Red Lights and Shoplifters

Have you noticed that more and more people are going through red lights in their rush to compete in this frantic world, and that no cops are there to stop them. We have only a token representation of police to give the impression that we are being protected. It’s an illusion.

Many cheat on their taxes and never get caught. Again, the government relies on a small contingent of auditors to check tiny, insignificant samplings of returns to enforce its laws. It’s a bluff.

Illegal immigrants run free in every small town in Florida. Nice people, but illegal nonetheless, and there is no way to stop them from flooding in. Even if the government passed the greatest laws in history to resolve the problem, they have no one to enforce the laws. They can’t even issue passports in fewer than three months! How would they ever be able to issue twenty million new I.D. cards for illegals, or to all of us, which would be required. It would be tactically impossible.

We are at a point where we can do little anymore. We are pretty much stuck with what we have, and what we have will only deteriorate further. Nothing stands behind the bluster; no entity can step in and enforce anything, except for a few sad cases where we make an example of some poor chap that sticks his head up at the wrong time.

Criminals are catching on that there is basically little enforcement out there. Shoplifters are essentially untouched in most retail stores for fear of litigation. The illusion that there is enforcement is but an illusion, good enough in the past to keep us in line, but now falling apart as more people catch on to the fact that government, without our cooperation, is powerless.

Now, the reaso
I have written this article; it’s because I’ve been trying to come up with an analogy that explains “self," that strange, enigmatic concept that is the basis of our problems. And I think I have finally come up with it.

The illusion that something stands behind our government, something that can actually control these things, parallels the illusion that something stands behind our individual actions and thoughts. Nothing is there, in either case. The only reason we obey laws and do the things we do is out of fear, and as we discover that there is no entity to enforce our laws, we begin to ignore them.

But when we discover that there is no entity behind our thinking and our actions, which is a spiritual thing, and that there is only one thought following another, something quite different results — freedom. And in that freedom, guess what, we no longer obey laws because we fear prosecution, we obey laws because in our new freedom from the tyranny of a false self, we begin to become whole, instead of fragmented.

When we become whole, there is an integration of our actions that naturally harmonize with all of our fellow beings, without laws or police breathing down our necks. It’s only when we lose track of the falseness of self, and believe in a self, that laws are necessary. It’s as if laws are the last refuge for human beings, just before total anarchy explodes.

We might be nearing anarchy, with the violence that is occurring in the world, and in our neighborhoods, with increasing frequency and brutality. So maybe it’s time to take a long look at this entity we call our “self," and take steps to get a handle on it.

Just fifteen minutes a day in meditation is a start. It could save your life, and maybe even the world. n