Unforgettable Love Story

Both crime and punishment are insane. To believe that you will get what you want by taking it from another, to believe that doing harm to another will serve you in some way, both are insane ideas. Anyone who is observing life clearly understands the insanity behind either approach to life. One popular definition of insanity states that to continue doing the same thing and expecting different results is insane. And it is. There is a feeling of frustration that goes along with insanity, which often causes anger and violence, or at least the thoughts to commit violent acts. Insanity is a lack of understanding of how life works, which plays out in the actions of the insane person. An insane person thinks or does certain things which give them results they do not want.

Consider the idea of punishing someone as our society does, locking them up in jail or prison for a long period of time. This is inhumane, this is torture, and in most cases patently unfair. The punishment is usually far more severe than the criminal act. The reason the severity seems necessary, is because punishment is such a poor way to get someone to change their behaviors, that we must go to great extremes for it to have any effect at all.

Punishment does harm to the individual who is already insane. If they committed a true crime, they are by definition insane. How will torturing someone like this alleviate their insanity? How do we expect their behavior to improve once released? What new lessons will that person have learned? In prison as they currently are, they will have become more skilled criminals. Locked up with others whose life skills consist of harming others, what else is there to learn? By being abused and neglected by those who watch over the prisoners what life lessons are learned?

And we can see the results if we open our eyes and observe. Most criminals go right out and commit another crime in order to be locked up once again. Do you know the reason? Not because they are looking for a free ride…a place to sleep and food, but because they feel safer and less judged amongst those of their own kind as opposed to the angry judgmental society that would do such a horrific thing to them in the first place.

Certainly there are those who are just broken by the experience, and those who leave prison and never commit another crime. Yet are they productive members of society, or just too frightened to fully participate anymore? I am confident that if we observe the results of our “justice” system we will find that in most cases (probably higher than 90%) it is failing miserably. And that is pure insanity. It says that as a society WE ARE INSANE!

Is there another way to protect the lives and properties of the people of our society? Most definitely there is, and the time has come for us to develop this system. Our goal should be to ensure the safety and well being of all people, even the insane criminals. Our goal should be to ensure that every citizen of society understands the proper use of their thoughts and actions in gaining the life experiences and objects that they desire. The actions we take to accomplish our goals should bear fruit. Our actions should deliver what it is we are seeking or we should adapt and evolve until we do accomplish our goals.

A Possible Solution

First we must do away with the idea of punishment. This is a must. There are all sorts of problems with punishment, the greatest being that it leads to dishonesty. And without truth, what can be accomplished? Without truth, we are dead in the water. We have nowhere to go when truth is absent. When there is no fear of punishment the truth should be much easier to discover. Why lie when you don’t have to?

Those who insist on punishment should fall into the same category as the perpetrator of the “crime”, insane, and as such both parties require treatment for their mental illness.

Developing new habits in the person who commits a crime should be our primary goal. ALL people operate out of habit most of the time. Rarely do people consciously choose their actions, and those that do are usually in the category of enlightened beings rather than criminals. You could argue that when a person steals an object, or does harm to another person, that they have consciously chosen to do that. But then I would argue that you really don’t understand people and life very well and thus you are not fit to be in a place of trying to solve this problem. Even those actions of theft and harm come from prior training. Habits of thinking like, “I can get what I want by stealing it, I can force that person to do my bidding by harming them or threatening them with harm,” are the real cause of their actions.

So we need to retrain people. Now it would be much easier, much more economically efficient, and much more humane if we actually offered this training from the get go. We should be doing a better job of training our children so that they don’t grow up to be criminals. We all know how horrible grade school and even high school years can be, with all of the bulling that goes on. This is the start of crime and it should be nipped in the bud.

But we still have to deal with an existing, predominantly insane society. And to do this we will need to provide retraining for a lot of adults with pre-existing insane ideas about life. People have to want to change in order to change. In the beginning we may need to keep the ultimate threat of punishment alive. The criminal would be given a choice, to participate in retraining, or have their freedoms severely restricted. They would be locked up in a reasonably comfortable prison cell, better than our current systems, and given good healthy food and good medical care. The only radio, TV, or reading material they would be allowed would contain positive, life affirming messages that in some way gave them a life skill that would improve their mental condition. Movies that promote violence and vengeance like, “The Terminator” and “Die Hard” would be strictly forbidden.

The retraining option should treat offenders with as much respect and dignity as possible. They should work one on one with guidance counselors to establish new skills and habits. Those criminals who have been successfully retrained would be prime candidates to assist newly discovered criminals in their retraining. Look at the good works that programs like Alcoholics Anonymous does. Reformed alcoholics, those with a real understanding of both sides of the problem, are helping those who are still struggling with their problem to transform.

Certainly there are more details that need to be fleshed out. But if we try we can do this. There is enough awareness in the world, there are enough people with love and compassion and an enlightened understanding of Life to solve this problem. The biggest problem we face is that the majority of people on the planet still don’t understand Life and are not paying attention, and not observing what is working and what is not. They are organized, they are active, and they are insanely working to perpetuate the problem. Those of us with awareness must become organized and must set about to solve this problem as well as all of the other problems that plague our world today.

How can we do that? Right now we have no system for problem solving. We need one. I have made a proposal for a system that will work in my blog titled International World Government. It contains something I call a World Solutions Database and a computerized system to facilitate working out these solutions with people who are intelligent and offering ideas that will work. (We need to work these issues out for all of the world, not just America.) I suggest you read that blog too. I fully intend to develop that system once I have the financial resources to do so…unless someone beats me to it…and that is fine with me since I already have a great deal of work on my plate.

We don’t need government approval to begin. We can solve some of the world’s problems in spite of the idiots who are currently running the world. And when we do our successes will speak for themselves and attract others to join us.

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable: A Love and Spiritual Growth Story
Also on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com…including awesome book reviews!

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Being able to reprogram ourselves is a very important skill to have. If you can reprogram yourself then you can choose who you want to be and set out to make it so. It is particularly useful when you discover some automatic behavior; either a thought or action, that is causing you to suffer.

Later I will share a fantastic story of deliberate and difficult inner change that I underwent which had a dramatic and noticeable effect in the outer world. It looks very much like a miracle. But first let’s talk about the basics.

Old behaviors, ones that go way back, too many people think they cannot change them. This is just not so! How is it that you came to have the programming that you have? Unfortunately most people don’t know, and worse they blame it on outside circumstances.

Be Selective About Your Entertainment

Certainly the outside world has done its share to program you. News, movies, magazines, books, advertising, other people have had a very strong influence on your life. This is one of the reasons it is so very important to be selective about what and who you give your focus to, especially early in your reprogramming efforts. You need to ask yourself, “When I focus on this TV program, when I listen to this person speak, do I feel good? Do I feel empowered, light hearted, happy, loving?” If not I suggest you turn your focus towards something that does feel good, which in effect will turn you away from them, at least until you have successfully reprogrammed your mind.

Repetition and is the key to reprogramming. If you study hypnosis, or marketing which involves hypnosis, you will find that repetition is a key element behind their success. It takes time and deliberate conscious effort to reprogram yourself. But the results are worth the effort.

Any skill we wish to develop requires repetition, or practice, for it to become a habit or automatic. The first few times you rode a bike you fell down frequently, but if you continued riding, falling down became such a rare thing that years could go by between falls.

I learned to roller-skate on the old fashioned 4 wheel skates. I had an aggressive style and skating technique, which relied heavily on stopping via the toe stops. When I changed to rollerblades I automatically tried to stop on the non-existent toe stops and fell on my face, twice. After that I decided I had to reprogram my body so that it would respond correctly to this new toy. Even though I could skate aggressively, and with style, I had to slow myself down and teach my body a new way of stopping. It took patience but within about 4 weeks time I was skating like crazy as if I had been on rollerblades for years and I wasn’t falling.

Changing our psyche is a very similar process. Here are some of the key steps or elements involved:

* Slow Down. While the changes are in progress we need to slow down and change our expectations of life and of ourselves. We will make mistakes, love yourself anyway. You need to be okay with mistakes that have already been made, but then be firm and stick with your reprogramming efforts.

*Feel Your Feelings. We need to check in frequently to make sure we are still on track. Something that felt good at one time may not feel good at another time. We need to feel, and notice when something does not feel good and then notice our focus, notice our thoughts. What are we thinking, what are we feeling, how do they relate? Where is our focus? We need to notice what our automatic reaction is and become aware of the programming that is to be changed.

*Meditation and Contemplation. Is meditation a habit for you? It really is necessary in some form or another. Is it a joy for you? It can be and will be if you are doing it correctly. It should be as important in your day as eating, sleeping, bathing and exercising (if you are leaving one of those items out put it back in!) You need to be so skilled at meditation that you can sit down in a moment of deep suffering and bring yourself back into balance, back to peace. This requires practice, repetitive, ongoing, daily practice. If you say you don’t have time for meditation then what you are really saying is that you don’t have time to have a good life.

*Visualizations. We need to visualize the way we want to be and the way we want life to be. We need to script our response to life for specific situations that come up and tie it to the triggering events. I give an example of doing this in the story below. This takes only 30 seconds to 2 minutes to do but should be repeated as often as you can until the change registers in your response. Your scripted response should be loving, it should feel good to contemplate it.

*Stop Negative Thinking. During your visualization time, if negative thoughts occur stop them and counter them. You need to become skilled at finding new ways to view the situation such that you feel better about it and can respond from a loving place. Practicing this when you feel good will make it easier to do when you feel bad.

*RESULTS. When you get results, you need to remember them, re-live them, use them to re-inspire yourself in the future when you are feeling blue and when you feel like you are not making any progress.

Continued in Reprogramming Anger…

Love and Blessings,
Michael Skowronski
Author of Unforgettable - A Love and Spiritual Growth Story

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