[Springboard] The Current Reality

[Jack Gilles]

Dear Colleagues,

Here are a couple of links I found very helpful and sobering.  I can't  
get it out of my mind that we're in the midst of the BIG ONE and that  
we are all in for such a dizzying ride that no one knows how this will  
end.  The first link comes from my son who sent me the recommended  
reading list from his MBA professor at Ohio State.  I've only read the  
first one, the NPR interview, but it has clarified for me what the  
origin of all this is.  It will also make you mad at how the global  
greed has now sunk so many people's dreams and security.

<http://www.themoneymeltdown.com>

The second link is another interview of Amy Goodman with John Perkins,  
the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman.  If you haven't read  
that book, please do so.  I just ordered his new book.  Again, you  
will see how the global economic cartel controls governments and  
resources.

<http://www.democracynow.org/2007/6/5/ 
john_perkins_on_the_secret_history>

Finally a story.  Just before we left India, just about this time last  
year, I got a call from a company to talk about a leadership program.   
I had never heard of this company, but when I visited their operations  
I found it to be a call center working for a Houston based company  
that had formed within the last year.  This Indian company had 10,000  
employees and were on track to recruit another 5000 by May. Here were  
roomfuls of young Indians calling Americans about housing loans.  All  
the information came from Lending Tree.  They were selling these  
people loans for homes with practically no information on them except  
the information they had sent to Lending Tree inquiring about a loan  
opportunity.  I couldn't believe it!  That's when I knew we were in  
deep trouble and this couldn't last.  I presume the company has gone  
belly up, I can't imagine there is any reason to have a call center  
doing this work today.

I thought I would close with a poem.  This morning as I did my  
meditation I opened the book The Illuminated Rumi and this is the  
first poem I saw.  It's a little long, but in it I find an answer to  
these times.  Later I hope to pull my thoughts together on what we  
(the Order) are called to do, at least in my opinion.

Grace & Peace,

Jack Gilles


A man was breaking up the soil,
when another man cam by, "Why
are you ruining this land?"

"Don't be a fool! nothing can
grow until the ground
is turned over and crumbled.

There can be no roses
and no orchard
without first this that looks devastating.

You must lance an ulcer to heal it.
You must tear down parts of an old building
to restore it, and so it is with a sensual life
that has no spirit in it.

To change,
a person must face the dragon of his appetites
with another dragon, the life-energy
of the soul."

When that's not strong,
the world seems to be full of people
who have your own fears and wantings.

As one thinks the room is spinning
when he's whirling around.

When your love contract in anger,
the atmosphere itself feels threatening

But when you're expansive, no matter
what the weather, you're in an open,
windy field with friends.

Many people travel to Syria and Iraq
and meet only hypocrites.

Others go all the way to India
and see just merchants buying and selling.

Others go to Turkestan and China
and find those countries filled
with sneak-thieves and cheats.

We always see the qualities
that are living in us.

A cow may walk from one side of the amazing city
of Baghdad to the other and notice only
a watermelon rind and a tuft of hay
that fell off a wagon.

Don't keep repeatedly doing
what your animal-soul want to do.
That's like deciding to be a strip of meat
nailed and drying on a board in the sun.

Your spirit needs to follow the changes happening
in the spacious place it knows about.

There, the scene is always new,
a clairvoyant river of picturing,
more beautiful than any on earth.

This is where the sufis wash.
Purify your eyes, and see the pure world.
Your life will fill with radiant forms.

It's a question of cleaning,
then developing spiritual senses!

See beyond phenomena.

Rumi