In planning our radio show, I have three quick questions I want to ask you guys. Questions will be taken from live callers and live chat, so we’re going to be able to spread a lot of Erik around!
Thanks, and now for the final part of the terrorism topic.
Me: I’m afraid. Should I be afraid?
Jamie; And what can we do?
Me: Yeah.
Erik: There are so many intents and prayers and love, fear and emotions in the air, like TANGIBLY in the fucking air. It’s like I’m swimming through it.
He mimics doing the breaststroke.
Erik: (Sweeping aside something invisible with one stroke of his arm) Oh, that one’s for Paris. Of course it is. Here we go! We know where the focus is for those who have had the experience, witnessed it or were 6 degrees of separation from it. We’re all feeling some kind of impact. When you’re sending those intents, prayers, thoughts—that love—send it in an open-ended way rather than very directed. Many are lost and don’t know exactly who we need to send the intention to. I’m monitoring the prayers to the man called, “God” and they’re like, “Save those who are innocent, and punish those who are bad!” The duality paradigm isn’t fucking working anymore. Although we appreciate the knowledge that those who have done nothing deserve to have that kind of peace and love and those who have created the chaos deserve to have a cause and effect, but again, it’s not in your judging hands. When we’re looking at—
Jamie: God Erik!
Me: Oh boy.
What has he said now?
Jamie: My heart had a moment of racing! He’s telling people how to pray. Holy shit.
She laughs.
Erik: If we’re really looking at maximizing our thoughts and using our energy and emotions, send it in an open-ended way so that it can be used by all.
Me: Well, give me an example.
Erik: You know, Mom, just like we were talking about how we can help certain causes? When we think about sending it to certain individuals, we get overwhelmed so I’m like, “Send it to the fucking earth, right to the core.”
Me: Okay, right.
Erik: Then it shoots up and touches everybody and everything including all the animals in the trees and the sky.
Jamie: He’s going on and on.
Me: Okay. That exercise, right.
He’s shared it before.
Erik: It’s that concept that you can send it to the situation. The situation is much larger than Paris.
Me: Yeah.
Erik: But because we see that action and that pain and that shock, everything is going there. We have a much broader situation.
Me: So, send your intent, your prayer to the situation? Give love to the situation?
Erik: Send love.
Me: Can we send light to the earth’s core and have it shoot up to the crust and go right to the situation?
Erik: Yeah, you can do that because the situation is located in more countries than just France.
Me: Oh yeah. Of course. So that’s short term. What about long term?
Erik: Long term, we’re looking at people in power and how they’re going to communicate. There’s a way to “control” or entrap conflict and anger in a way that doesn’t breed more. It doesn’t empower it. How we’re approaching it now, even in the media, is giving it power. It’s creating anger. It’s creating fear. Anger, fear, frustration, helplessness, hopelessness. All these feed their cause. They’re getting what they need out of it. They’re getting joy out of it, and they are the ones who are creating the conflict from the planners to the ones of create the bombs—not all of them are associated with ISIS.
Me: Okay. What about these refugees? I don’t want any of them here. I know that sounds terrible, but I’m scared because 77% of them are men and could be ISIS coming in under cover. I say keep them where they are but guard them, protect them. Put soldiers around to protect them from the terrorists. Or why can’t Saudi Arabia take them in? They have this giant complex that can house up to a million people. I can’t remember what it’s for, some special holy day. We can send humanitarian aid, food, medical supplies and all that.
Erik: If we’re really looking at the best way to do this—not like there’s right and wrong, but I’m trying to use English here—
Me: I know. That’s a tough one.
Erik: When something goes wrong and we come in to rescue and remove people, we’re not creating answers. We’re instilling fear. We’re saying, “Holy shit. This is so bad that we’re scooping you up and removing you.” Rescuing in this way is a crock of shit I don’t care where you’re going to put them—two miles away, across the world—it’s the same thing. We’re saying, “You don’t know how. We’re bigger and better so we’re taking on your problem.” As a mom, do you call that good parenting?
Me: No.
Not if the kid can rescue him or herself, anyway.
Me: So what should we do?
Erik: In my opinion, I like the idea of taking them aside. It would be even better if we could provide the humanitarian services while they stayed local or nearby. Our ultimate goal should be to help them heal, give them intellectual tools like conflict resolution tools that they need. Don’t give them guns. Then groom them to get back into their locations and root them back into their communities and culture. Now this isn’t overnight. This isn’t even in a fucking year. This is a long-term process, but in the end, we get countries that know how to communicate. We get educated people who are making a difference. One talks to two, talks to ten, talks to a hundred. It keeps going on from there. But we haven’t done that yet. What we’ve done is we’ve scooped them up, taken them somewhere and said, “We’re good people. We’ve given them food, shelter, clothing. We’re done.”
Me: Yeah, and we don’t have enough jobs for our own people as it is! So we’re going to accept a bunch of people who are going to need to make a living for themselves? So I agree. Put them in an area in Syria, wherever they’re from, and guard them. Put a wall around them. Barbed wire. Help them set up a community. Help them create an infrastructure. I don’t know.
I’m so unsure of my opinion because it’s so complicated.
Erik: Mom, even if there’s so many of them that we can’t find a place for them, in the sense of the United Nations, we divide them. We keep the families together and we put them in programs that teach them, so we provide more jobs for our country. Of course those will be government jobs.
Great. More bureaucracy.
Erik: These programs will teach them how to communicate, how to protect themselves and then we send them back [to their original communities and homes] in 3-5 years, educated to stay in contact with their community and culture. When we scoop them up and take them away, we’re not just giving them a false sense of security; we’re taking away their roots. We’re clipping them at their knees and we say, “Didn’t we do you a big fucking favor?”
Me: Plus, ISIS is probably embedded in the refugees, too, right? They can smuggle themselves in like Trojan Horses in these waves of refugees. Of course there are terrorists there.
Erik: Yes and no.
???
Me: What do you mean? There has to be some! It only takes a handful to take down an airplane full of 300 people.
Erik: That’s true.
Me: So there are.
Erik: But if you think about it, if we divide and conquer instead of sending them all to one place, then we’re watering down their strength.
Me: All right.
Erik: But we can’t punish all because of one.
Me: Will we ever see this eradicated or at least lessened enough so that we won’t have this level of threat? Will things get better?
Jamie (laughing nervously): I don’t want to say this, but I’ll repeat it.
Me: Uh oh.
Erik: Are there still Catholics in the world, Mom?
Me: Yeah.
Erik: That religion is still going strong.
Me: Right, but they’re not beheading people!
Jamie chuckles.
Me: I mean will the terrorism, not the terrorists, be quelled down to an acceptable level ever?
I don’t know what acceptable would be, but…
Erik: None of it should ever be accepted. They’ll always find a way to be together. They’ll always be one. The wound won’t heal completely. There’ll be a lot of turnover.
Me: Okay.
Erik: It will still be there. It’ll still happen. That’s their idea of war.
And has been since at least the 7th century.
Erik: But as we get further along with technology, that war will change. It won’t be the big bombings that we see.
Me: Yeah, it’ll be like cyber warfare. So anyway, it’s not going to get any better? Nothing is going to change.
Erik: Yep.
Me: Great. Anything else on that cheery note?
Erik: Nope. I think I offended enough people today. I did my job.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, here’s the vlog of our gender reveal party!
To close, I’m asking each of you to send love to the situation in the way Erik describes. We can make it a coordinated effort: everyone send it on the hour every hour until 6:00 PM your time. It only requires a few seconds.
