Westerners and 'inner peace'
Posted: Wednesday, October 22, 2003

By Rootsie

Last night on TV I saw an advert for Deepak Chopra's 'spiritual healing center' in La Jolla California. It showed a bunch of white folks doing Tai ch'i in the beautiful green surroundings. Of course anything green in Southern California is the result of irrigation, which is draining the Colorado River, but those tranquil well-fed people with their spa and meditation retreat (and an 18-hole golf course for good measure) didn't have to worry about that. I'm sure the place provided countless modalities for self-diagnosis.

Deepak Chopra is the guru of 'spiritual development' in the US, a millionaire from his best-selling books for anxious Americans. When you are American, and your country is carving up the world like a Christmas ham, there are so many things to be anxious about: the terrorists, money, your colon, environmental toxins... and then there is the conscience, though ones are not aware of it, intent as they are upon 'self-healing' and 'self-actualization.' Maybe if they meditate long enough or ingest the right substances that annoying guilt and unease will go away and they will be truly happy, and gain true spiritual enlightenment...despite the fact that they benefit DIRECTLY from a system that murders millions for the privileges of a few.

I can think of no better example right now of the importance of HISTORY. "There is very little facts that are independent from my self.' Ones like Deepak Chopra who teaches Westerners that 'inner peace' is possible without an engagement with history and sincere efforts (NOT charity!) to dismantle their privilege are either fools or con men. Those people in their pleasure-palace are going for a quick-fix that does not exist. If history teaches us anything, it is that we and everything exists in relation. Once we activate our ancestral knowledge, we work simultaneously on all the 'levels.'

Ones who truly want to develop will stay very close to history, to their own personal history and to our shared human history. We don't cure our little diseases first before we engage with the world. We engage the great healing force, which exists in the Universe, and then all of our actions on behalf of ourselves and the world carry true power, and only then. 

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