Barnett Weekly

We tend to classify events into those that are good and those that are bad, the reference point being our own well-being. When things happen that we don’t like, when the world seems terribly unfair, we wonder why bad things happen to good people, good people like us. In the midst of terrible hardship such as earthquake, flood, serious illness or the death of a loved one, it’s often challenging to make sense of things.

There are those who believe in fate: what occurs is predestined and unavoidable. While this view offers the comfort of surrendering to external forces greater than ourselves, if we’re lazy-minded it robs us of our will and provides a handy self-justifying excuse for everything we and others do. The good and bad of the world remain beyond our personal responsibility. Considering ourselves in God’s hands is not unlike belief in fate. God’s will is unfathomable and beyond understanding. Ah, well.

Others believe in cause and effect: what happens is the consequence of other things that happen. Seeing things in this way provides us the opportunity to participate in outcomes with confidence and playfulness, but also tends to promote the simplistic belief that we can fully control events. The good and bad actions of other people and natural forces, however, are simultaneous with our own, making reality an infinitely complex web of probabilities.

Yet another view is that each moment is completely fresh: the world is recreated anew in each and every moment. This view offers the powerful experience of letting go – seeing what has happened as totally gone, what may happen next as fantasy and the present moment as all we have to work with. Paradoxically, the present moment is ungraspable. While liberating, taken to extremes this view can lead to wildly hedonistic behavior if responsibility is discarded and intention becomes purely self-centered.

A totalistic perspective accommodates all and everything: good and bad are simply two sides of the same coin, as are birth and death. The arising of each and every moment simultaneously engenders its own demise and this is the basic nature of the unfolding spontaneity of life, an immutably impermanent moment-to-moment continuity of change. If confused, this view can veer towards nihilism, the certainty that nothing actually matters and that there is no right or wrong.

When great misfortune strikes and the world tilts on its axis, philosophy takes a back seat to actual experience and each of us must cope in our own particular way. We do not live a philosophy, we live a life, and whatever our views may be at any one point or another, highly dramatic events can always reach beyond the limits of conceptual belief. It’s at life’s most terrible moments that we come face to face with being human, plain and simple: grief, shock, a broken heart.

Yet difficult times may potentially lead us to deeper truth and understanding. Such moments contain great power, and it’s possible to transmute their energy to transformative wisdom. Jungian analyst Florida Scott-Maxwell, a writer whose most important work was written while she was in her mid-80s, expressed this brilliantly: “Life does not accommodate you;” she said, “it shatters you. Every seed destroys its container, or else there would be no fruition.”

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I received a letter in the mail the other day, a nondescript white envelope from my credit card company. It was the sort of envelope I’d usually toss into the recycling figuring it just contained special offers on merchandise purchasable for all the points my wife and I have accumulated by using the card for 22 years. But uncharacteristically, I opened it.

The letter inside filled a full page, and in dry language explained that the interest rate charged on our card was being raised to 19.99% on January 1, 2010. It gave no explanation of the rate increase – poor payment history or if this was a change being made to all card holders, not just us. Further down the letter, it said we could “opt out” which means use the card at our current rate until it expires at which point it would not be reissued. It also offered, and here’s the blackmail part, a lower interest rate if we’d agree to spend a minimum of $1,500 per month and make payments on time. We have an “auto-pay” plan in place so paying on time is not an issue. But I was offended by the requirement that we spend $1,500 monthly.

The credit card world, which is the world of banking, is morally upside down. Charging rates that 50 years ago would have subjected them to prosecution for usury (like 29.99% interest due to delinquency!), the banks and their credit cards use late fees and insane interest rates to lock people into perpetual debt. Now that many transactions require credit cards, people are virtually forced to use them. Those that pay them off completely each month are called “freeloaders” by the bankers, and this latest effort to secure high monthly purchases is a blatant attempt to force more people into debt.

I called my credit card company to ask them why my rate was being changed. A representative coldly stated that “the change was to enable the continuation of credit.” When I asked him if this was a card-wide change, he brusquely answered that he was “not going to feed any rumor mills,” and refused to tell me more. This is what 22 years of payments made on time earns you in 2010. Disgusted, we “opted out.”

I went to the local bank to find out what they offer, and approached a young man named Socrates at one of the desks. One has hope when one asks a person named Socrates a question, but he said that “all the credit card companies are doing the same thing.” Ah, well. Now that the big banks have been bailed out by us tax-payers our reward is 19.99% interest unless we pay ransom. Paying many millions to lobbyists to get congress to legalize usury is not expensive for banks when they can so easily pick our pockets.

The average American’s neck has been placed in a financial noose. During difficult times credit cards can buy a month or two of security while a new job is found, but the banks are playing on such hardship by tightening the noose. Just as the bank/mortgage industry had no compunctions about foreclosing houses instead of working with homeowners, the bank/credit card companies have no hesitation about yanking on the rope from which many now hang.

Reprinted from The Sonoma Valley Sun Newspaper

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The health care debate has been an unseemly exercise in political positioning, special interest lobbying, horse-trading and near bribery. Health care is the fastest growing sector of the American economy, so discussions naturally stimulate anxiety, anger and confusion.

I suggest that in order to cut though the current crush of opinion, let’s examine health care from the very beginning: birth. (Well, that’s not exactly true – before birth is gestation – but later for that). We are all born and come into the world defenseless and in need of protection, a simple fact every mother understands. Who among us would fail to protect a helpless infant? This consideration is where an honest health care discussion starts. Protecting children is instinctual; can we agree that every child deserves health care, even if their family cannot afford it?

Does this instinct to protect others fade and if so, why? Are such feelings based on perceived levels of helplessness or matters of age? Do the elderly, handicapped and disabled deserve care? How do we determine lesser qualifications? Human beings are vulnerable to a wide variety of physical and emotional ills, and this is what health care is meant to address. The point is that when people suffer our natural, compassionate response as human beings is to try to alleviate it. Setting aside economics, providing universal health care is the naturally compassionate choice.

In the end death comes to us all, and comforting the dying is something we want for others, friends, loved ones and also ourselves. Here again, such care is a natural part of what makes us fully human. Thus, viewed from the perspective of basic compassion, it’s clear that all people deserve health care under all conditions and all stages of life.

But let’s examine health care from a different perspective: simple common sense. Bacteria and viruses are equal opportunity infectors; they do not discriminate between people based upon race, creed, color or income. Common sense dictates that promoting health and the eradication of preventable disease among all populations of people benefits everyone. If you are ill and receive no care, your illness will spread to others, and eventually to me. To ignore illness and disease is illogical from either individual or economic standpoints. Economically, the loss of productivity due to uncontained or untreated illness compared to the cost of providing free universal health is far greater. Investing in health simply insures a more healthy economy.

So who would suffer under free universal health care? Certainly not the public or the health care professionals, nor the hospitals, nurses or home-care providers; currently, one-in-seven U.S. jobs are in health care, and as the American population ages more jobs will be created. Let us be clear; the ones who will suffer will be the health insurance companies and their shareholders. But, I ask, what business is without risk? Throughout the evolution of our economy, various business sectors have undergone change. Steam engines were replaced by diesel engines, carriages by autos, propeller aircraft by jet planes, gas guzzlers by hybrids; this is simply the evolving nature of economics. Private health insurance companies are next.

Thus it is that during the 21st century, the wasteful and non-sustainable American model of profit-driven health care should and will naturally come to its well-deserved end.

Reprinted from The Sonoma Valley Sun Newspaper

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Money is on everybody’s mind these days; we’ve spent too much and saved too little, it seems. Money is about trust – trust that our medium of exchange will retain value and be accepted by others. When money was made of precious gold (if not money it easily becomes something pretty to wear), trust was mixed with gold’s inherent value. Nowadays, our money is printed on paper or stamped into cheap metal coins.

It was the coin that first was called “money,” derived from Old French moneie and before that from Latin, moneta, meaning “mint or coinage.” The term “money” was later adopted for the paper bill, a less expensive but considerably less durable form of “currency” (a term applied to money by John Locke in 1699 who noted its circulation). Our American dollar is an adaptation of the German taler, a word that evolved from a silver coin minted in 1519 near Joachimstal in northwest Bohemia. To our founding fathers, the non-British origin of “dollar” was reason enough to adopt the term.

The dollar sign may be derived from an image of the Pillars of Hercules, a reference to one of the 12 extraordinary tasks he was forced to perform. The Herculean pillars were later used by European royalty in their coat of arms. Reduced to a single pillar, the dollar sign bears some resemblance to the symbolic medical Caduceus, perhaps a reminder that health is wealth.

In matters “fiduciary,” from the Latin, fiduciaries (derived from fidere, “to trust”) we return full circle to the heart of the issue. Our dollars say “In God We Trust” and if Wall Street has taught us anything about money, God may be the only one we can trust. For a while our trust was placed in kings, but now “cash” (a word introduced by the French, caisse, meaning “money box”) is king. The lack of money makes us grouchy, a term likely derived from “Grouch Bag,” an American noun meaning a “purse for carrying hidden money.”

When it comes to hidden money, “interest” is perhaps our best example, which is why it’s disclosed in the smallest of print. As a word, “interest” comes to us once again from French, interesse, meaning “having legal concern of importance.” Its application to the loan of money is related to risk and the compensation thereof. Accordingly, some lenders get “cold feet,” an American phrase most likely borrowed from an Italian Lombardy proverb (avegh minga frecc i pee) meaning “to have cold feet,” ie, no money for shoes.

Some terms related to money are falling out of fashion, such as “pony up,” a reference to the slang use of the Latin legem pone, the title of the Psalm for March 25th, the first payday of the year in the 16th century. “Pay” is from Old French paiier, from the Latin pacare “to please or satisfy.” In England of 1387 “pay” became associated with punishment. We all know how that feels, I suppose, particularly on tax day.

Perhaps the most interesting quality of money is its lack of inherent value. Money is a token (Old English tacen, Dutch teken, and Old German zeichen for “sign or symbol”) and exists on a metaphysical level. Thus it is that from time to time, like a “phantom” (fantum, Old French for “illusion”), it simply vanishes into thin air.

Reprinted from TheIsCollection.com

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I recently returned from my annual silent retreat at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado. I continue to be fascinated by what happens when my mouth is shut. I have an active mind prone to playful ideas and deep inquiry, and when they surface, like many I am inclined to share them with others. Deprived of this option through the discipline of silence, thoughts kept to myself while sitting for hours focused on my breath and observing thoughts as they arise and fade away, I ultimately find that most things on my mind are not worth expressing anyway.

When a group of 60 people simultaneously engage in such discipline, the experience is magnified. Sitting together for 14 hours a day in silence, eating three meals a day together in silence, and waking up the next morning in silence creates a unique form of intimacy unmatched by casual discourse. Though instantaneous impressions, likes, dislikes, fascination and repulsion all arise upon first meeting others, they fade away in the absence of talking. Opinions are often the fuel through which we largely find justification for our initial feelings and fantasies about others, and when deprived of such fuel our automatic engines of discrimination peter out.

By week’s end, despite little actual conversation, what had been a group of strangers becomes an oddly comfortable family. Within the safe confines of a quiet and predictable container, postural shifts and adjustments, walking styles and body movements, facial expressions and hair styles coalesce into an all-encompassing non-verbal transmission far more revealing than speech. In such an environment, words are at best superfluous and at worst destructive. Bereft of verbal argument and rationale, people are simply people, working with silence in whatever ways we can.

With mouth shut mind opens and begins to accommodate space. Actually, space is naturally present at all times, but it is veiled by the incessant chatter of discursive thought and its vocal expression. Within silence the internal chatter slows, gaps appear and the ever-present space is more easily revealed. Mind begins to mix with space. Slowly the gaps widen and periods of actual peace and quiet grow. Occasionally within that space, sharp clarity of awareness forms – insight beyond thought – knowing beyond thinking. And then, just as quickly, it dissolves. Moments change and cannot be grasped. This is the practice: not grasping and not not grasping – relaxing into simple awareness.

The practice continues into the night, even while asleep. Waking in the morning reasserts the continuum of silence, and without any expectation of conversation mind continues to relax. One even stops talking to oneself, internal dialogue too distracting. And then, there is the boredom.

To infer that silent meditation is never boring is to ignore the limits of self. Meditation is inherently boring, extremely boring, boring to the point of nearly intolerable. It is at the point of greatest boredom that I confront the edge, the location where ego entertainment ends and the reality of no-self begins. This can be a scary spot with nothing to hold on to, no reference points, and no place to go – the spacious open-ended moment of being. I rush back from that brink repeatedly, finding stability in my breath.

Breathe space in, breathe space out. Thoughts arise and thoughts dissolve. And so it goes.

Reprinted from The Sonoma Sun Newspaper

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