QUESTION: (Robert Buxbaum) For some time there has been discussion about a new name for the Political Committe. People have been concerned about the partisal implications that the word "political" carries, especially in relation to our legal status. It has also become clear recently that even the meaning of the word politics in its purest form, having nothing to do with the polis or city state as a political entity, is outmoded. What is needed is a new name that expresses the innate striving and movement toward oneness in humankind, as well as the relationship between our individual inner truths and the truths of larger entities of which we are all a part. A number of us have thought, meditated, and brainstormed about this new name, but without success. Our efforts have not been as serious as they need to be and I do sense a resistance in us to discover our real name. Could you please comment on the obstructions that bar us from finding our name and perhaps suggest steps we might take to uncover it? Could you also comment on the particular spiritual laws and principles that people need to connect with and that should be expressed in our name?
ANSWER: What should be expressed in the name is the word government, perhaps somehow in connection with New Age Government Approaches. However, this is not a direct suggestion about the actual name to use. It is merely a hint about what is the essence. Because this is after all what your committee strives for: new governmental approaches, unitive governmental approaches that differ vastly from the dualistic ones of "me versus you," right versus wrong. With this hint you may come up with an appropriate designation.
QUESTION: (Stewart Braunstein) After a harrowing incident last evening, I felt moved to ask the following of the Guide, and pray for guidance and clarification in his answer: On the evening of May 3, as I met over dinner in CIC with the Communications Committee, my mother, as she drove home from work, was fired upon by an apparent sniper from the rooftop of a building near her own apartment. Miraculously, she was unharmed, even though a rifle shot exploded the window directly behind her left ear and sent glass flying through the back seat of the car. Several other persons had also been fired upon at the same location only minutes before my mother arrived at that spot; one man had been wounded and all of the cars involved had their windows smashed. All outward indications pointed to the random selection of targets by some deranged person. When I heard this news after arriving home later from the Question and Answer and the deeply moving commitment ceremonies, I felt many things simultanepusly: initial shock, immense relief that she was not hurt, deep concern for her emotional state and that of my father as well, and also intense anger. The anger did not come immediately, but grew within me gradually as I pondered this incredible incident and thought about the frightening possibility that my mother could have been killed. But it was not so much directed at the assailant. Rather, I became aware that the anger was truly the result of frustration and confusion over deeper issues. Having just come from my personal commitment to stage II, I was acutely sensitized to the conflict I felt. It clearly had to do with your teachings on self-responsibility and the falsehood of victimization, and my inability to experience the truth of these concepts in the face of this seemingly random assault on my mother. Where is her self-responsibility in this act? Where is the responsibility of the other people who were also shot at indiscriminately, without rhyme or reason? I have often pondered these conceptual issues before; in fact, it came up recently in TC around the issue of the Holocaust, and I have privately struggled with my resistance to accepting the stated truth that no one is a victim, and that we attract negative actions against us. Yet, it has always been more abstract for me, until this incident brought it very close to home. In light of this, can you please help me to understand the meaning of such an outer experience, and where the connections between cause and effect can be made?
ANSWER: Although this incident is now well behind you and your family, the questions you raise are still as relevant as they were at the time this happened. It is, indeed, sometimes exceedingly difficult to establish the connection between cause and effect because the cause may lie back in previous incarnations and may be deeply imbedded in the soul substance. In order to truly understand this issue, it is also necessary for you to not see self-responsibility as a kind of blame and punishment. I might say that perhaps there is violence in your mother's soul substance that she is more frightened of than any outer violence, and that she has deeply buried it. This might then become a magnetic force field. Your own fury and anger is directly related to the last lecture I have given. It is the existential anger against a fate that manifests as obscure, as unjust, as meaningless. To get in touch with these feelings is very important. Often a person joining this or any other Path has irrational and inarticulate hopes that through the work and the striving that the path in question prescribes and through the teachings of the particular path these dreaded aspects of life will be eliminated. In other words, that death, sickness, pain, and apparently unjust fate will be magically removed as a reward for all the efforts undertaken. When this hope proves false, then the anger that already existed against God and against life to begin with is then turned toward the teacher or leader of the path. Any true and realistic path must help you to go through these feelings and experiences because this is the only way to genuinely find out the eternal life and well-being that exist beyond the level of consciousness that you are now connected with. Faith in the Creator can become complete only when the opposite is met and dealt with.