives and name-calling. If he allowed his son to live, the father would probably punish him so harshly that he’d wish he had been stoned to death.

In our story, he probably would never regain his position as a beloved son. He had traded that for debauchery.

Jesus viewed God as divinely forgiving

Father greets prodigal sonHow did the father react in Jesus’s story? He spotted his prodigal son from a distance and ran to greet him with open arms. He clothed him in fine garments and ordered a feast, much to the dismay of his older and much more respectful son.

The father in Jesus’s story was unconditionally forgiving, unconditionally loving and totally merciful. Why? That is the way Jesus viewed God.

It was a perception that defied religious teachings and disturbed the religious order. They felt that chaos would erupt if people were not controlled by the threat of extremely harsh or deadly punishment. (We see how well that has worked.)

What if every child was told the same thing when they reached an age of comprehension: “Sweetheart, we live in a what-goes-around-comes-around world. Whatever you do here will be done to you. It’s called karma. It keeps everything in balance. Keep that in mind every waking minute of every day. Let that be your guiding light.”

If we believed that, like the father in Jesus’s parable, God gave all souls the free will to choose our consequences, this world probably would be less chaotic and more heavenly. We would always be thinking that if we steal, cheat, deceive, rape or murder, at some point in our eternal lives the same thing will happen to us. Consequently, we would never do anything that we would not want done to us.

Instead, we worship the ancient human view of God as a controlling, judgmental, vindictive villain, an enforcer, and alas, a sadist who unfairly murders His innocent child.

I have only one thing to say about that: Either Jesus was wrong—or we are.

Tuesday’s votes are already counted

"Vote" buttonA spiritual teacher I highly respect recently confided to me, “Contrary to the view I usually hold of human beings as inherently holy, I have trouble holding that view of one of the political candidates. I would have less trouble holding Hitler as holy; at least Hitler had some passion. This guy, no matter how hard I try to see him otherwise, seems empty, soulless, and zombie-like to me. And I wonder why I can’t seem to get past this with him. He makes me shudder.”

I could relate to her concern; but I couldn’t concur with her angst. That’s because while I fervently believe all souls are inherently holy, I don’t hold the same view of human beings. For me, “human” is the costume we’re wearing; it is not at all who we are.

The Body and Soul Disconnection

Distinguishing the mortal body from the immortal soul provides a different and deeper context for the drama on Earth’s stage. It enables me to watch the action from Life’s balcony more objectively, and opens me to the possibility that there is a script outline guiding the acts.

Paper ballots in boxesWhen you watch Life long enough from the balcony, you can glimpse evidence that “the script is already written.” This U.S. presidential election drama is no different: The votes were cast and counted eons ago, just as the evolution and devolution of this planet were obvious in the Big Picture.

A Body with a Soul or Vice Versa?

Let me explain: Imagine that you were made in the image of your Creator: immortal, invisible, and invincible. There is no beginning or end to you. You are soul, and as soul you have the free will to do whatever you want.

One day, you learn that something dramatically transformative was going to occur on teeny tiny planet Earth during the 21st century. Grand theater! You don’t have to watch it from afar; you can actually be part of it.

You survey the planet’s locales, and decide the perfect place and circumstances. You spot old friends over there who could be your parents and siblings. While their bodies sleep, you huddle with them and plan your entrance onto Earth’s stage. It’s all quite exciting, and what a break from the monotone life of soul: *Om*

But here’s the thing: You quickly discover that millions of other souls had the same idea. Bummer.

Entering Earth’s Stage

There you are, in the wings of Earth’s theater, surrounded by a swarm of souls patiently awaiting their stage cues. There’s no pushing or shoving. There’s no anxiety—with the exception of those who are returning to the stage because they bombed miserably in their previous performances.

Golden Rule on bronze bears statueThese bad actors have reason to dread the return. They violated a rule so simple and so basic that some call it golden: They treated others in ways they wouldn’t want to be treated. Now, they will be treated the way they treated others. Ergo, the queasy feeling in their celestial bellies. Diagnosis: Bad karma.

But enough of those unfortunate karma creators. You’d rather focus your attention on your temporary home, an intriguing location called the United States of America.

Intriguing is an understatement. This particular spot on Earth, considered the leader of the free world and a Christian country, paradoxically was founded and has been sustained for more than 200 years through acts of oppression, suppression, bigotry, injustice and violence—often under the guise of religion.

The Karmic Ricochet

America is in a “what-goes-around-comes-around” world. It is governed not by the laws of men, but by the Law of Karma. Some call it the Law of Attraction or the Law of Reciprocity. It all means the same.

Most of us don’t believe that because we’ve seen too many people fail to receive what they have given. But karma isn’t attached to people. People are merely human body costumes that souls wear during that bat-of-an-eyelash experience called a human lifetime.

We step out of our bodies, leaving them like a heap of gym clothes on a locker room floor. And the karma we created while wearing those bodies follows us, just as the glory or embarrassment of athletes’ performances follows them, not their uniforms. Karma is also attached to the soul of a nation.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

The karmic energy of this country, a mere molecule of this dust speck of a planet hanging in the massive universe, is seductive to those who revel in pain and discord. But it is just as attractive to souls who want to heal pain. That’s why you and I were so determined to be here now.

We knew about the karmic history of this place; some of us even helped create it. We knew that 2012 would signal a major turning point, a shift. We knew that the schisms and “isms” that have historically mired this nation had to be coaxed from the underbelly into the sunlight so that they and the nation could be healed. We also knew that one incredibly courageous actor would volunteer to be the target of the venom and the catalyst for the healing.

We’ve read the script. We know the outcome. The votes were cast and counted before most of us stepped onto the planet. Tuesday our body costumes will discover what we already know: whether or not this nation, through blatant disregard and disrespect for all of creation, will eat itself alive.

The politics of hate: What it means for us

From the balcony during this political season, I’ve noticed that most of the American actors on Earth’s stage are campaigning in their own heads, whether or not they’re running for office. Hatred, which many have cloaked for a few decades since it became politically incorrect, is once again basking in the light of day.

A village in Kenya is missing its idiot.

(c) zazzle.com

Hatred is uniquely human. It’s taught and perpetuated by those who have relinquished control of the greatest part of themselves to the weakest part: the ego. Like the ego, hate’s life blood is the illusion of separation. Like the ego, hate preaches that others are different, less than we are. Consequently, we are not obligated to respect them.

Haters are being played like a fiddle. The ego is strumming their laziness and gullibility, and chortling while they create more drama and karma debt than they can repay in a lifetime. No doubt, they’ll return as the hated.

Let’s not get it twisted: Haters are not “the other.” They’re like the rest of us: too lazy to find out who we really are beneath these human costumes and so gullible that we believe Ego’s claims: We’re merely human. We’re separate from each other and from the Divine. Life is hard, unfair and scary.

No wonder we needed a rabbi to save us! Lord knows, he tried.

But Ego got us so entangled in the bad storytelling about the rabbi’s birth and death that we overlooked the life-saving teachings he left behind. For example, he reportedly said: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”  

The “Law” to which he referred is karmic law, that immutable Universal Truth that declares: We reap what we sow.

“Rubbish!” We hear Ego screaming. “How many times have you seen people hurt others and get away with it?”

We have to admit, Ego’s got a point. Heck, we’ve even seen innocent people serve prison time after being wrongly convicted.

Life simply isn’t fair, we conclude. That’s precisely the conclusion that Ego wanted us to draw.

Here’s what Ego doesn’t want us to know: We’re not “people.” We’re currently cast as “people” on Earth’s stage, temporarily dressed in mortal costumes. In reality, we are souls, made in the invisible, invincible and immortal image of our Creator. We’ve been alive since The Beginning. And we’ll be alive forever. (It’ll take some of us that long to work off the karma we’ve created.)

As long as we believe that we’re mortal, we’re going to sow shortsighted behaviors such as hatred that we’re going to have to reap at some point in our eternal lives. You see, Dear Souls, everything we do while wearing a human body costume will return to us at the most perfect time, in the most perfect way.

Just because you don’t believe that Life is eternal or that karma isn’t a law doesn’t mean that it isn’t. If Life isn’t eternal and if karma isn’t real, the worst that can happen is that you treat others the way you’d want to be treated. But if it is true, and you treat others in ways that you would not want to be treated, speaking to them the ways you wouldn’t want them to speak to you, disrespecting them even though you would not want to be disrespected, hurting them even though you wouldn’t want to be hurt, hating them even thought you would not want to be hated, refusing to forgive them even though you would want to be forgiven, the worst that can happen to you is horrific.

You might not be able to see it from Earth’s stage. But from where we’re sitting, you’re always carrying the debit or credit card called karma. So go on and hate if you want to. Eventually, you’ll have to balance your karmic bank account. And sooner or later in your eternal life you’ll figure out that if you’re not factoring in the karmic consequences of all your actions, the only one you really hate is yourself.

The dreaded karma conversation

(continued from “Troy Davis left something for you“)

When we look at Earth’s stage from here, the first thing we notice is that every performer is wearing a costume that functions exclusively in this atmosphere. Most of the actors appear to be following a script., although there are some who are trying to do improv with varying degrees of success. (Ha’ mercy, entering the stage without a plan can be a recipe for disaster!)

You’ll also notice that not one of those actors thinks Earth’s theater is real Life. Not one of them entered intending to stay. Each came with its own purpose, time line, to-do list and exit strategy. If you could see their scripts, you’d have some insight into these souls’ history, and some context for this phase of their eternal lives. More important, you might even discover context for your own.

I believe that is the gift that Troy Davis and others present us when they perform in front of global audiences. If we’re paying attention, we might grasp the lessons they’re teaching. We might ask, “What do they want me to know about myself, as an immortal soul?”

Know thyself

No one is here by accident. If we are to discover and accomplish our purpose for the visit, we must be conscientious and receptive to new information. It could come from anywhere, even from souls playing the roles of former Death Row inmates Troy Davis and Samuel David Crowe.

We can’t intrude and read their scripts. But when we look at their contrasting outcomes, we have some clues about the scripts’ content and their souls’ histories. Through them, we might discover more about ourselves.

Troy Davis and Samuel David Crowe

Credit: Ga. Dept. of Corrections/Reuters

Both Davis and Crowe were in the Death Row section of Earth’s stage, convicted of murder. Davis (left) was executed, despite pleas from Pope Benedict XVI, former FBI Director William S. Sessions, Bishop Desmond Tutu, former president Jimmy Carter and the prayers and online petitions of tens of thousands of people around the world. Crowe (right) was spared, due mostly to the efforts of a lesser known group, Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Why were their outcomes so different?

If we look beyond the color of the costumes these souls were wearing, one answer is obvious: The outcomes served each soul’s purpose and honored each one’s schedule. No one, not even the Pope, can override the will of a soul on a mission. If a soul wants to leave its body—even if the ego in that body adamantly disagrees—the soul will do it. According to the evidence, the soul inside Troy Davis’s body wanted total freedom on September 21, 2011, or it would still be confined to it. Just as clearly, the soul inside Crowe’s body had not scheduled its departure on May 22, 2008, or it would have left behind human remains.

But there’s also a less obvious answer: As souls, Davis and Crowe have been alive forever, and have different karmic histories, which naturally results in different scripts with different outcomes. As far as we know, the soul that became Davis might have gotten away with murder or falsely accused someone else of murder while performing another role, in another play, at another time in its immortal life. Just speculating.

But what if that really is what happened? The soul is very much aware that a human lifetime on Earth is only a bat-of-an-eyelash experience in the Universal time/space continuum. Why wouldn’t it take a second to restore balance to another situation?

In this case, punishment for a crime Davis didn’t commit would balance. It would be considered a victory, a mission accomplished. What if it came with a karmic bonus? What if, in the process, the soul inspired a multitude of people to take the next step in man’s evolution, to move beyond revenge, barbarism and flawed man-made law to become more humane, if not divine. A twofer! Again, I’m not stating fact, just offering some possibilities, based on the real Life principles we use in Drama Queen Workshops:

  • Life is always fair.
  • God is never far.
  • Death is not THE END.
  • Absolutely nothing is unforgivable.

And that brings us to Crowe. Based on the testimonials of those who were advocating on his behalf, Crowe was very repentant, remorseful, and took full responsibility for his crime. With this context, it’s possible that the soul that became Crowe chose a different technique for restoring balance: He forgave himself. That’s a little-known option that substitutes for the “having it done to you” part. I discovered it in one of my readings years ago. After seeing how spectacularly it neutralized negative karma for me, I now highly recommended. (I related that life-altering situation in EARTH Is the MOTHER of All Drama Queens, pp.116-118)

That brings us to the final question in our dreaded karma conversation:

How can we use and share the gifts these souls have given us?

Davis and Crowe remind us to be more conscious as we perform our roles and interact with others on Earth’s stage. I’m reminding you to maintain top-of-mind awareness that we are immortal souls temporarily wearing the costume of human beings. No matter what skin we’re in, the Laws of Balance and Reciprocity will apply to us; so it is in our best interest to doing nothing to someone else that we would not want done to us at some point in our eternal lives: That means everything from being dishonest or taking something that doesn’t belong to us to harming or depriving someone of their body.

It’s also in our best interest to discover why we’re here on this planet at this time. It’s so easy to become distracted by the sights and sounds of Earth. We’re susceptible to messages that we are in control, that we can have anything we want. That applies to the real you, as soul, not your body costume. Use those prayers and affirmations to find clues to your soul’s purpose. Pay attention to what it embraces and what it rejects.

Jobs, relationships,and entrepreneurial income may keep eluding you for any number of reasons. Take the time to cultivate a relationship with your real self to find out why. Ask for guidance and follow it. Part of the reason it’s said that it’s so difficult for a rich man to get into “heaven,” that state of peaceful consciousness, is that he’s too distracted by the outer world to find the real treasure within.

Periods of lack could be the most evolutionary of your soul’s existence. Replace stress with real success.

We keep looking at life from a human perspective when that literally scratches the surface. From the viewpoint of soul, I can confidently say, “This is not Pat’s life, it’s mine. She’s necessary so that I can be visible in Earth’s atmosphere. Through her, I am fulfilling my purpose for coming. The Divine within me is not here to do her will. She is here to do ours.”

Balance is natural; balancing karma is a victory, no matter what it looks and feels like on Earth’s stage. Davis’s victory demonstrates that real Life is greater than our physical eyes can see, and as souls, we are more powerful and present than we realize. Our immortal souls’ desires are more potent than prayers, thoughts, visualizations and other manipulations.

We could save ourselves a lot of frustration and disappointment by trusting our immortal selves to know what is for the Highest Good in any situation. Trusting the Divine within, instead of becoming attached to the one created in our mortal brains, enables us to embrace any outcome, and know that all is well.

Having said that, I was hopeful that barbarism would not rule the day on September 21, and my heart broke when I read the news of the execution. But I trusted that everything was in Divine Order, happening as it should, no matter what it looked like here on the stage. I trusted that by sacrificing his body (not his life), Troy Davis made a huge difference in the world.

And he did.