What Killed the “Flower Power”?

The late sixties and early seventies were magical times. I was born in 1956 so I was still very young, but I had a chance to partake in the seventies as a youth. The age and the hippie movement were something very refreshing and new. It came as a synthesis of art (music), philosophy and a lifestyle that rejected all the robotic, mindless corporate culture that sadly got us where we are today.

We had great movies that came out over the course of these 20 years. “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”, an adaptation of the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, just to name a personal favorite. We had a promising new age that rejected materialistic aims, sought (and found) spirituality and basically enjoyed life through the arts and love. This sounds easy, doesn’t it?

The problem came of course in the beginning via using recreational drugs.

Mind expansion is a novel concept and using “herbs” and magic mushrooms were customarily used by shamans, who took the dangers upon themselves in order to gain insight and possibly serve their communities better. It was not a free for all.

Of course it was impossible to even attempt to explain this to the selfish and overly liberal mind of the flower children of that age.

Drugs are dangerous, and can be a novel experiment in the beginning but they are highly addictive, unhealthy and destructive regardless of the kind of substance you wish to try. Through daily meditation and active serving, the community a person can enjoy is the same “mind expansion” clean and free of the aftereffect of a legal or illegal substance.

The same goes for sex. While it is part of life, and vehicle of procreation, free sex is not the same as free love. Tantric sex is the other mind expanding vehicle that was embraced through the sixties and seventies. While I KNOW I will sound prudish, sex, especially promiscuous and unprotected sex is not mind expanding nor is it spiritual.

I know for a fact that while all this appears to be a coincidence, this is not. The age of the anti war, anti establishment movement that I prefer to call Flower Power, scared the powers that be to their core. These “dark forces” that we must fight all the time, looked at the trend of the Hippie movement using LSD and openly advocating destructive behaviors and at that point they knew that their battle had been won. The movement had no chance from that point on. As the cliché goes, “sex and drugs killed the anti-war, hippie movement”. The war continued on and ultimately was lost, the young Republicans eventually ventured back to their college campuses and the new selfish, materialistic eighties came storming in.

Everything comes and goes in cycles. The pendulum swung back but this does not mean that all is lost. Those twenty years gave us plenty to learn from and such great music and art came from this era.

Having said this, where is the outrage of our new war in Afghanistan? What about the mass protests against war on the middle class? Where are the mass protests of the wholesale theft in Washington? I wish we had the ounce of the gumption and zeal TODAY that the Vietnam War protesters once had. Would we have more outrage if the US army were not a voluntary fighting force? What would happen if the powers that be re-instated the draft? Protesting out of self-interest is wrong. The war in Afghanistan is not winnable; it clearly lacks goals and purpose. No nation has ever defeated these people. The US will not be the exemption.  Better dust off those old history books…

Let Go, Let God

We live in scary, uncertain times and change is in the air. It is best not to listen to the news but some of it is unavoidable. I listen to talk radio and it is interrupted with sporadic bits of news, and all too often, emotion takes over when we listen to political and economic news.

No matter what job you have or how much money you have banked, REAL security is fleeting and unattainable. It is accepted that the more money people have, the more they worry about who is after their wealth or what political organization has them in the crosshairs.

Let’s face it, the more money you have the more you are a target to all sorts of efforts to “liberate” you from your material wealth. This begets paranoia and rightfully so. There are tremendous ups and downs associated with material wealth. I was reading a very interesting article about the life stories of ten substantial lotto winners, who are now on government assistance or barely making ends meet.

In Biblical Times, Jewish children caught sparrows to sell in the marketplace. Jesus used the sparrow to illustrate this Wisdom Law

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will…Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Mt 10:28-31; see also Lk 12:4-7). ”

People on the spiritual path should understand this and accept it. There is a secret of the Ancient Wisdom and it goes like this; when you are in heart and mind accept Nature’s Laws and lay back and let go, a miracle will happen!

“Let Go, Let God”.

You must have strong, unyielding faith in this, because when and if you do, magical things will happen! The Universe will provide for you and will take care of you. It is like a circular system resembling the cornucopia, whatever you put in one end you’ll get it back tenfold. The secret is, and this is important; you must be a giver and not a taker! Since there is an esoteric oneness what you give is actually one that you “save”, since all is one. Conversely, when you take, you only take from the “collective”, yourself included. You see?

This saying is truer than ever, “Takers fall on hard times, but givers keep on giving.”