King for the Masses By BJ Scofield I have a dream that one day the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.'s will be the dream of every man, woman and child. I remember the first time that I listened to a speech by Dr. King in its entirety. It was entitled an "Address to the Montgomery Improvement Association". I was so moved that I cried throughout the majority of it. What I heard…no what I felt resonating through his voice was something that I knew to be true in the depths of my soul. His message screamed out to me something that I had experienced through my struggles in life and had witnessed in the coming together of tragedies and the triumphs of the human spirit. It was then that I realized that his message was for all people regardless of race, color or creed and it spoke to a much deeper level than words could convey. Carved out of the darkness of racism, oppression and injustice, Martin Luther King Jr. showed us exactly how a successfully manifested physical representation of peace can transform our consciousness. More specifically he has given to humanity a vision of hope and has provided the necessary building blocks for the eternal freedom for all. Through his victories in the civil rights movement the eternals that he spoke of such as love, peace and serving were brought to the forefront of America's conscience. Dr. King said, "When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality." Forging its roots in a rich non-violent pro-active movement based on this unifying principle, Dr. King successfully exposed the moral deficiency of racism, oppression and injustice. He did all of this while garnering the respect of the conscience of America and transforming the souls of the masses. Love was his motto. Non-violence was his method and an oasis of cultural beauty was his long-term goal. To make progress in this world we will need to embrace the principles of Dr. King. When we look at the problems facing the world today such as war, hatred, social injustice and poverty just to name a few, we have a great resource to turn to for inspiration and answers. He spoke and wrote on all of these ideas and they should not go unheard, I believe that we have a duty to collectively examine what he said and implement strategies that can impact our world. When Dr. King spoke out against the Vietnam War, he was criticized by his supporters who were worried about losing focus on civil rights as well as by the government who was deeply involved in the war. However, imagine if every politician or leader held this short quote from Dr. King as their personal motto. "We must confront physical force with soul force". These words are small in number but decisive and defining in our philosophy for a secure peaceful future. Or if our government embraced this philosophy from Dr. King "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than on love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers." He also recognized "true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice." He knew that it takes people to become active in the procurement of these ideals and that we must work toward what we want, not destroy what we do not want. Something that was very close to Dr. King was that of serving others. In fact Martin Luther King Day is honored by the government with a day off, but the King Center says that is a day on, a day to serve. In this quote from a sermon he gave called The Drum Major Instinct, he speaks to the heart of the issue, and that is that anyone can serve. "If you want to be important - wonderful. If you want to be recognized - wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's your new definition of greatness. And this morning, the thing that I like about it…by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve…You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. And you can be that servant." With these few examples of the ideas of Dr. King we can model the methods utilized by him to raise the human consciousness. First and foremost we can embrace the eternals that he spoke of and apply them in our lives, master them and incite evolution, just as Dr. King did. He didn't wait for evolution to change history; he stood up and "…injected new hope into the veins of civilization" as he said when speaking about the civil rights movement. Now is the time to break these eternals down into individual steps and form a staircase to an accepted global reality of a philosophy based in love. Ideas so inherent in the body of these movements cannot be disregarded for long. As Dr. King said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice". Throughout the course of history, our consciousness is expanding on this wave, which is bending toward what is righteous. Ride this wave and it will remind you to master the universe and to not forget your purpose. It will remind you to serve others and to give your life for something that is worth dying for. For the sake of the survival of humanity we must rise up from our so often complacent lives and spread Dr. Kings message to the masses.

If we can think of spirituality as pain experienced beyond the level of the physical body, then our country and much of the world needs nothing short of a spiritual revolution. Collectively and individually there is a large disconnect between the suffering of the world and our conscious awareness of it as well as a failure to raise the pain of the world into a spiritual dimension. Daily we are confronted with the madness of our society yet there seems to be an unwillingness to engage in conversation about our predicament. We fail to take the next step and ask how the events in the world make us feel, in turn perpetuating the collective denial that we have succumbed to. In our failure to do this we reinforce the myth that there is no suffering in the world or that we are separate from it. It is crucial for us as a nation to begin a dialogue which will allow us to feel the current state of emotional condition of the world. If we do not, this repressed collective pain will continue to dominate our way of being, increasing our infatuation with ourselves, continuing the numbing of our spirit and leading to polices that divide the world even further. The reason for this disconnect and repression has to do with a problem of faith. Some say we lack faith. In reality, there is no shortage of faith; there is a problem with what we have faith in. Our faith is rooted in the belief that our money, technology and individuality can provide a suitable replacement for emotional experience, discipline and the need for community. Our faith so strongly rooted in this belief, we find our identity and purpose here. It is rather ironic that our security comes from this place, considering the madness it has created in the world. Yes, this is the society that taught us to make fun of the overweight person, to not sit next to the “nerd”, to divide the cafeteria in a “cool” side and a “loser” side, to associate only within our race, to humiliate people, to put faith in money and material things, to continually seek out pleasure from obsessions with drugs, alcohol and sex, to organize around violence, guns and warfare and to place a strong emphasis on the individual. This image in which society represents to us is no doubt a reflection of our creation, the problem is that we believe that this image is who we actually are. In many ways this image is held as an organizing principle in our culture, finding a home in government, education, media, music and families. On some level we say to ourselves that since our society is filled with many forms of violence then our true nature is violence. Or, we find ways to rationalize the state of the world because is has become familiar to us. This image that has been perpetuated within our society is the world that we “know”. People often say that we are afraid of the unknown, however this is not true. It is not that we are afraid of the unknown, rather that we are afraid of losing the known. What we know is a world driven by an addiction to a way of thinking and an identity formed by the drama and violence in the world. We don’t want to get rid of it because it is so well known to us, so familiar, so close to home. We have been deceived to think that if we get rid of it then we die or our humanity dies and we lose our foothold. We feel threatened to end the violence, separation and faith in material things because that is where we get our identity. To counteract this extreme focus on individuality and faith in the fear of the world, we must extend ourselves and create a societal dialogue to gain the crucial awareness of the reality of the state of the world. We must tell ourselves that it is o.k. to have a conversation about how we feel about the world. It is o.k. to let ourselves feel and contemplate the pain of the world if need be. This common dialogue and emotional healing is humanity’s best chance to turn the tide of organized fear and self-destruction. Through this genuine experiencing and identification with others suffering we can begin to feel what is going on in the world. When the world begins to feel this suffering true change can occur. However, our emphasis on technology (Internet, computers, T.V., video games…etc) increasingly produces more individuality and reduces our capacity for compassion. There is nothing wrong with these technologies per se, rather our confusion lies with our identification with them and belief that they can fulfill aspects of the human experience that in reality cannot be addressed by them. Thus we end up with a profound numbness, which dissipates the energy necessary to feel responsible and to want to make a change. Our need to turn to our neighbor and communicate has been becoming almost non-existent, thereby reinforcing this cycle of social alienation. Dr. King defined our priority when he said, “Through our scientific and technological genius, we've made of this world a neighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we must make of it a brotherhood." In conclusion, the answer is thus to understand that what we have been taught cannot be trusted as an accurate representation of our humanity and cannot be turned to for security. Is this not a system rooted in something that identifies with the madness of our society and is itself subject to the violence that it is teaching? We must ask of this system why is there an emotional and spiritual starvation, while many other societies are rich in spirit while poor in material wealth? What encouragement has been provided to discuss the emotional state of our country? We also must ask what is the intelligence that guides those who run our society? Fear is a keystone element in our society, organized through the government and media. Surely this is not intelligence. The process of becoming intelligent means being free from fear while learning. How can we trust a system that’s intelligence is based on fear? We must challenge ourselves and ask tough questions. Throughout our daily activities we must ask am I doing this because the center of who I am believes this or am I imitating what my friends, the T.V. and society has told me? Do you have the courage to revolt against what you have been taught about the way we should be and start to see for yourself what is real? It is easy to be a slave to society, to have blind faith and to continually believe what the television and our friends tell us that we should be. It takes courage to challenge and revolt against what society has taught us about love, education, morality, our role in the world and freedom and to begin the genuine process of searching. A genuine “experiment with truth” as Gandhi said. “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein