meditates
against war
Using mind over matter
to avert conflict in Iraq
By Josh Gohlke
STAFF WRITER
Participants in a peace vigil meditating to avert war with Iraq.
"The reason why there is war is that people are afraid of love,"
one man said at the Ramsey gathering.
RAMSEY
- The people at the alternative-oriented Lightworkers Center seemed to sense
that it would be difficult to avert a war with Iraq. To practice for the task,
they tried bending spoons with their minds.
“This
is a whole course in itself,” the center’s Karen Noe said of the time-honored
art of mentally manipulating silverware. “And we’re trying to do it in five
minutes.”
Noe,
a spiritual counselor and medium, joined 10 others in a softly lit, incense-perfumed
suite at a Ramsey office building Sunday for the spoon-bending primer, which
preceded a noontime meditation on peace. While doubts about the pending war may
run as mainstream as some members of Congress and much of the U.N. Security
Council, this group had settled on a decidedly unconventional means of
expressing opposition.
Accompanied
by the sounds of trickling water from a small fountain and ambient New Age
music from a clock radio - as well as, briefly and more disruptively, a cacophonous
floor waxer in the hallway - the meditation was meant to coincide with similar
gatherings in Jerusalem, Sacramento, Calif., and elsewhere.
Dubbed
“the Great Experiment III,” the event was organized by James Twyman, a Joshua
Tree, Calif., musician known to followers as a “peace troubadour.”
The
links between peace in the Persian Gulf and spoon bending - popularized by
famous Johnny Carson guest Uri Geller - may seem tenuous. But Twyman and his
local sympathizers see the two challenges as akin.
Offering
Internet lessons in spoon
In a later letter, Twyman reported some students had been more successful than others, but noted that a “higher purpose” was the point.
Likewise, Noe and Mary Beth Del Balzo, a Lightworkers hypnotherapist, stressed that, for now, spoon bending would serve mainly as a useful metaphor. Whether the target was stainless steel or smart bombs, the key to metaphysically influencing the external world was confidence, they said.
"Your're not bending the spoon; you’re knowing that it’s happening,” said Noe, an amiable blond woman who wore a bright orange shirt and noted that she has seen angels. “It’s a difference between begging for peace and knowing that peace is happening.”
Those who sat in the small circle of chairs - mostly seekers of alternative therapies provided by the Lightworkers Center - had a range of experiences. Susan Beatini of Park Ridge, who lost her husband in the World Trade Center attack, admitted that her lingering anger makes peaceful feelings elusive.
George Soroka of Haworth, a pastor and sometime third-party political candidate, was the only one who did not sit still during the meditation (he shook his head rapidly from side to side).
“If everyone could get beyond thinking, they would feel that peace is there,” said Soroka, who added that he has survived two lightning strikes. “The reason why there is war is that people are afraid of love.”
The meditation was followed by the recitation of a dozen “peace prayers” from different religions, both major (Islam) and less well-known (Zoroastrianism).
Events elsewhere make it difficult to tell whether the experiment will succeed. In Baghdad a couple of hours before the vigil, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said further inspections would be preferable to “some other solution,” namely a U.S.-led military strike. At the same time in West Virginia, President Bush said, “We will disarm Saddam Hussein if he will not disarm himself.”
In Ramsey, meanwhile, Noe was sure of her methods.
“We’re doing this,” she said, “because we believe that, just as two or three people can create war, a mass consciousness can create peace.”
