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The Greatest Crisis in the World

In the old reality progress comes from technology. In the new reality progress comes from exploring the untapped potential of consciousness. In the old reality disease is a constant threat. In the new reality individuals are learning that they can become healers. In the old reality terrorism holds populations in fear. In the new reality a majority of people have given up the outworn tactics of war and violence.
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The following remarks were written for a conference of news people but were judged as too “harsh” or “unfair” to the media. I thought it would be interesting to see how readers -- and fellow bloggers on the Huffington Post -- respond to the same ideas.

On a day-to-day basis those of us who don’t work for a news organization imagine that a reporter’s job must be fascinating because he (or she) is constantly running after the future. The evening news isn’t just a string of random events. The future is a mystery, and by gathering bits and pieces of it reporters are on the front line of unfolding the mystery. A new reality is always on the horizon of our television screens.

But what if the exact opposite is happening? I often feel that the evening news simply repeats an old reality. Headlines emerge as recycled versions of the same attention-grabbing crises:

Natural disaster strikes Third World country. Panic and chaos ensure.

New disease breaks out in Africa or Asia.

Peace talks break down in the Middle East.

Rebel forces approach the capital in heavy fighting.

These stories, and dozens more like them, are the prototypes of what is considered news. It would be legitimate to ask in what way they could be called news at all. Nothing becomes real until we perceive it. What I perceive on cable news is that the real crisis that should be covered -- the greatest crisis in the world, in fact -- is the crisis of perception.

The current perception I get from the evening news is that the world is dominated by human failure, crime, catastrophe, corruption, and tragedy. We are all tuning in to see how the human mind is evolving, but the media keeps hammering home the opposite, that the human mind is mired in darkness and folly. This schism gives rise to stark contrasts.

In the old reality progress comes from technology. In the new reality progress comes from exploring the untapped potential of consciousness.

In the old reality disease is a constant threat. In the new reality individuals are learning that they can become healers.

In the old reality terrorism holds populations in fear. In the new reality a majority of people have given up the outworn tactics of war and violence.

By constantly harping on the old reality as fact and the new as fanciful, eccentric or implausible, the media is using its massive power to fuel the crisis of perception. For example, which of the following stories seems more real to you, more deserving to be called news?

A. Muslims riot around the world after allegations that the Koran was flushed down a toilet in Guantanamo.

B. Spiritual groups hold a vigil at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem that leads to a sharp decline in Middle East violence.

I’m almost certain that at any news organization the first is big news, the second is New Age whimsy. What about the following example?

A. Vioxx is withdrawn from the market on fears that it promotes heart attacks in the elderly.

B. A man with HIV goes into remission through prayer and meditation.

Again, the first is hard news, the second is dubious, false, or a strange anomaly. On the basis of this prejudice against the new reality, the media endlessly trumpets the next new cancer drug, despite the fact that cancer rates have stubbornly remained unchanged for decades, while treating as quasi-hoaxes thousands of spontaneous remissions from cancer that are well documented in medical literature. Yet isn’t the real issue something that Buddhists have known for centuries: it is an illusion to see mind and body as separate?

Instead of encouraging expansion of awareness, the media treats as news stale medieval religious views that lock us in intolerance. Isn’t the real issue another Buddhist insight: My enemy is as fully human as myself?

It is in the field of unseen and even bizarre phenomena that quantum physics has totally altered the world, and I would offer that by extending the same discoveries to human awareness, you will find the real future, the real news. There are going to be Einsteins of consciousness, and they will force the status quo to change. Journalists need to keep abreast of human potential as a fresh, ever-evolving picture. Ask yourself,

Why do more people in the U.S. turn to alternative medicine than established M.D.s?

Why are global communities forming to meditate on a mass scale?

Why do millions of people tell the Gallup poll that they have had paranormal experiences such as communicating with the dead?

Not because they are foolish or superstitious. Rather, the official version of reality is fraying around the edges, and millions of people have chosen to opt out of the official version of truth. While the news continues to recycle the past, the future is gathering strength far away from the glare of publicity, which is where reality has always been born.

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