Chapter 10 - Freedom, Love, Joy as a Movement

 I do not want to start a new religion or philosophy but I wanted to discuss the need for our world to find a common belief system so that we can create a world in peace.  Religions and any rigid belief system usually create separateness and division.  There are literally hundreds of different sects of religions and the problem is when they begin to think they have the answer and they know what others should do to find God.  Unfortunately, we argue and fight over this issue or that issue.  I do not want to create another separate religion to complicate matters even more.  I want to create another option for us.  I want to create a movement in which the goals of life are freedom, love, and joy.  

You don't have to give up your religion and become a convert.  You can be Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish, pantheist, agnostic, or atheist,  What we all need is something to give us purpose and direction.  We need to have common goals that we can agree on.   

I am proposing that we adopt goals for life and the goals should be freedom, love, and joy.  Our goal as a society is to ensure that each person has the right to pursue these goals.  The goals for education should reflect the goals of life, so we need to redefine the curriculum goals for education.  The new goals for education should be freedom, love, and joy.  Our children should be engaged in a learning community in which all of their needs are met.   We can create changes to our world by changing the environment in which our children are growing up and learning to be adults.  Our schools need a complete make-over.  It is long past time for us to get serious about changing our schools and the world.  

We need a new movement to pull us together and give us hope that we can change the world.  We can create a learning environment that reflects the change we want.  We can create a world that reflects the goals of freedom, love, and joy for everyone.  

I encourage you to continue to read my ideas about the freedom, love, joy movement and support this movement to change the world.   

Chapter 9 - A new religion based on freedom, love, and joy

Pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are the same thing and God's presence is in everything.  Paganism is the belief that nature is sacred and humans are part of nature and we are connected to nature in a spiritual manner.  Pagans and pantheists believe that God comes in many forms and all of life and the universe is sacred.  Most of the world were pantheist and pagan and they based their beliefs on their experiences.  Along comes monotheism and they believe that there is one and only one God.  The major religions that are monotheistic are Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. 

These major three religions have viewed the entire ancient world as heretics who believed in foolish magic and voodoo and they have literally been trying to exterminate anyone who believes in such nonsense.  Just think about this for a minute.  Think of all the examples throughout history in which major monotheistic religious leaders have used violence, torture, slavery, and murder on pagans who were considered godless.  

The problem is that the modern world religions did not even consider the possibility that any of the beliefs by pagans could be of value.  But there is a connection between pantheism and monotheism and when you consider their pros and cons, you can see how they compliment each other.  One is not a complete answer, but combining the concepts in world religious beliefs gives us a new religion based on a merging of the old and the new.

Pantheists are correct.  The universe is the manifestation of God and everything in the universe contains God.  God is found in the clouds and the sun.  We are all connected and we are all one with the universe and God.  Monotheists are also correct.  There is one and only one God.  That statement does not contradict pantheism, but enhances it.  There is only one consciousness and we can call that one consciousness God.  The one consciousness has created the entire physical universe in his image.  Everything is God and God is everything.  

So, the world's religious leaders need to stop and think about what they believe and try to formulate new ideology based on new discoveries and technology.  They need to reconsider that we all want pretty much the same thing and that is to find the truth.  The truth can be found somewhere in the middle path as Buddha proposed.  

I propose a new religion that recognizes pantheism and monotheism as beliefs that can be merged.  The new religion has the belief that the one God manifests as the universe and all elements of the universe are connected because they are actually one.  There is only one consciousness and that is God.  Every person and everything has God within.  God is everything and there is only one God.

Please take a minute and think about what I am saying.  Our old religions make things very complicated but things are actually much simpler than most people think.  God is consciousness that can manifest in infinite ways that appear to be separate but they are all connected as one.  Each one of us is a part of the God consciousness and our consciousnesses are connected.  Each life has the same God consciousness within and each life has certain basic rights.  The three basics of life are freedom, love, and joy.  

I have written quite a bit about the concepts of freedom, love, and joy as being the basics of life and therefore they should be the basic goals of education.  I will not elaborate much now about the importance of freedom, love, and joy because I have discussed these in much more depth in other writings.  But I wanted to introduce these concepts in terms of a new world religion that can take us into the next century and beyond.

God, the father, gave us freedom.  Jesus, the son, gave us love.  The Holy Spirit gave us joy.  

Chapter 8 - Jesus and God

 The ideas that I have presented in my writings do not represent any lessening of the teachings of Jesus.  I am concerned that people who call themselves Christians will think my ideas are not part of Christianity and should not even be considered.  I hope that Christians and everyone else will give my ideas a chance and really consider what I am suggesting.

I talked in previous chapters about us contacting a primitive man and trying to communicate our knowledge of technology and the universe.  He could not understand us when we told him about electricity, cars, planes, satellites, space rockets, Smartphones, computers, medical advancements, etc.  He would not know what we were talking about and would think we were magical or wizards or gods.  

Then think about an enlightened being who understood the reality of the universe.  He wants to explain this reality to mankind thousands of years ago.  Two thousand years ago during the time of Jesus, most people were not too intellectual.  They couldn't understand about any of the things I mentioned above and they certainly would not understand the concept of God and how God affected them.  

So how could Jesus explain the complexities of multi-dimensional universes, time and space wormholes, the Akashic records, consciousness evolution, and anti-gravity to people two thousand years ago.  Jesus had to find ways to explain complex concepts to a population who could not think abstractly.  Most people were very concrete thinkers and many people even today cannot understand abstract concepts.  So, Jesus had to put a very complex topic of God into simple, concrete terminology.  All the other enlightened souls on Earth could not explain the complexity of the universe either.  No one would understand them so they spoke in simple terms and used a lot of symbols that represent concepts and complex ideas.  

Jesus was to be the concrete example that people could understand.  Instead of trying to explain the complexities of God, Jesus simplified matters by saying that he is God and the way to salvation is through him.  He was the Way.  Jesus also said that he was Love and gave us the Golden Rule of loving one another as we love ourselves.  Christians have taken Jesus' message and turned it into a demand that the only way to heaven is to believe Jesus is one and only son of God.  Jesus taught that we should be like him in order to be saved.  Jesus was talking symbolically when he said the only way was through him.  When you act and behave like Jesus and when you love others as Jesus did, then you will find salvation as he did.  This can be done by anyone, even an atheist.  

The easy way to heaven would be to just go up during church and proclaim your faith in Jesus as your Savior.  We don't have to put out much effort in changing ourselves because we are Christians so we are going to heaven.  That's a bit too simplistic.  But we want simplicity so we accept it.  We don't have to think about becoming like Christ and loving everyone, even our enemies, like Jesus did.  Jesus literally told us to be like him and we could also be the son of God.  Think about that for a minute.  Jesus told us that we could be like him and we could also be the son of God.  Being a son of God is symbolic of choosing love and understanding for all of humanity and life.

The error of Christianity and the error of all world religions is that they think they are the only one correct and others are wrong.  They separate themselves from others.  Christians literally believe that all non-Christians are going to be punished in hell forever.  How can anyone be so self-righteous and egotistical?  But that's what Christianity and most other religions do.  They think they are the only ones who know what God is and they are the ones chosen by God.  They separate themselves from others.  

Every religion also had several sects or variations of the main religion and they have disagreed with each other.  They continue to separate themselves from people as they think they have discovered the truth.  Now we live in a world that is divided into hundreds of variations of religious groups and ideologies.  And they all think they are right and they are literally fighting and killing one another over these issues.

Mankind has really messed up.  We have made many mistakes about understanding life and God.  Our religions have done their job in providing a simple explanation of God but religions have put limits and restrictions on our full understanding of reality.  We need a new religion that does not separate us into groups in a competitive battle for supremacy.  In the next chapter, I will provide an outline for a new world religion that can bridge the gap between all other religions.     

Chapter 7 - Defining God

 I do not think of God as a person or a single entity.  The idea of God as the king or ruler of the universe came from a human mentality of a male dominated world in which each country had a king or ruler with ultimate power.  So it is no wonder that when man was wrestling with understanding the universe that we would assume the whole universe operated as our countries did.  We also feel safer if we think there is a single supreme being who is our father and protector.  A father takes care of his children and it makes us feel good to believe a father is ruling the universe, keeping evil away with his supreme powers.

In the U.S. today, we do not accept the idea of one supreme leader of our country because we don't want to give anyone too much power over the rest of us.  We want to have some say in things.  We want our freedom.  We have fought enemies who want to enslave us and we continue to fight terrorists and dictators who want to control other nations.  So why would we want to hang on to the idea of a God who is a dictator and we are completely at his mercy?

Some people think God is the creator of the entire universe, has ultimate control of all of creation, makes all the rules for mankind, and passes judgment on every one of us.  God decides who will get rewards in Heaven for all of eternity or who will be punished in Hell forever.  They believe that we live one very short life and God makes the decision for us as to how we spend eternity.  Wow!  What power this one man has over us.  No wonder that many people fear God.  You certainly would not want to get on this man's bad side.  If you believe God has so much power over us, I can see that you would do anything he says for you to do to avoid going to Hell.

But do you really want there to be one person with this kind of power over you and everyone else?  Does it even make sense that one person should or could have ultimate power over us?  Wouldn't we be God's slave and we wouldn't he be like a dictator?  Some people have accepted the idea of a king who we were to obey and we had to be submissive or we would be imprisoned or killed.  So they accept a God who we have to obey and he will punish us if we don't.  

So, over the centuries we have been conditioned to be submissive to a ruler, then it makes sense that we would transfer this belief system to the order of the universe.  A king can reward us for being obedient or he can kill us for breaking any of his laws.  So a God who can offer use reward or punishment fit into our paradigm.

As I said earlier, I cannot accept the idea that God is a single entity with dictatorial power over our destiny, but I do believe in God.  My concept of God is not new and it has been around for centuries, so I am not claiming to have an understanding of God that no one else has.  So I will make statements about God as if they are facts although they are my opinions and I do not have verifiable evidence.  But these ideas are based on what many others throughout history have believed and they are based on the evidence I have presented so far in these writings and evidence I will present later.

God is an infinite, loving consciousness that permeates and resides in everything.  This all pervasive consciousness is an energy force of which everything is made.  

Energy cannot be created or destroyed.  But energy can be converted to physical matter.  God is the energy of the universe and this energy is conscious.  Centuries ago, the Hindus taught that everything, including matter such as rocks, were made up of consciousness, even if the consciousness was mostly dormant.

Every single physical and non-physical element in the universe is made of this universal consciousness, which is an energy and it is God.  Every piece of matter, no matter how small, has a God particle in it that represents and contains the entire universe.  Some people call this God particle a hologram.  A hologram contains the whole in the smallest piece.  We are living in a holographic universe, in a sense.  So God is literally in everything and everything is connected to God and to everything else.  We are one and we are not separate.  

So God, in a sense, did create the universe and God does have ultimate power over creation because God is the one and only conscious energy that exists.  God is everything.  God is all that is.  God is love.  God gives us freedom to follow our dreams.  We need to discover how we can tap into the loving energy of God and transform ourselves so that we can create a Heaven on Earth.  This will be when we manifest the will and love of God in humanity, and we will transform the world for the next stage of our evolution.  

If you consider yourself a Christian and think this idea of God is blasphemy, don't quit reading.  I would like to explain why this concept of God does not contradict the teachings of Christ, but it enhances Christianity.    

Chapter 6 - Who or What is God?

 Notice that I didn't just say who is God, but also what is God.  Most people assume that God is a person and is like us.  Most of the early religions said that there were many gods, not just one.  As I said earlier, the Hindus believed there were many gods, not just Krishna.  And there were all of the Greek and Roman gods plus the Egyptian gods.

The idea that there is only one God of the universe came later with the three major world religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  These religions depict God as a man who looks and acts like us.  But God is all powerful in such a way that he personally created the entire universe and all of life  in the universe and judges us all to such a degree that he could sentence us to an eternity of punishment in a place called Hell or he could reward us with eternal peace and happiness. This judgment is supposedly done in a very short time frame - you get one lifetime no matter how long or short.  You could die at age  20 or 100.  God will judge you and pass sentence on you that will last forever.

Just think about how old the universe is and then how short a time we live.  In universal time, our short few years of our lives are but a blink of the eye, but in this blink, God judges us and determines our destiny for billions of years to come.  

Personally, I cannot believe that such a God exists.  Just think how cruel and unjust such a God would be.  Would any parent tell a child he had one day to prove himself and after that one day the parent would let the child live with them or the kid would be kicked out of the house and could never come back?

I also have trouble with the concept of one super-powerful person who controls the entire universe.  Does this make the rest of us his slaves?  How could one person be so powerful and the rest of us have hardly any power or say in the matter.  This seems like the ultimate dictator.  Wouldn't it be great to be the ruler of the universe?  

So, I can't believe such a dictator exists no matter how loving this one person is.  He couldn't be too loving if he casts millions of people into Hell for eternity.  I would never sentence anyone to such horrible punishment for such a long time, so why would a loving God do this?

All of this does not tell us who or what God is.  I said that God does exist but do we understand what the term God means?  With all the religions of the world trying to put their own spin on God, we could debate this term forever and not agree.  So, in the next chapter I will discuss options for the definition of God and you might not agree but it might make you think. 

Chapter 5 - If aliens were our gods, does God exist?

 Aliens might have been considered to be gods but that does not explain all the mysteries of the universe and all the things that have happened throughout our history.  There has been a lot of alien interactions that were attributed to gods but there have been many more unexplained things that were not related to aliens.

Where did aliens come from initially?  I don't mean what planet or solar system but how did they come to exist?  The bigger question is "did life in the universe arise from matter or from a spiritual non-physical element" and this leads to the other big question, "is there nothing after our physical deaths or do we continue to exist after physical death" and yet another big question "is there a God"?  

After reading hundreds of books and a life of experiences and contemplation, I think there is no doubt that the universe is not only full of alien physical life forms but there are many spiritual life forms as well.  The spiritual world is where all physical matter comes from.  This means humankind and aliens.  It is not logical that such a fascinating and complex universe full of life could possibly be an accident.  With all of our scientific knowledge to date, we know enough to know that there are many, many aspects of the universe and life that we cannot explain.

So I would say that the universe is not simply physical matter, and life did not just appear from matter alone, but a spiritual element of the universe is responsible for life.  As far as life after physical death, there is a ton of evidence to say that yes life does continue after death.

This issue is similar to the issue about the existence of aliens.  Many people are reluctant to think there is really life after death because they don't think there is proof of it.  But actually there is more proof of life after death than about anything else.  

There are thousands of books and writings about people throughout history who have had spiritual experiences, who have seen ghosts or spiritual beings, who had had mystical experiences, who had had out-of-body travels, and who have had communication with the spirit world.  If the spiritual world did not exist, science would easily show that there was no evidence.  But science and real-world experiences continue to give us overwhelming evidence. 

Personally, I have seen a spirit and I have had two out-of-body experiences in which my spirit left my physical body and I looked down upon myself.  I have no doubt that when this physical body dies, our spiritual body or consciousness continues to exist.

Another set of evidence for life existing after death is reincarnation.  This is another phenomenon that is supported by thousands of writing and millions of people who have had experiences and memories of past lives.  You can read dozens of books or view videos that describe accounts of evidence for reincarnation so I will not repeat all of this information here.  Some of the most interesting accounts of reincarnation are from writings by the psychic, Edgar Cayce.

In Edgar Cayce's book, "The Story of Jesus," he described some of his own past lives in the continents of Lemuria and Atlantis.  He also talked about the many past lives of Jesus and how Jesus was also on these two ancient continents in past lives.  Cayce said that Jesus had many lives on Earth beginning as Adam, Moses, Abraham, and others until Jesus he became fully enlightened.  He then was born as Jesus to fulfill the purpose of bringing the Way to God through love.  Jesus said that we should do as he did and we could be god as he became god.  I think that too many people misinterpreted Jesus'message.

Jesus wanted us to live in his example of being a kind and loving person and with unconditional love, and then we could become enlightened as well.  And we could be god, like him.  We don't need to believe Jesus is the Way.  We need to be like Jesus.  We need to be the Way.  What would Jesus do?  That's what we should do to find the Way.  

There have been several enlightened beings throughout history and they all have provided very similar messages and several religions have been created around these enlightened people and their teachings.

Christians want to convince us that Jesus is the One and only God, while Muslims want us to believe their version of Mohammad.  But Mohammad was supposed to be a prophet in support of the lineage of Jesus.  Jews believe in basically the same thing with their lineage going through the same leaders.  Buddhist think that we should listen to Buddha.  Buddhists believe in a path of enlightenment requiring suffering to learn compassion and understanding.  Hindus believe there are many spiritual leaders or gods throughout history and we can learn from each of them.  

If one or more of these enlightened people of our past are God or prophet, it does not matter.  We do not need to argue about who is specifically right?  We are all one.  We don't need to argue about God.  Every time we argue for our side, we separate ourselves from others.  If you think the path to Heaven requires complete acceptance to one religion, then you put yourself superior to others and separate from them.

So, the question, does God exist can be answered as yes, but who and/or what is God?  What can we believe about God if there are so many different religions, all claiming to know who God is but none of them agree. 

Chapter 4 - Aliens and religion

 It seems to me that there is no question that the universe is populated by many intelligent, physical life forms who I will refer to as aliens because they are alien to this planet.  But how alien are they really?

I propose that aliens came to Earth tens of thousands of years ago and they had a huge hand in human growth and development.  Aliens intermingled with humans and the story of Adam and Eve is a story about aliens mating with Earth humans to help create a new, more advanced human.  Humans made an enormous leap in evolution thanks to the aliens and they have continued to visit Earth to monitor what happens in human development. 

Some of our religious stories have been an account of the alien involvement on our planet.  Early man could not understand the concept of an alien race who has a vastly superior intelligence.  To primitive man, aliens seemed to have powers and abilities that were magic so the aliens were considered to be gods. 

Just think about humans today going back in time to visit early man.  We would be able to fly around in airplanes.  We would have gadgets, such as phones, computers, flashlights, cameras, radios, etc.  They would not be able to explain all these things so they would think we were gods.  There are many books about theories and evidence of alien contact and influence on our cultures and religions so I will not repeat this information here.  

It is not very clear as to how long aliens have been involved on Earth.  Most people have heard of the possibility of an ancient civilization on Earth known as Atlantis.  If so, aliens would have been involved with helping the Atlantis civilization with their technology.  Some people think that the story of Noah could have been connected with Atlantis going underwater and maybe the aliens helped humanity with a major Earth change.

Another lesser known civilization that existed before Atlantis is called Lemuria. This advanced civilization was also influenced by aliens.  Again, there are many books and writings about these two ancient civilizations that seemed to have disappeared.  We also do not know if there were civilizations living on our planet before any of these.  We have not fully explored all the Earth's surface and we have only begun to explore what is hidden in our oceans.  

So aliens are really not so alien because they mated with humans and have intermingled with us over thousands of years to the point that we are as much Earth humans as we are aliens ourselves.  

Chapter 3 -Take me to your leader

 Other than landing on the White House lawn, aliens have let themselves be known in multiple ways.  They have been seen by thousands of people, including military and private pilots throughout the U.S. and other countries.  There are hundreds of reports of alien abduction and a lot of verification of a wide range of alien activity.

It is not my intention of going through the literature on alien encounters and sightings as there are a few hundred books and videos on this subject.  If this issue was something not so controversial our leaders and scientists would have confirmed aliens on our planet years ago because the evidence is overwhelming.

But, the question that we should be asking is why are they here and what are they going to do in the future?  There are tons of theories about their influence in our past, such as providing scientific knowledge to humans at several points in our history in which we have made quantum leaps in human thought.  There are some who have suggested that aliens mated with early humans to create  homo sapiens.  Perhaps, they were responsible for the first humans mentioned in the Bible - Adam and Eve.  Maybe they have invested a lot in the whole development of the human race.

Aliens obviously have a great interest in Earth and human development.  There are likely several races of aliens who are interested and involved with Earth and not from just one planet.  Again, think about Star Trek and how they investigated dozens of planets but they did not interfere with the freewill of other life forms.  They might assist them and give some guidance but they would not do anything to make a drastic change for them.

Think about the primitive human and their lifestyle.  They lived very simple lives, hunting and gathering.  They were relatively happy and unless there was a climatic event, such as a major drought or other catastrophe, they lived quite well.  But, what would happen to their lives if more advanced humans, like ones of today, tried to educate them and teach them about our modern technologies, like computers, cars, phones, etc?  Their simple lifestyle would be completely changed.  Would this be good for them or bad?  We shouldn't judge what is good or bad for others so it would be best to leave them alone and let them live out their lives in their own way.

This is why aliens only dole out little bits of knowledge and assistance at a time.  They can help but they don't want to completely change the way we live and think.  They also have orders to not interfere.  They understand that we must continue on our own path of growth and development.  When we progress to a certain level, they can give us more help.  They have been more active in the last several years as our technology has advanced.  We might be close to another quantum leap in technology in the near future with the assistance of aliens.  

Chapter 2 - Who is in the Universe?

 Our universe is literally packed with a billion trillion stars within 100 billion galaxies.  It is really unimaginable as to how massive the universe is and how many planets there are with intelligent life forms.  As the father in the movie Contact said when his daughter asked if he thought there was intelligent life in the universe, "If there isn't, it would be a great waste of space."

The only logical conclusion is that there has to not only be intelligent life but intelligent life in the universe is very abundant.  Think about Star Trek and how the Enterprise traveled from one star system to the next and they encountered all types of life forms.  Perhaps that idea is not so much science fiction but it is rather close to reality.  Reality might be more unbelievable than any science fiction ever written.

Go back to when humans on Earth were living in small tribes, say 10,000 years ago.  This is a very short time in our world history of 4.5 billion years.  What did the average person believe about the size of the Earth or how many other people existed on Earth?  They usually lived in a relatively small area of land and were not aware of anything more than a few miles from them.  They might be aware of another tribe or two but that was it.  They had no concept of being on a continent and how large their continent was.  They had no idea that there were hundreds of tribes throughout the continent.  They had no idea there were several continents with hundreds of other tribes.  They could not conceive that they were on a large planet and it was round.  So, they obviously had no concept of our solar system or our galaxy.  

Relative to universal time, 10,000 years is a blink of the eye, but in that short amount of time, we have realized that there is a whole planet full of humans and those people 10,000 years ago would have never believed us if we told them how many people were on Earth and how large the Earth was.

As you know, it was as recent as 500 years ago that humans thought the Earth was flat.  We didn't know there were two very large continents with people, and this was such a short time ago.  We still were unaware of what a planet actually was or much at all about the stars we saw in the night sky.  People could come up with theories about the stars, but the theories were not reality.  We just made guesses based on very limited knowledge.  When you have such limited knowledge, it is nearly impossible to make up a valid theory.

Over the next two to three hundred years, we traveled and learned a lot about our planet and then telescopes finally provided us a glimpse of the skies.  But, we still had a limited understanding of what we found.  It has only been in the last 100 years that we have gained our knowledge of the size of the universe and we still have a lot of questions.  Is this the only universe?  Are there multiple universes co-existing simultaneously?  We still have very limited knowledge of consciousness, time, and space.  

Today, we think we are so advanced, but we are still in our infancy with our knowledge of the universe.  Again, we try to develop theories to explain things but our knowledge is still too limited so our theories are far from reality.  

Just like the primitive tribal humans who were so unaware of other humans on Earth or the size of the Earth, we are also unaware of the tremendous population or size of our universe.  We continue to live in our own limited space while there are billions of life forms and around us.

Most people today are aware of the many cases of UFOs and theories of how aliens from other planets have been visiting and influencing humans on Earth for centuries.  Skeptics say, "If there are aliens, why don't they just land and show themselves?"  Actually, they have. 

Chapter 1 - In the Beginning

 In the beginning, there was darkness and void.  Then came a big bang that changed everything.  Out of seemingly nothing, the stuff that made galaxies came spewing out, expanding, and forming stars and eventually planets.  

Supposedly, this happened around 14 billion years ago.  As many as 100 billion galaxies were created and each with about 100 billion stars.  Our own Milky Way galaxy has 100 billion stars.  If you multiply 100 billion stars times 100 billion galaxies you get 10 to the 22nd power.  All of these stars came from one explosion 14 billion years ago.  

Our own planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, which means there are billions of galaxies that are billions of years older than our planet.  So, the likelihood that we are the only intelligence beings in the universe is practically zero.  Assuming there are at least millions of planets with intelligent life, then we also have to assume that there are also a few million planets that are at least a billion years older than our planet and this means that there are many life forms who are a billion years more advanced than we are.

Just imagine how much we have advanced in the last 100 years.  Now imagine how much more we will be advanced another 100 years from now.  Next, imagine how advanced we will be 1,000 years from now.  In a thousand years will we have found the cure to all diseases?  Will we have found unlimited, free energy?  Would we have discovered how to stop aging and live for hundreds of years?   Will we be able to travel to other planets?  Just think about all the secrets of life we will discover in one thousand years.

Now - imagine what we will learn in 10,000 years or what about 100,000 years.  Will we have discovered what life itself is and how to create life?  Will we know how to travel to other galaxies instantaneously through frequencies?  Will we, that is, our consciousness, even need physical bodies?

Let's jump ahead to a million years from now.  It is impossible to even imagine how advanced we will be.  Will we be able to exist as pure consciousness and be as gods?  Would there be anything that we couldn't do?  

Ok, now imagine a billion years from now.  That is 1,000 million years.  How advanced would we be?  Impossible to imagine.  But as I said earlier, there is a very high likelihood that there are perhaps millions of civilizations that are a billion years older and more advanced than we are.  We cannot even imagine how advanced they are or what they know or what they can do.  It would be very difficult for us to even communicate with them.  They would be talking about concepts of life and science that we have no idea about.

Just imagine meeting someone from our past, say around the early 1880's.  We try to tell them about the Internet, but they don't even know about electricity.  They also have no knowledge of TV, radio, telephone, etc. so they would be completely baffled if we showed them a Smart phone.  If we tried to explain how it worked, they would not understand at all and would think we were god-like.  This would be the same if we exposed them to cars, trains, or airplanes.  Or, if we tried to explain modern medicine, such as our understanding of surgery, cellular structure, DNA, and other new medical advances.  

So, if we would have so much trouble communicating our knowledge to people from our own planet just 200 years ago, think about how difficult it would be for beings who are thousands, millions, or even a billion years more advanced to communicate with us or for us to understand them.  We would try to put their communication in terms that we can understand, but we would fail to fully understand them.

A century of public education: How are we doing?

The model for our public school system was factory training for the masses.  We wanted to train employees for industry so they could move out of farming and into a job requiring conformity and strict rules.  Schools were also designed for white males to best succeed in a competitive environment so they could go to college and be successful in professional work.  

How has that been going?  You might think, well, yeah, that's the way schools were first created, but they have changed now.  Really?  Have they changed?  During the 50's and 60's, we wanted to train society to be competitive in a free market so  we could beat other countries.  In the 70's and 80's, we said schools had to get back to the basics and we implemented standards and expectations for student success but the testing was on the acquisition of intellectual skills so white males were in a huge advantage and they continued to outscore everyone else.  After another thirty or more years we are still using the same type of tests to measure school success and guess what?  The scores on these tests have not changed for decades and decades.  The system works well for some students with white males having the biggest advantage, but for the rest of the population the system continues to keep them in their place and prepare them for taking orders in the work place.   

Has there really been any changes?  We think we are creating new educational opportunities and improving schools with multiple programs.  But we continue to do the same thing over and over but we expect different results.  That's often referred to as either stupidity or insanity.  Looking back at reading and math scores over the last half a century, the results are not changing.  We have not made any progress in improving student test scores after all these years.  Why?  Because we are doing the same thing and we expect different results.  Please stop this insanity and let's get rid of competitive testing and make schools a place for everyone to enhance their intellectual, social, emotional, and psychological growth and development.  

One century of our educational system and we hold on to a dead end.  I would say we are not doing well at all.  

We need new goals for education

 In every state and in every school district, they write the vision and goals for the education of all of the children in this country.  The goals are often written in general terms and include a wide range of skills and knowledge.  However, when we ask how well our schools are doing, we automatically think about student test scores.  If the scores on intellectual skills are not what we expect, then we are upset and want a remediation program to close the gap of learning.  We put a lot of money and effort into a program to increase student math and reading test scores and we feel great if the scores improve even the slightest amount and we shake our heads if the score are still low and might try another program that is thought would increase test scores.

But, how about all the other goals in the curriculum?  There are many goals about student creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, and other higher-order thinking skills.  There are also many goals about skills in developing musical, artistic, and physical skills.  There are also goals in developing student emotional and psychological well being.  We don't tend to look to see if students are meeting these non-intellectual goals.  Student creativity or critical thinking might be below expectations for an age group but we don't do anything about it.  We should develop a remediation program to improve student creativity and/or critical thinking, like we do when test scores are low in math or reading.  We should take all the other goals for our students as seriously as we take reading and math scores.  

What is happening in schools is the devaluation of humanity.  We treat humans like they are robots who need to be programmed with data and they should be able to spew out answers.  We are humans.  Humans have feelings and emotional and spiritual needs for self-esteem and self-actualization.  

We need new goals for our children and these goals need to be the goals that we all should have as human beings.  Our goals should align with our needs.  Our needs are to grow and develop all of our skills and abilities in a holistic manner.  Reading, writing, and arithmetic have been the three basics of education for too many years.  We need new basics of education and the three new basics of education should be freedom, love, and joy.  I have written quite a bit about these basics for human life and for education.  Before blowing me off, you should read more about what I am saying.  

Look around and see all the violence, fear, and depression in our society and in our children.  When we make test scores the most important goal, then we ignore the other areas of growth and development our children need.  We get what we ask for.  We might get students who score OK on test scores but we also get students who feel left out, ignored, confused, angry, and frustrated.  We do not get students who can be self-responsible, creative, thoughtful, and happy.  Our students will not be able to think critically, solve problems, or empathize with others.  

We need to take action as soon as possible.  We should transform schools into constructivist schools based on new goals for human growth and development and we need to stop using tests as the measure for our success in schools.  Our schools are failing but it's not the test scores that makes them a failure.  The failure of our schools is our inability to create goals in alignment with our human needs.  

Education and the evolution of the human consciousness

 The reason that I write so much about changing how we are educating children in our schools is the importance of education in the evolution of our interconnected human consciousness.  I have written about the evolution of our human consciousness in which we are moving from a self-centered, egotistic mind to an other-centered, loving mind.  The world's consciousness has been evolving for millions of years and we are at a vital time in the direction our consciousness will go.  

The connection to education is that education should meet the goals of humans.  The major goal we share is the evolution of our minds.  Are we evolving into more thoughtful, caring, and loving humans?  Humans who use their freedom of choice to think of others and care about the well-being of others.  Or are we going to remain ego-centered and selfish.  Humans who do not care when others are starving or being murdered.  They might even hurt others and kill others because of their complete lack of feelings for anyone else.  

The goals for education should align with the evolution into an other-centered and loving consciousness for every child and for our world.  We need to change how we are educating our children because our present system is perpetuating a competitive and ego-centered learning environment.  I hope you will continue to read my posts and my book to more fully understand why and how we can change our educational system. 

Battle for control of our world mind

The world has seemed to have gone insane. The violence and division of mind seems to be growing.  Putin and his autocracy are trying to destroy truth and all opposition in any way possible, including the unimaginable horror and violence in Ukraine.  Putin represents the world mind of evil, greed, and indifference to anyone else.  This type of mind is the ultimate self-centered mind.  One level of self-centered mind is one in which you love yourself and no one else except a very few family but it is one that might not really care what happens to other people, however, it is one that avoids hurting someone else.  The worst type is the person that actually enjoys hurting and controlling other people.  They feel nothing when they hurt or kill another person because they are so lost in their own ego and making their ego stronger.  To increase their ego, they need power over others so their own ego feels better.  This type of ego-driven individual has chosen, because of their free will, to center thoughts on their own power ego.  The more people they can control, the more power they feel.

Look around the world today and you will see microcosms of the Putin mind.  In China, their leaders have been controlling the news outlets and information their people can access.  They use misinformation to project a lie that they want everyone to accept.  The Trump mind is very much the same.  They lie and completely distort reality to literally brainwash people.  The whole right wing groups throughout the world are doing the same kind of thing.  They want power and they want to have complete control over others.  Democracy and freedom are a threat to them so they want to destroy freedom and make everyone their slaves, literally.  China and Russia have known for many decades that freedom for their people meant people would learn what they are doing and they will not choose to be their slaves.  

What we see going on in the world is a struggle for the mind of the world.  Minds, consciousnesses, are energy.  Ego-driven minds generate dark energy, that is, energy that is cold, callous, uncaring, angry, and hurtful.  Love-driven minds generate light energy, that is, energy that is positive, caring, happy, and helpful.  The world is in a battle of dark and light energy.  Which one will dominate the most people in the world and thus dominate our world mind's growth and development?  

Our freedom and our minds are at stake in this battle.  

Thank you

 Sandy and I just got our second dose of the Moderna vaccine and the thought that keeps coming to me is thank you.  I don't know who or what I am thanking but I need to say thank you more often.  When the nurse was giving me the shot, I thanked her and told her how good the shot felt.  I said it feels like freedom.  We are all in a bizarro world with how this pandemic has effected our minds.  We have been conditioned to stay shut away from others and limit what we do, where we go, and how we interact with others.  We have a lot of healing to do, not just physically, but mentally.  We can soon be more free to do what we want to do and not feel so much tension and fear from hugging our own family and friends and even strangers.  I just want to take a minute to give thanks for our world and life.  Namaste 

Our National Consciousness

 I have not been writing anything for quite some time and a lot has happened in this country.  As I write, the House of Representatives is impeaching Trump for inciting violence in disrupting the verification of an American election.  I have been pretty speechless as I watch events unfold.  Trump clearly and in front of the world is inciting people to help him overthrow the election results and make him ruler of the world, or whatever delusion the man is under.  But as I witnessed what has been happening, and there has been a heck of a lot of stuff hitting the fan, I have been monitoring what is happening with our national consciousness.  In my book on the Probe Method: A Transformation of Human Consciousness, I outlined the evolution of our human consciousness.  Basically, we all have our own consciousness and we also have and share group consciousnesses as we grow and develop throughout our existence in the universe.  We have all heard about mob violence and that is what we saw on January 6 at the Capital Building.  Once a mob takes over, the group creates a group mind or consciousness, and the mob mind is representative of the members of the group.  This kind of mind is unfolding in front of the world and it was a very egoistic and controlling mind.  It was a mind full of hate for others.  There were symbols of the Confederate flag and Nazism at the Capital.  This is a mind of the ego, which is an ego mind we have been trying to transform into a more other-centered mind.  Our national consciousness is now being shaped and we should pay attention to this issue.  It is as important as all the other issues we face and maybe it is the most important because it is the very evolution and future of our personal and shared consciousness experience.  

Are we going to regress in our human consciousness evolution or move forward?  Our human purpose is centered around this evolution.  As individuals, we are consciousnesses evolving from ego-centered to other-centered through freedom, love, and joy as our basics of life.  Individuals meet and interact with others and we all begin to develop group minds, first with our families and then with our peers.  This group mind could be a high school club, fraternity, sports team, religion, cause, race, political view, geographic region, etc., etc.  There are millions of ways in which we group ourselves and we tend to follow the group mind when our personal mind might not do so without this influence.  We need to be aware of the power the group mind has on our own mind so we can remain independent, but we all are still going to be influenced by group minds.  A great example of the group mind, is the Republican mind.  The Republican mind has been taken over by the Trump mind.  Anyone mixed in with the Trump mind will do things that they would not do alone.  It is unquestionably clear that Trump has abused his powers as President and that he incited the minds of the people who attempted a coup on our nation.  How could anyone not admit this?  But we continue to see Trump minds making excuses and lying about it all even when they know they are wrong.

All of these group minds within one country, such as the US, will form a national mind of some kind.  The national mind is not clearly formed in the US because there are so many individual and group minds in the US that are still very ego-centered and they are not only self-centered, they are controlling and power hungry minds.  They want to control other minds and make others think and do as they say.  This is a mind that wants power.  You get power when you control the minds of others.  

So we are at a crossroads in our evolutionary process in which we can go backwards or forwards.  I hope we can take this moment in history seriously in terms of our human awareness and consciousness.  

Follow Your Dreams: A constructivist goal

 I am a big believer in the old saying, "follow your dreams."  We tell our own children that they should have some ambition in life and they should pursue those ambitions throughout their lives.  We tell our children to be yourself, to find yourself, to be the best that you can be.  We encourage our children to think positive about their future, work hard to accomplish your goals, and never give up.  We tell them to keep on going, no matter what.

We tell our own children to follow their dreams and as parents we are there to help them succeed.  This is a great message for every child and adult and this is a message we hear over and over again in the media.  We see examples of people who have been successful and they tell us that we can also achieve our dreams if we keep trying.  We are told that we can obtain our goals and we believe it.  In reality, not everyone can win the gold medal and not everyone will get the money and personal benefits of being super successful.  But, it is good to have a positive attitude about your own future, so that you don't give up.  We might not always be the winner but the game can still be fun.  

In our school system, we should also set educational goals for the children who are required to participate.  A major goal for all children should be to follow their dreams.  We want all children to have ambition and to have personal goals for their own lives.  We want to help them to be successful in meeting their goals in life.  However, presently the educational system does not encourage children to follow their dreams.  Instead, our system mandates the goals for students and discourages their dreams.  We tell them to do as they are told and we don't listen to them when it comes to the curriculum, instruction, and assessment we use in schools.  On the one side, we say you can follow your dreams, but then we don't give them any time or opportunity to do so.  We actually put up roadblocks for students so that they give up on their own dreams.  

A constructivist approach to education is a way for us to establish an educational system that is much more aligned with individual goals and dreams.  Students should be able to express themselves and their personal thoughts, feelings, and dreams about their future.  They should be involved with setting their own educational curriculum and with how they will meet their goals.  In a constructivist system, children with their parents and teachers establish their individual goals and how they will be successful in meeting those goals.  

So, a constructivist approach is the only one in which we help children to follow their dreams.  Let's change education so that we can become a nation of people who are following their dreams.  

Black Lives Matter

 I am so ashamed of so many White Americans who are still racist after so many years of Americans who have worked to make our country better, and now the big, bad racist pops his head back up.  What is happening in this administration is shameful for Whites and harmful to all Americans.  Racism is alive and still sick in America.  A free and democratic America has no place for racism of any kind.  

White Americans should all be ashamed.  Seriously!  How dare you believe you are better than anyone else?  What arrogance!  If you're not a racist, then stand up and peacefully protest, but protest like your own life depends upon it, or your children's lives.  We all have to stand up to injustice, police brutality, and racial discrimination.  There is only one way for us to react and that is non-violently.  When we react with violence, then we give them an excuse to use force, and we don't want an armed confrontation.  That would just hurt everyone.  When millions of people protest non-violently, they take power and politicians will listen and change will happen.

We have all seen in our history how peaceful protest can be extremely effective in making change occur.  But we have to be persistent and we have to stay focused on our goal of justice and equality for all.  Black lives matter.  We should make that our national motto.  Every White American should say Black lives matter and apologize in the name of all Whites for the racists who make the rest of us look bad.  

I certainly do hope and pray that most Whites are not racist.  I hope it is only a minority of highly verbal and reactive White racists who are coming out of the woodwork when our administration urges them on.  We must use our collective outrage and get out there and protest and then get out and vote the racists out of office.  We can use our voices and our votes to end racism in America in this generation.  

Why freedom as a goal for education is so important

 The concept of freedom is quite simple in some ways.  We are free.  Period.  What else is there to say?   I do what I want.  You do what you want.  Simple.  But we all know it's not that simple of a concept.  Are we free to kill someone else?  That's not quite so simple either.  People do kill other people so they had the freedom to kill and they did.  It happens every day.  Someone will be killed by the freedom of someone else.  We are inherently free to do good or evil.  That certainly does not mean the rest of us can't do anything about someone who uses their freedom to hold us hostage, torture us, or kill us.  So the whole story goes that we are free but we need to live with others and allow others to be free or we could end up fighting to the death.  So we have to compromise with societal laws and norms that might discourage individual freedoms when it comes to infringing upon others' rights.  But where does it stop with laws?  When do they take away freedoms you should have just because others don't like what you're doing?  And so we try to compromise in our society and that's not so simple either.  

But I want to talk about the freedom of children and the concept of freedom in school.  I started talking about freedom for adults because children are going to be adults in our society in the next few years and the freedom of children should align with the freedom we give to adults.  Freedom for children becomes more complex than freedom for adults.  Adults can use their freedom and cheat, steal, and harm others.  Adults can do all kinds of evil and destructive things and the rest of us can try to control the harm they do.  These are adults who should know better.  These are adults who should have learned to control their selfish impulses and to live with others.  Children are also free and they need to learn how to use their freedom in life to survive and to be happy with others.  Freedom is a given but it is not easy to be free.  It is one of the hardest things in life - to be free.  Some people don't want to be free.  They would rather that someone makes decisions for them or for someone else to do things for them.  But then others can't stand for anyone to tell them what to do.  And this is all true with children.  Some children are so independent and stubborn that they want listen to a word you say.  They don't like it when the teacher makes them sit and listen.  They want to do it themselves and they can usually figure it out on their own.  Then there are children who won't do anything unless you tell them exactly what to do and give them complete orders throughout the day so they do not need to make any decisions.  They want the teacher to explain and go over and over content and they follow instructions about completing instructional tasks.

When I talk about freedom in school, I mean teaching children how to be free.  They are free.  But are they capable to handle their freedom?  To be a free adult, you need to take care of yourself completely.  You have to earn your own money.  You have to take care of all your personal life responsibilities.  You have to be self responsible in every aspect of your life.  You will also need to have personal skills to live with others and to respect their rights and freedoms.  Therefore, as a child you will need to learn a lot of life skills and other skills that will enable you to be an adult who is capable of living independently and peacefully in a society with others.

So I don't mean that you just turn children loose and let them be free to learn.  That's not freedom to learn.  For some children that would be a way for failure.  Every child, just like every adult, is different from every other child in many, many ways.  We should not create a curriculum for all children, but that is what we have done.  We also dictate the instruction children receive and we dictate when they learn, when they do each task throughout the day, and when they can even talk.  Schools presently are stripping freedom from our children.  Some adults would be OK with this, but not many.  Why should we treat our children in a way that we would not tolerate?  Why can't we recognize that we want adults to act responsibly but we have not taught them how to be free in school?  Children need to be in a constructivist school system that provides children a learning environment in which they are given as much freedom as possible with adult assistance and supervision.  Children need to learn skills in which they can take care of their personal well-being and they need to learn many other skills they will need to become self-directed and self-responsible.  But children need a lot of help in learning these skills.  They have a lot of needs they do not understand so they need direction from adults in developing their own, personalized educational goals.  

So children need to learn skills to be a free, responsible, and peaceful member of society.  Our adult population reflects the educational system in which they grew up.  Our present educational system prohibits freedom and our society is a reflection of the lose of freedom.  We need to turn things around and re-create schools with a primary goal of education to be that all children learn how to be free in a responsible way.  So a goal for children is freedom or how to be free.  We need a lot of discussion about the meaning of freedom in our lives and the meaning of freedom in schools.  There is a compromise in which we can give children guidance and supervision but we can also give them experiences in making choices and in learning to be independent.  We not only need to give students some freedom to learn topics of their own choosing, but we need to provide them with experiences in which they learn to be self responsible and to cooperate with others.  Freedom is not just freedom to do what you want, but it means that you are capable to live in joy with others in a peaceful society and let others be free as well.  

Goals for humans and goals for education

I have been a teacher and instructional designer for nearly a half century.  I have seen so many innovations and changes throughout the decades, particularly in the last few decades with the integration of technology.  We are now experiencing a tremendous challenge with the Covid-19 and the need for online and blended learning.  Teachers are searching for ways to use technology that they have been discussing for years but might not have had the push to implement.  Now they are scrambling to put their curriculum online for students and to create a much different learning environment than we have ever known.

The big question is how do we make these changes and how many of these changes are needed for the long term and not just for this pandemic period.  We need to have a very serious conversation about how we can introduce blended learning into our educational system and how should we use technology to help us with our goals.  But I think that we now also need to take the time to start the conversation to replace our early 20th century educational goals with 21st century goals.  The old goals were framed around children as potential factory workers who needed to follow orders and to recite back information. During the last few decades, we have added more and more curriculum demands on the knowledge level for each grade.  We don't remove curriculum items as much as we just keep piling on more to require students to regurgitate. 

But the problem is that we have not taken a systematic approach to designing our own educational system.  We have taken the "just pile it on" approach and now we have a huge mess that we call a curriculum.  We need to take a step back and redesign the entire curriculum.  Sometimes, it is better to tear down and start over rather than keep on trying to patch things up.  In this case, we need to start all over with new goals that reflect mankind's 21st century goals.  Of course, we will need to agree upon what those new goals will be.

The Instructional Systems Design (ISD), or often just Instructional Design (ID), approach is an approach to design systems, which might mean organizations, businesses, schools, corporations, etc.  The educational system is a system.  The human system is also a system. Duh, you think, but we need to examine these two systems much more than we do.  ISD should be used to help us set new goals for our educational system.  We need to use a very methodical approach in designing our schools.  I have worked as an instructional designer for many years and I have used ISD to design and to develop hundreds of educational and training projects and instructional materials.  ISD provides a thorough analysis of a system and then recommends solutions to any system problems.  Problems within a system would be anything that might deter the system from meeting system goals. 

ISD will help a company identify areas in which the company needs to improve and determine if any of these areas for improvement are related to a need for education or training of some kind.  ISD process can also be used to help identify the goals for our educational system and then determine the instructional solution for obtaining those goals.  I maintain that the goals of the educational system must be in alignment with the goals of human beings.  It is our children who go through our created educational system and these children are humans.  I know that sounds dumb, but we often forget that we are creating a system that is not a corporation or business that needs training programs for specific needs for their employees.  We are talking about an education/training program for the needs of every child and therefore every human being in our nation.  There is not a specific need to fill any more.  We do not need to train children to work in factories or to get a job.  There are many, many training programs for specific work related skills and so getting training for a job is always possible for everyone and training will become even more easy for adults to get to prepare for good paying jobs that have immediate need in our society.

But we are now talking about creating the environment in which we will require all humans in our society to live. That is a much different set of goals to consider.  We must consider what are the goals of our children.  Are the goals of every child the same or different?  How much?  Children are like us.  Humans who are growing up into becoming adults who will become us.  What are the goals of children?  What are our goals as adults?  What are our goals as human beings?  How can we create an educational environment in which all children learn to obtain their individual goals?  The goals for this educational system should be the same goals for each individual human. 

We need to decide on the goals of the human system.  Determine the goals of humans first and then make them the goals of the educational system. 

What do you say are the goals of humans?