COST OF OCCUPATION / BETRAYAL AND MISERY

In five years, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama, the agent  of hope and change, has become the prince of darkness and his presidency has become a farce ~ an absurdly futile exercise in pretense and broken promises from a president who cloaks himself with drones and armor and who answers only to the corporate global elite.

The cost of occupation in both Iraq and Afghanistan is the silence of moral disillusion and betrayal by a dying Empire ~ for our military has bought into a War on Terror farce which will not go away and continues  through this Veterans day in 2013. If you want to get a feel of what American troops go through in Iraq and Afghanistan ~ watch The Hurt Locker and read Steinbeck's The Moon is Down and realize that eventually The Flies will conquer the fly paper in both Iraq and Afghanistan ~ as they most certainly did in Vietnam: Allen L Roland

This Veterans day we have over 200,000 homeless veterans on the streets of America; yes 200,000 ~ that is not a misprint. That is a disgrace, a national disgrace and part of the cost of occupation along with national betrayal and dying for lies. Here are the current death and wounded numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan;

IRAQ:

Killed In Action: 3/2003 ~ 12/18/2011: 4,818
Wounded total to 12/18/1I: 54,834
Iraqi Civilians Killed: 1,366,350

AFGHANISTAN:

Killed In Action: 2,285

Wounded Total:18,188
Afghanistan Civilians Killed: 56,250

Here is reporter Ann Jones firsthand, close-up-and-personal look at the impact of our recent wars on America’s unlucky soldiers ~ as she describes the silence of moral disillusion and betrayal;  "The last time I saw American soldiers in Afghanistan, they were silent. Knocked out by gunfire and explosions that left them grievously injured, as well as drugs administered by medics in the field, they were carried from medevac helicopters into a base hospital to be plugged into machines that would measure how much life they had left to save. They were bloody.  They were missing pieces of themselves. They were quiet.

It’s that silence I remember from the time I spent in trauma hospitals among the wounded and the dying and the dead. It was almost as if they had fled their own bodies, abandoning that bloodied flesh upon the gurneys to surgeons ready to have a go at salvation. Later, sometimes much later, they might return to inhabit whatever the doctors had managed to salvage.  They might take up those bodies or what was left of them and make them walk again, or run, or even ski.  They might dress themselves, get a job, or conceive a child. But what I remember is the first days when they were swept up and dropped into the hospital so deathly still. They were so unlike themselves. Or rather, unlike the American soldiers I had first seen in that country. Then, fired up by 9/11, they moved with the aggressive confidence of men high on their macho training and their own advance publicity."  Must read articles : Tomgram: Ann Jones, Silent Soldiers, The Losers From Our Lost Wars http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog//175769/

Here's Ann Jones being interviewed by Amy Goodman on The Untold Story of War: U.S. Veterans Face Staggering Epidemic of Unemployment, Trauma & Suicide

Excerpt:  Regarding veteran suicide rate which is actually closer to 50 a day when you count veterans who have left the military ~  

AMY GOODMAN: "These suicide numbers are astounding. I mean, I think people just have to close their minds; they can’t comprehend: 22 veterans or soldiers a day in the United States take their lives?"

ANN JONES: "And those are soldiers who are still in the military. Those who have already left the military are not counted. And there’s a lot of indication that they may be committing suicide at even greater rates. But to me, the most shocking part of this is that many of those who kill themselves are receiving treatment at the VA, but the treatment they’re receiving is Big Pharma drugs, the opioid painkillers. They’re prescribed not for psychological problems, but for simple body pain. And they’re highly addictive, and they’re very deeply implicated in soldier suicides. I tell the story of one Texas soldier…."  

 Must see 12 minute video http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/11/the_untold_story_of_war_us

Every dying Empire has its truth telling prophet and America had its own with Chalmers Johnson. Johnson correctly compared the decay of the American empire, with its over 900 overseas military bases, with the fall of the Roman Empire whereas the Senate becomes a wealthy corporate club and irrelevant compared to the ruling Military Industrial Congressional Complex. Read article: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/05/31/prophet-for-a-dying-empire-chalmers-johnson/

Johnson’ s main points were; The United States is treading the same three steps as the former Soviet Union;

• Inability to deal with corporate corruption.
• Imperial over-stretch is leading to fiscal insolvency ( 900 plus bases throughout the world )
• Inability to reform, thus accelerating the inevitable fall.

Chalmers offered the solution but rightfully suspected that it was already too late for America; ( with my inserts )

1.    Reform Congress ( Good luck )

2.    Reform corrupt election laws ( good luck )

3.    Re-division of electoral college  ( good luck )

4.    Cutback funding of intelligence agencies and department of the defense and take steps to break up the Military Industrial Congressional Complex. ( more good luck )

Chalmers expected considerable resistance but also said that only the truth could avoid the inevitable fall of the American empire ~ as it did in bringing down the Soviet Union.

Thus, only the role of the alternative media and courageous whistle blowers in exposing the truth can rescue a crumbling Republic that has rapidly become a corrupt plutocracy.

It is my opinion, that there is one central truth that can bring down America’s Berlin wall of denial along with the deceit of the War on Terror ~ it’s the big, big lie and America’s greatest act of treason, it’s the rationale for the cloak of secrecy, torture, Guantanamo, Drone assassinations and illegal spying that now erodes our Republic ~ it’s the monstrous lie of 9/11 along with its unchallenged official story.

What started as a War on Terror in Afghanistan has now become the front for an Orwellian never ending War of Terror which is rapidly draining the heart, resources and spirit of America.

The object of this perpetual war, as Orwell describes, is to keep a society or ‘Our Way of Life’ intact ~ The war in actuality is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society or the global elite status quo intact. 

 Who can ever forget Tony Blair justifying the Iraq war and occupation as “protecting our way of life” 

Tony Blair sporting his Yarmulke and the self-satisfied smirk of an AIPAC supported war criminal.

The American Killing machine most certainly still exists and now we have Nick Turse’s new book, Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam  to confirm this obvious truth ~ “No one has ever described the American killing machine in that country the way he has; nor, as he did, tracked down Americans charged with war crimes by the U.S. military in that era, nor tramped through distant rural Vietnam to hear what it felt to be on the other side of massacres or experience the American-imposed “system of suffering” in those years. A decade in the making, it is a book that should reshape in fundamental ways how we remember the Vietnam War.“

Afghanistan excerpt: “Untold numbers of Afghans have also died of everything from lack of access to medical care (there are just 2 doctors for every 10,000 Afghans) to exposure, including shocking reports of children freezing to death in refugee camps last winter and again this year.  They were among the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have been internally displaced during the war.  Millions more live as refugees outside the country, mostly in Iran and Pakistan.  Of the women who remain in the country, up to 2 million are widows.  In addition, there are now an estimated 2 million Afghan orphans.  No wonder polling by Gallup this past summer found 96% of Afghans claiming they were either “suffering” or “struggling,” and  just  4 %  just “thriving.”     See article:

 

If you really want to know what our troops are going through in illegally occupied Iraq and Afghanistan ~ read John Steinbeck's ' The Moon is Down ' or better yet read Paul Rockwell's poetic and moving commentary ' The Agony of Occupation / The flies have conquered the flypaper ' from Common Dreams .

Excerpt: " It is impossible to read Steinbeck's masterpiece without thinking about our own soldiers in Iraq , about their daily fear, the growing tendency for revenge, the agony of conquest. 'The Moon is Down' is not primarily about the Norwegian people, or even about the resistance. It's about the terror, the self-doubts, the slow transformation of arrogance to self-loathing, under which invaders live... 'The Moon is Down' is not about the violence; it's about the psychology of occupation. Steinbeck focuses on the inability of occupying soldiers to cope with the ingratitude of a "liberated" people. Germans trusted their leaders and expected to be greeted with flowers, not contempt. The public hatred of the occupation, not sabotage alone, destroys German morale ... When a lieutenant is upset by the hostility of the local population, his commander admonishes him: "I will not lie to you, Lieutenant. They should have trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led you along with lies. But you took the job, Lieutenant. We can't take care of your soul."

The occupiers are not pacified. "Captain, is this place conquered?" "Of course," the captain replies. But the listener cracks. "Conquered and we're afraid, conquered and we're surrounded. The flies have conquered the fly paper ! "  

See article: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0402-12.htm

The War on Terror farce is still with us and will be until the truth prevails.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/cost-of-occupation-betrayal-and-misery.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and transformational counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

SEEING MY LIFE AS A QUEST VS. A STRUGGLE

Allen L Roland, PhD

My life has been a quest, not a struggle, to fully surrender to love and eventually re-embrace a young child within myself who felt, knew and longed to share a great truth ~ before he closed his heart at six years old ~ that a profound love and joy deepest within myself indelibly connected me to a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness that exists not only beyond time and space but also deepest within all living beings: Allen L Roland

I'm almost 80 years old, yet I remember surrendering to my birth experience, pushing against something (which must have been my twin brother, who was born two minutes after me) and the three lights over the birthing table ~ but I knew I wanted to be here. I also remember lying in front of my mother's bedroom door at less than one year's old wondering why my mother was crying inside and I distinctly remember hiding under my bed during the great hurricane of 1937 at 3 years old. But what I remember most was the warmth and love of my beloved grandfather particularly at meals with my brothers ~ when he would invent imaginary characters under the table (like Indian Joe) who he would have conversations with which engulfed us all in delight and laughter.

But there is one particular memory which became the foundation of my lifelong quest to share a great truth and make a profound difference on the planet.

The experience happened when I was four years old while playing alone in my room one glorious summer day in Newtonville, Massachusetts. I knew I was loved by my twin brother Bobby and our loving maid Delia but I could feel love literally leap from my heart toward my beloved and leprechaun like grandfather who brought magic to our daily life.

Suddenly, I heard my favorite song on the radio (Gene Autrey's I'm Back in the Saddle again) . My inner joy became too great to contain and I felt an incredible urge to share it with the world ~ so I turned the radio up to full volume, stood on my tiptoes and opened my  bedroom window, and as I leaned out into that gorgeous New England Summer day ~ I felt an overwhelming delight that seemed to lift me out of myself. An utterly amazing feeling of knowing rose from deepest within me, a feeling of incredible joy and oneness with everything that I saw at that moment~ and I totally surrendered to it.

For a few ecstatic moments, I knew that I was not alone. This awesome joy and delight lifted me out of myself and somehow connected me to everything I saw around me.

At four years old, I knew ~ for one important blissful moment ~ that I was a beloved and essential part of a loving universe but I also obviously felt a deep intention to share this truth with the world ~ which I have been doing for close to 40 years.

Two years later, when I was suddenly taken away from my grandfather, my heart closed and I checked out. Emotionally I stopped growing and for the next 30 years, that transcendent moment of soul consciousness I had at three years old remained buried beneath a well of grief, a mantle of psychic pain, aloneness and despair as well as the feeling that being myself was not enough.

Grahame Greene once wrote There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in ~ and that moment at 4 years old was one of two moments when I was given a glimpse of my soul's destiny and the other was a precognitive vision of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay at six years old when I emotionally shut down after being taken away from my grandfather ~ 40 years later I walked into that very moment in time in San Francisco and it verified my theory that a Unified field of love and soul consciousness exists beyond time and space.

Only when I eventually fully opened my heart in relationship did I set the stage to escape my self made prison and when that brief relationship ended ~ when I finally took full accountability for my deep pain and stopped denying love ~ only then did those joyful memories from my childhood emerge from hiding including that joyful transcendent moment at 4 years old as well as my precognitive vision of the Golden Gate bridge at 6 years old. I was obviously seeing through different eyes and that was my first self-discovery that a profound joy and love lay beneath my own deepest fear and pain ~ as well as my need to prove it and share it with the world.

At age 37, my life became truly inner, or soul-directed as opposed to outer or ego-directed. I dreamed I was going to write a book Conscious Love, the Ultimate Energy which two years later became my Master's Thesis. That was followed much later by my PhD on the Unified Field and eventually my book ~ Radical Therapy / Surrender to love and heal yourself in seven sessions ~ not seven years.

My life has been inner directed since age 37 and my life's work has been connecting to the trapped child within others, particularly recently with combat veterans with PTSD, and facilitating their path to inner joy and freedom by opening their hearts through love and gratefulness.

It was Mahfouz who correctly wrote "When the heart achieves its desire, you shall transcend time and space" ~ and the heart or soul's desire is to love so deeply that we become one with a universal state of love and soul consciousness that exists not only beyond time and space but also deepest within each one of us. My after death experience with both my mother in 1987 and beloved twin this year is valid evidence that this state of soul consciousness exists beyond time and space.

Now I clearly see my whole life as a quest to return to, live from, and share with others that joyful state of soul consciousness that we all once knew and felt as children ~ and from a place of celebration and service lead others to that same place of joy and delight beneath their deepest pain and aloneness.

And the central, liberating truth on which my work as a heart centered therapist is based, is this ~ The basic underlying and uniting force of the universe is a psychic energy field of love and soul consciousness ( the Unified Field ) which lies not only beyond time and space but also beneath our deepest fears and whose principle property is the universal urge to unite.

Seeing our lives as a quest versus a struggle is the most important step I take with my clients in my individual as well as group sessions and it always begins in the first two sessions. When you begin to see all of your love relationships in the perspective of a quest to find yourself ~ it becomes far easier to thank them for being gifts in your life regardless of any associated painful memories.

I vividly remember one of my Band of Brother's combat veterans with PTSD who could only remember one person who really loved him ~ his grandfather. I took him by the hand in a group session and said what would he tell his grandfather right now if he was holding his hand. He opened his heart with his deeply felt words and his homework was to come from that same place, that he had just shared with his grandfather through me, with his family. He did and the inner light came on as it has with over 60 combat veterans with PTSD over the past three years and hundreds of individuals who have completed my 7 session short term heart centered transformation counseling sessions over the past 40 years.

Obviously, my most powerful work as a heart centered therapist has been with Combat veterans with PTSD for the following reasons:

1.They have been taught to hate and long for another choice in their life.

2.They have faced their deepest fears in combat and have the courage to face the inner fears of opening their hearts.

3.They trust me, as their coach, since I'm a active duty veteran and have gone to the edge as a pilot as well as facing and going through my fears on the journey of my heart.

But they also somehow sense, in their work with me, that beneath their unworthiness issues, shame based guilt and inability to give and receive love that there is another choice and that it's finally their turn to go inside and claim that choice. As their coach, I help them connect the dots so that their heart centered quest becomes obvious to them as well as their family and friends.

The third tenet of my Unified Field is the key to understanding the stumbling block we must change into a stepping stone in our quest to find ourselves as well as real meaning in our life;

Tenet Three

It would appear that the pain of not feeling loved for oneself and being seemingly separated from our original state of soul consciousness and the Unified Field is of such deep psychic proportions that, early in childhood, processes are triggered in the hypothalamus which result in a left brain imbalance and dominance as well as the denial, mistrust and forgetting of our connection to the Unified Field and the love and joy and a state of soul consciousness deepest within us. It is from this dark tunnel of pain, aloneness, despair and apparent death that the ego and ego consciousness is born - for survival and protection purposes only. As such, death or the idea of death, is an illusion measured by the limits of our consciousness. Think of the ego as a protective cocoon that is eventually meant to be shed. The Unified Field can be visualized as a grid of great luminosity joining all living beings within its energy field of love. The words of Longfellow would seem appropriate in describing this all-encompassing field or grid: "The thread of all sustaining beauty that runs through all and doth all unite."

A UNIVERSE OF HEARTSTRINGS

This is why most people are not afraid of their pain, most people are living in pain ~ what most people are afraid of is their deeper joy because they feel it will eventually be taken away ~ as it seemingly was as a child or in relationship.

Once my clients sense that beneath their deepest pain and fear is joy, intention and purpose ~ their ego is no longer needed for protection and begins to slowly unravel.  

The 8 steps of ego death are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, Surrender, Celebration and service.

I meet and touch them at the celebration and service stage and guide them through their fears to the same stages.

I have personally proved that a Unified Field of love, joy and soul consciousness exists beneath our deepest pain and fears and I have guided hundreds including combat veterans, who were taught to kill, to this same place of gratitude, self-forgiveness, joy and love deepest within themselves. See http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/02/12/miracle-of-heart-centered-counseling-is-self-healing/

There can no longer be any doubt that this field of soul consciousness exists and I am indebted to four people who built the scaffolding for my unveiling of this universal truth;

1. Albert Einstein ~ who looked at nature in awe and wonder and dared to think the unthinkable. He also believed that a common pattern was there to be seen if one would look with the fresh clear eyes of a child ~ and he was correct.

2. Carl Jung ~ who sensed a parallel between theoretical physics and depth psychology. This inspired his efforts to probe the deepest regions of his own psyche, as well as that of others, in search of a unifying source of energy and a causal theory of synchronicity comparable in scope to Einstein's theory of relativity. His collective unconscious was actually the Unified Field of love and soul consciousness which exists beyond time and space.

3. Teilhard de Chardin ~ who clearly defined this all-unifying source of energy as love ~ "Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them for it alone takes them and joins them to what is deepest within themselves."  Teilhard's dilemma was that he did not realize that psychic pain ( the seeming separation from love) can override our original state of love and soul consciousness causing us to deny or mistrust the love and joy deepest within ourselves.

4. Joseph Allen Bryant ~ my grandfather, whose loving presence and spirit served as a source of inspiration and a beacon of light on my journey through my own darkness and fear to the love, joy and intention deepest within myself and whose Masonic ring I proudly wear on my right hand. My grandfather's gift was himself and his irrepressible  childlike heart.

My lifetime quest is almost over ~ for I am once again in many ways that same joy filled irrepressible little boy leaning out his window (except mine is now Microsoft windows) whose heart is wide open as I fully share the joy and triumph of what I feel and see with the whole world.

Finally, Lincoln Barnett ( who wrote The Universe and Dr Einstein ) spells out the eventual philosophical triumph of any sought for Unified Field ~ which indeed greatly resembles my Unified Field ;

"The great philosophical triumph of any Unified Field is implicit in the first word of its title. For it will carry to logical fulfillment the long course of science towards the unification of man's concepts of the physical world.
 For from its august perspective, the entire universe would appear as one elemental field in which each atom, each flying electron, each star, each wandering comet and slow-wheeling galaxy is seen to be but a ripple or tumescence in the underlying space-time unity.
 And so a profound simplicity would supplant the surface complexity of nature. Thus all man's perceptions of the world and all his abstract intuitions of reality would merge finally into one, and the deep underlying unity of the universe would be laid bare"

Once again, the deep underlying unity of the universe is a psychic energy field of love and soul consciousness ( the Unified Field ) which exists not only beyond time and space but also beneath our deepest fears and whose principle evolutionary property is the universal urge to unite ~ and this is the truth that shall eventually set everything ablaze!

We cannot escape our destiny and it is divine.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/seeing-my-life-as-quest-vs-struggle.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and transformational counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net