This chapter is to me the critical essence of what we need to hear in White America, unless it's too late for this experiment. Let me admit the obvious first. I come from possibly the longest line of Christian Missionaries representing what we may call today American Zionism. White people in America, by this definition, are in cahoots with Israel in some way that may be mysterious to them, but which certainly makes them lost Jews, at least. It just doesn't occur to them that the Palestinians and the Muslims of the world are going to "make it into heaven to be with Jesus". They may not even know anymore that this dogma is behind their support of Israel, but its there. I have come to accept that I truly am a white American male protestant christian. Let me just caricature my position, since I studied it well from the position of being raised in India. Living in India, but "really from America", where people are partial to Jesus so they don't need to be threatened quite so. American Zionism threatens "the lost" with Jesus and Political American Zionism dominates the current global system with oil to the dollar bill, (and fire from the skies, and a bar code, and a military machine). But if not for missionaries like me our system would completely lack meaning today. White American people today have no idea what to do because they have lost a sense of the story they are in. The Jews already did this under Hitler - they quit being so attached to a spiritual fulfillment of Abraham's conversation and just picked up weapons again and fought back into power. What I am trying to tell you is that I have a voice that is not conditioned by inferiority. Today I am on top of the world and I get to be the one to tell you how you should think. I can come into your village and your little nuclear family and talk to your kids and tell them that you all need a change of mind. You need to be converted. I mean it. I am ready to take persecution to be on the front line of telling ignorant white America that they need to be saved. Irony. Now I'm talking like that to White Christian, and especially Protestant, America. If I didn't have deluded DNA I would think myself crazy. (It's ok to be crazy, you just suffer it.)
Let me begin by pleading for understanding. I am pleading here for an understanding of Islam that I hold with zeal and passion, all by myself right here in white America. Here is what I think about Muhammad's Knowledge. Yes, peace be upon him - in terms of the completion of the vision of Islam. But don't think you know what I'm saying yet. Of course, understand that this is my argument. And I hope I am ready for the challenge from those who wish to argue. Bring it on. Try to change my mind.
I must confess that I had a series of serendipitious experiences that contributed to this delusion - that I am somehow connected with the spirit of Muhammad. It's really a whole story that I don't want to tell, but enough to give you the impression that when it comes to arguing about Religion, that's my job. I want to put all the Jesus people in their place: pick up some wood for the fire and hang out! Get off your higher order stuff, all your storytelling and personal experience and self knowledge and philosophy, and work all that out right here in a real village, which means local community. Give up your desire to go to heaven and be here with WE! And then you will experience Paradise!
Now here is where I go crazy. For example, yesterday I was running and heard some drums so I ran excitedly to whirl among them. As I came up an elder white woman was complaining and inquiring as to the legality of the situation. It was a drum class for kids. After they went through the technicalities I took it on myself to give her a lecture in front of the kids about the important relationship between drums and valid local community. Where there are no drums there is no way. And the point is that we live in an extreme of isolationism today in white America. You can't even meet girls on the trails anymore. They are all indoors texting people around the world to get a date. But I have to go into some Detail before I can really express my anger about what is going on today in America. Let those with understanding be empowered.
Homo sapiens consist of circuitry. Electromagnetic circuitry. There is other stuff, but there is also circuitry. And there are three broad circuits that compose what we are. We are Collective and we are Individual and we are Tribal. These are all important and we are not in any position to judge our own qualities, but to embrace what we are. The Collective consists of everything we can think of as logic and reason and detail, but also everything we can think of that is emotional, like pornography and violence, lust and blame. On one side we have our reason and on the other we have our yearning for new experience. Individuality was also a mutation that really made us Homo sapiens. We differentiated to individuality, the integrity of the individual illusion of a self. We are self conscious creatures. We want to know who we are: who am I? We need information to feed our need to know who we are. Individuals need two things, information and comfort. With enough information and comfort the individual can make it in this world. But deprive an individual of meaningful information and they can commit suicide the way cells do for other reasons. But Homo sapiens are essentially Tribal creatures.
We may be here to give expression to literally everything that has the potential and the possibility of coming into the world. But we do not escape the surrender into the world once we are here. I am not one with Allah as long as I am in form. Ok, so the sound of Allah is difficult for white people. Let me make it plain. Allah pertains to the god of the patriarchy that would force us into Tribal relations. It is my opinion that there are 10 different Religions that we Homo sapiens must acknowledge. Islam is the key to dealing with The Ego. White new age rhetoric about the ego is bad talk. It won't work, anymore than denying the validity of Muhammad's Knowledge. Islam is here to stay.
To me Islam means that to fulfill my destiny as a Man I must live in Tribal relations, which really means committed local community. There is a part of me that needs a sense of a people, that, does not exist in white America. There is a negative streak that goes through American Zionism that perpetuates violence and blame. And the way it does this is by denying the validity of The Tribe! This is the point of this chapter. You can tell White American Zionism is in trouble by how its old people are dying. Check it out. The old people are not talking with the children. What I mean is, old people and young children are not spending their days together, not as a special event, but just as what Tribal people do with their children. They leave them with the elderly and go off to work! Listen, when the old people and the children are segregated you have the death of a whole culture. The thing is, this is not very new in America. We have been getting isolated since the Puritans first decided the Indians lived in a bad way. Every generation of white America is educated increasingly to deny Tribal desires. The language we use shows how we feel about living Tribally. If we are new age philosophers you would say the tribe was a stage in human development that we no longer need. If you are just a new ager you will tell people to get out of their egos. If you go to Iraq, you get to kill Iraqi's, who just are manifestations of The Ego! If you read "a course in miracles" you will be completely confused about the ego, and only Muhammad's knowledge will be able to help you.
To relate to the true family, that is The Tribe (not the white american family: an illusion in an illusion), we need zeal and passion and force. So, finally, here is my plea for restoring white America to the spirit of Islam. Identify a local area, say alpine to iris and broadway to 19th. Go through a 10 stage process of building a village right out of those people, by getting them to make sure they take care of their own old people, first of all. Local people must return to the need to take care of their own old people. The Tribe will follow. If you build it, they will come.
My ego is lonely in white America. When I miss my girlfriend I begin to realize that what I really lack as a white man is authentic tribal experience. We don't even know what this means today. We have to begin by confessing that the collective has tried to dominate our tribal desires long enough. But I think The Gathering experience is as close to authentic tribe in white America today: because of the meaning I attach to it. But The Gathering in America is still only a Voice for The Tribe, for the restoration of The Tribe. We are not a Tribe as The Gathering in America. Those of us who live in the spirit of The Gathering feel something about being lost in Babble-on.
Finally, it has become my way of thinking that money in the future is based on local economies. What are we doing with the people around us to make something that can be traded with the world in Mecca? The Global Trade Circle: Mecca! Imagine the road between Jerusalem and Mecca - for the tribes of the earth to make pilgrimage together. You could go to The Gathering in Israel "alone", but you need A Tribe to make it to Mecca. Hey white kid, where's your Tribe?It doesn't exist: go find a tribe. And not with people from all around town. Live in a Tribe. The irony is that I am obviously talking to myself. But I still haven't given up hope for some kind of colorful company who can dance and instrument and play and stretch and gather and sit down.
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