In The Spirit of Truth

There is a simple solution to chronic wasting disease: we as human beings need to return to a state of mind and daily practice of spiritual reverence and respect for all life.

In the tens of thousands of years that Native Americans inhabited North America, animals and humans were recognized as planetary family members. In the Native reckoning, all of creation comes from and returns to God, is interconnected through God, and has a spirit, fulfilling a spiritual purpose. All spiritual beings—animal, vegetable and even mineral—are guides, experts each in their own areas, and teachers, in communication with human beings through Hail-o-way-an, the language of the heart. (1) It was through this language that healing herbs were discerned and other gifts given to man in abundance.

In oral traditions that go back to the beginning of the first ice age, it was our spiritual brothers and sisters, the animals, who volunteered their hides and meat to help their hairless sibling, man, survive. Before a tree was cut to build a canoe or a lodge, prayers were offered and the eldest tree in the area was consulted and permission obtained first. Likewise, hunting was not simply a matter of food and certainly not a form of entertainment; that would have been considered blasphemous. Animals that fell to bow or ensnared in traps were thanked, recognised as spiritual equals who freely gave their physical lives so that the people could live. And it was paramount that something always be given back. (2)

It is interesting to observe that despite the fact that tens of millions of aboriginal peoples speaking over 500 different languages peacefully co-existed for thousands of years, cultivated food crops, created extensive trade routes into South America, developed sophisticated democratic political systems on which our own Bill of Rights was modeled, and preserved a natural resource base that supported them healthfully—for thousands of years longer than most of northern Europe was even populated—that there were virtually no communicable diseases present in North America. By contast, Europeans suffered from a myriad of communicable afflications. When infected with these new diseases, it was said by the Native victims that the fevers had “a face” of evil. It was said that the newcomers walked in an unholy way.

What could be more unholy, more disrespectful, more sacriligeous, than to cut up your dead relatives with chain saws—which is how modern meat processors butcher animals? Think about it. We must stop treating God’s creation as a disposable commodity, much as we stopped treating other human beings as disposable commodities when slavery was abolished and women got the vote. Respect for all life is evident in the Bible as well. When God instructed Noah in the building of the Ark, he was directed to collect two of every animal, not just the domesticated species. As the Yaqui Indian medicine man, don Juan Matus, told anthropologist Carlos Castenada, death stalks each one of us just the same as it stalks a cockroach. (3) Face it. We are all going to die, to return to the spirit world some day. We do not actually own anything other than our spirit. And to act as if we do is not only foolish, it is ungodly.

Hunters: start rebuilding your spiritual bank account. Cultivate sensitivity, respect and an attitude of gratitude for your prey. Chronic wasting disease first appeared in captive stock of elk and deer—not in the wild. Let these majestic beautiful animals live freely as God intended them to. Look to see if an animal is sick before you shoot, pray and listen to what your heart tells you. If you take the shot and hit the mark, be grateful. Learn how to butcher it yourself, respectfully, using as much of the animal as you can, wasting as little as possible, or find a spiritually centered, respectful butcher. Do not take more than you need. Recognize that God created a balanced, functional ecosystem and allow balance to return by supporting protection of our wilderness areas and the return of the high-end predators: wolves, bears and lions. They will immediately help maintain a healthy population of prey, for they take only the sick and injured.

Chronic wasting disease is a symptom of a deeper spiritual problem which will be resolved when human beings rewaken to the truth of our connection, through our hearts, to all of life, and simply allow the return of natural balance established by God.

1) For more on Hail-o-way-an and the Seneca creation story see Other Council Fires Were Here Before Ours by Jamie Sams and Twylah Nitsch.

2) For more on Native spiritual traditions see Mother Earth Spirituality by Ed McGaa.

3) See The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Casteneda.

Think! Who has anything to gain by admitting the truth to global warming–and who has something to lose? Why would scientists come to a consensus on an issue, independently, if it were not true? Researchers around the globe, all applying the same principles of rigorous scientific inquiry that brought us knowledge that the world is not flat and airflight and penicillan and the Polio vaccine and rockets and cell phones and the million other technological marvels of the 21st century, all agree on this issue. . . but there are those who don’t want the masses to believe it. Open your eyes and ears. Read, listen, evaluate, and think about it.

We are frogs in the kettle and the water is getting hot. Only we can rescue each other and ourselves by jumping out and turning off the heat! Consider this my attempt to rescue YOU and your loved ones and our children, because I love you all!

There are those who put dollars ahead of human life. Dollars ahead of health. Dollars ahead of an end to hunger. Dollars ahead of justice. Dollars ahead of the love of God and mankind.

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine
by: Sharon Begley 6 August 2007

Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate’s Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with “the overwhelming science out there, the deniers’ days were numbered.” As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. “I realized,” says Boxer, “there was a movement behind this that just wasn’t giving up.”

If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the “Live Earth” concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, “green” magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore’s best-selling book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. “They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”

Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was “a lot” of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was “mainly caused by things people do.” In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world’s economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is “a lot of disagreement among climate scientists” on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.

As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to “enact strong national legislation” to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, “the American public yawned and bought bigger cars,” Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians “shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing.”

continued at http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_read.asp?id=102958862007