Welcome to a World of Spiritual Harmony

One of the fascinating parts of The World Is Flat relates the journeys that all the parts of Tom Friedman’s new laptop took before being assembled at Penang, Maylasia. It was co-designed in Austin, TX and Taiwan. Parts came from sources around the planet, some with multiple possible creation countries - here’s the list: Phillipines, Cost Rica, Malaysia, China, Taiwan, Korea, Germany, Japan, Shanghai, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, Britain, Ireland, India, and Israel. Americans own companies involved in this supply chain in several of those countries.

Tom’s old Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention - that countries whose level of economic development supports a big enough middle class to support a network of McDonald’s don’t like to fight wars any more - has been updated to the Dell Theory of Confict Prevention: no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain (like Dell’s) will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.

The book ends with a chapter called Imagination. Tom uses the story of the Arab company Aramex, which is the only Arab company listed on the Nasdaq. He theorizes that there are no Indian Muslims in al-Quaeda because there are opportunities there now to participate in the Flat World, and says that it is no accident that the 3,000 Arab employees of Aramex - a Fed Ex type company - “want to deliver only packages that help economies grow and Arab people flourish - not suicide bombs.”

“Give me just one hundred more examples like Aramex,” says Tom, “and I will start to give you a different context - and narrative” for the Middle East and for peace on the planet.

Tom Friendman’s chapter The Quiet Crisis lists 6 dirty little secrets - problems we haven’t admitted to having as a nation, so we have done almost nothing to solve them. These may all sound technical…but think them through. These failures are affecting the quality of our lives, and those effects will broaden exponentially over the next decade.

Dirty Little Secret No. 1 - The Numbers Gap

We are not going to remain at the head of the pack with our advanced economy if we don’t find a way to increase the number of scientists and engineers we are training. Half of America’s current crop are 40 or older - in NASA, 40% are over 50, and are retiring.

Dirty Little Secret No. 2 - The Education Gap at the Top

A headline in Education Week in July of 2004 says it all: “Immigrants’ Children Inhabit the Top Ranks of Math, Science Meets.” And our kids are below international averages in applying math skills to real-life tasks.

Dirty Little Secret No. 3 - The Ambition Gap

Several prominent American CEO’s told Tom in whispers that when they outsource jobs to other countries, they save 75% on wages - and get a 100% increase in productivity.

Dirty Little Secret No. 4 - The Education Gap at the Bottom

There is no future in mass production jobs any more, and yet we haven’t found a way to upgrade the skills of all of our young people to a very high standard. Without that, “the only way the low-skilled can compete is by driving down their wages.” One major key to change according to Tom is for public schools to deliver a standard curriculum, with money out of each state’s general budget.

Dirty Little Secret No. 5 - The Funding Gap

The federal government is no longer funding the research that would lead to continued American technological leadership in building the jobs of tomorrow. And it’s beginning to show: the percentage of American papers published in the top physics journal has fallen from 61% to 29% since 1983. And the number of American patents is starting to fall.

Dirty Little Secret No. 6 - The Infrastructure Gap

A quote: “In the first three years of the Bush Administration, the United States dropped from 4th to 13th place in the global rankings of broadband internet usage.” And as of April, 2005, we had dropped to 16th. And what we measure as broadband service - 200 Kbps - ‘wouldn’t cut the mustard in much of…the world.’ Japanese consumers pay the equivalent of $10 per month for service 40 times as fast.

During our Dream Group gathering this morning, we played with a technique learned by two of our members interested in the work of writer and dreamer Robert Moss.

The synchronicity technique was fun and amazing, simple and positive. Lisa started to drum, telling us to let our minds go where they would, and that when the drumming ended, we were to each write down whatever was in our mind at that moment. I wrote down ‘Lemuria, ancient village, full of peace, power and beauty.’ And then, my double Gemini multi-thinking mind slipping through, ‘gold - shiny, smooth, positive’. Lisa collected the slips of paper.

Our next job, no drumming this time, was to write down a question of any sort to which we wanted an answer. My question - my always and hopefully-not-forever question - was / is ‘How can we create a more peaceful world?’

Lisa shuffled the pieces of paper and let us each pick one. Estelle got my ‘answers’ - and, synchronistically, she had 2 questions, so there was an answer for each. One question was about whether the new air conditioner at her art studio was going to work out well, and the other was about how two health tests were going to turn out.

The group’s feeling, especially since her studio is shared with another artist, was that the village of peace, power and beauty answer applied - and since it was such a happy place, of course the air conditioner was going to be fine. Shiny, smooth and positive was clearly a very good answer to the health tests question.

The answer to my question about how we create more peace was also a great one - with a hint of the Oracle at Delphi about it. ‘Systematic derangement of the senses’, a quote from French poet Baudelaire, was dreamer Carol’s first statement, followed by a scratched out drawing of a deranged spider, and a very good spider drawing - with ‘Oh, no, not the spider!’ written beside them.

To me, ’systematic derangement’ means going out of our right minds - our every day logical brain that can talk us into believing that killing other people is a good idea. Our unitary in-touch mind could never believe such an outrageous thing. So I loved that part of the answer.

And then, having worked with Medicine Cards, an intuitive Native American spiritual tool, I know that Spider is the creator, the weaver, the writer - the totem that is pushing me to write something every day.

The answers felt very satisfying to me. And as we went around the room, the other dream group members also had similar experiences of unexpected and harmonious directions and ideas in answer to their questions.

This would be a great game to play with the family after dinner, with friends on a picnic - or just to give everyone a chance to turn off the TV and turn on another part of our brains. Go play!

At Reiki Healing Circle last Sunday, we meditated on what to do to bring about peace, before we began to work as a group to heal each other. Normally, we would take time to de-brief after a meditation, but this time 2 new participants arrived and we never managed to talk about what had happened for each of us as we sat silently turning inward.

The answer that I brought back from the meditation - asking about peace - was that love (eliminates? destroys? annihilates? trumps?) pain. I couldn’t quite ‘hear’ the action word, though it was clear that through love is the way to release pain.

I didn’t have time to think about it until sleeping, and woke up in the morning wondering about the behavior of the hummingbird dive bombing the big front window as we emerged from our meditation the evening before - and wondering why that was what was in my head first thing. The hummers know perfectly well where the feeders are kept - all in the back yard - and I knew the feeders were full. Hummers have been known to stay perfectly still in that big window for minutes at a time to make sure I know the feeders need attention.

This hummer was not still - flitting and playing, zooming in and then way out into the trees, fast, fast, fast. The tumblers clicked into place in my brain - humming bird in the Medicine Cards - and in my heart - is Joy. The answer to the question about peace is the equation that Joy: creates Love: eliminates Pain.

And I remembered that friend Carolyn (who had attended her first Healing Circle the night before, urged on by several synchronicities), eliminated her friend’s bladder cancer by writing ‘100% Love’ on the bag of chemo chemicals. She and he danced Joyfully and with Love through each treatment as the chemicals were absorbed.

Proof of the equation I had arrived at through my waking and sleeping meditations.

And the peace question? An indirect answer is that Joy and Love make war impossible. But stay tuned for another more direct answer one of these days - I’ll keep following that thought!