POVERTY

By Cal Garrison

Drunvalo feels that poverty is now the number one problem in the world. According to him planetary healing will not occur until we heal poverty. For that reason, what seems to be none of our concern has become our problem too. Cal Garrison's article on poverty addresses every aspect of the issue and what it means for those of us who understand what can be done from the Heart.

Early Impressions

My earliest exposure to abject poverty came to me through one of my first-grade classmates, Clifford Chalk. Clifford lived in an old Buick, along with his mother, his father, and his three brothers down at the end of an old dirt road, far enough away from the center of things to be invisible to the rest of the residents in the small New Hampshire town where I grew up. No one ever saw where the Chalks lived or how they lived. They were a hot topic for the local gossips — but no one knew them or wanted to have anything to do with them. As far as that goes, they might as well have had leprosy.

My daily chores included walking to the general store for bread, or whatever my mother needed. This errand always involved waiting in line. Some days I'd stand quietly next to the counter and eavesdrop on the conversations the adults engaged in. Every now and then, when Mrs. Chalk came into the store, her arrival would call an abrupt halt to the banter — for a few moments at least, until the silence turned to whispers about her plight. It was from these hushed exchanges that I learned all about the Chalk family and how they came to be so destitute.

While the customers discussed her husband's alcohol problem and what things were like before the family moved into the Buick, my eyes would follow Mrs. Chalk as she moved from aisle to aisle. As hurtful as it was, the gossip didn't appear to affect her — and if it did, she was too proud to let it show. It wasn't until I got older that I came to know how important pride is to a person who has nothing. It's the one thing you're allowed to keep and the last thing to go when there's nothing material to support you. Hanging on to your pride keeps you from sinking to the depths of total despair.

My classmate Clifford was Mrs. Chalk's youngest son. I sat next to him all through the first grade. Clifford never washed. He never changed his clothes either. The odors that wafted from his body were a mixture of kerosene, axle grease, and urine. This perfume, along with his borderline IQ made him an outcast at Hancock Elementary. Most of Clifford's time at school was spent doing penance in the dunce chair at the back of the room — not because he was bad, but because he reminded the teacher of where she had come from — and she hated him for it.

Underneath his rags and his stench he seemed like a sweet boy — but Clifford had never been taught any manners, and he didn't know how to act around the rest of the kids. At recess he'd chase everyone around and if he caught you he wouldn't let go. Looking back now I can see that he had no other way to get anyone to notice him — but at the time, he seemed like a monster and his behavior terrified me.

His older brother Francis was even more frightening. Sometimes the teacher would choose me to be the one to take a note upstairs to the principal. Every time this happened I'd have to steel my self for the journey — because it meant that I would have to pass by Francis Chalk. Francis was always sitting in a chair outside the principal's office. Whenever I'd walk by him, he'd make strange faces and noises before he's try to grab me. He wasn't like the other kids and neither was Clifford. Nothing about the Chalks was normal. They lived in a different world, a mysterious shadow world, where filth and destitution altered everything about them.

Later on, when my family moved to Peterborough, I met more poor kids. We'd have to take the bus to school and it gave me the opportunity to actually see where they lived. Theresa Tatro lived in a tarpaper shack on the old Hancock Road. Her house was so small I couldn't figure out how all of the Tatros, there were seven of them, fit inside it. Whenever the Tatros would file onto the bus the rest of the kids would hold their noses.

Theresa looked like a wild animal. Her hair was never combed and her dress always looked like it needed to be washed. She and I were the same age and we sat next to each other from the second grade through the fourth. Our proximity to each other made us friends. I liked Theresa and she liked me, but the two of us knew somehow that our worlds could never cross outside of school. Every day her lunch bag contained one mayonnaise sandwich made with cheap white bread. I remember being jealous of Theresa and her white bread because my mother wouldn't allow me to eat anything but whole wheat. At the time I was too young to realize how lucky I was to have that choice.

My Take on It

As far as being poor my self is concerned, yes I have been poor — but in my case it was different. I made some choices in my 27th year that reduced me to it, but I wasn't raised in poverty and my consciousness had never been infected by what having nothing can do to the Spirit over a long period of time. I spent 15 years paying off a few Karmic debts on the wrong side of the tracks so I know a little about it — and this is what I know:

Not having anything numbs you. It separates you from your self and from life to the point where you don't feel connected to anything. The world contracts and your options drop down to zero. I don't care what the people who tell you to 'pull your self up by the bootstraps' think about it because anyone who says that hasn't been there — and if they have, they weren't taking notes because one of the few blessings poverty loans the Spirit is compassion. The truth is, you can't do anything when you're really poor except pray and keep asking God to show you the way out. Unfortunately, most poor people are too numb to pray.

What We Don't Want to See

In this country we are two-faced when it comes to poverty. On one hand we shun it and at the same time we romanticize it. No one I know, including my self, would dream of inviting the white trash down the road, or the homeless guy under the bridge, over for dinner. But every Country Western song ever written makes it sound like living in squalor and ignorance is something to be proud of. What's up with that? If the people in Nashville are telling the truth, how come the rest of us have so much disdain for the Mrs. Chalks of the world? No street person I have ever seen bears the slightest resemblance to the carefree 'King of the Road' — and as far as being proud goes, all of them look like their pride went down the tubes ages ago.

Popular literature plays the same trick. Books like 'The Grapes of Wrath' idealize poverty in a way that makes it seem as if there's something spiritually ennobling about it. I've had a taste of the grapes of wrath and believe me, there's nothing spiritual or noble about being poor — unless you equate the two with humiliation. It confuses me that we shun anything that smacks of poverty in real life but find it so easy to sentimentalize and euphemize it intellectually. Could it be that we can't bring ourselves to see it in its raw state and have to sugar coat our perceptions in order to look at it at all?

The truth about poverty is, it frightens us to death. It frightens us more than death because it would be easier to die than to have to live that way. Poverty reminds us that everything we have and all of who we think we are could be taken away in a split second. No matter how secure our money and possessions make us feel, all of us know on some subliminal level that those things are ephemeral. When we see a street person and say to our selves, 'there but for the grace of God go I' some part of our being is totally aware that we are only a hair's breadth away from being in the same boat. And if in pitying those people we hold the assumption that God has abandoned them, what we understand just as well is that He/She could abandon us too.

Beyond the abandonment piece, I am pretty sure that the real reason we shun the poor and do everything we can to erase the picture they present us with has to do with the doubt we hold about how strong our faith is. No one is really certain that they have enough faith in God to survive any similar ordeal. Taken one step further, our truer and more ultimate fear could be rooted in the idea that — God may not even exist. The un-Godly evils that attend poverty and homelessness seem to deny His/Her existence altogether — and it is this that we don't want to see when we turn our eyes and look away from a homeless person.

Third World Poverty

Poverty in this country is nothing compared to third-world poverty. The First Nation people in the US have it almost as bad but not quite so horrible. I've never been to Africa, or South America, or India, or China but I have been to Mexico. Seeing the destitution in Mexico City was more than I could handle. It's hard to imagine that it could be any worse. The Chalks and the Tatros were living on easy street compared to the people in Rwanda or Calcutta. I have a feeling going to any place where war and famine and disease have taken the issue past the point of comprehension would be like taking a trip to Hell. If it is inconceivable that any human being would have to live in an un-Godly nightmare 24 hours a day, with no respite and not one glimmer of hope that they might wake up and have it be different, think about this; right now there are over 2 billion people on this planet who are having that nightmare.

Poverty and Consciousness

What does this say about our consciousness? If everything 'out there' reflects our consciousness, is the worldwide poverty epidemic an indication that all of us are totally out of touch with God? This idea may be hard to accept, especially for those of us who are spiritually inclined. But given what we know, the thought has to be considered. If our collective connection to Spirit has in fact been severed, the following offers a partial explanation for it:

"In other words, the grounding of the life-force in the lowest chakra has to be secure, open to the energies of the Earth, before the radiance of the Spirit can take up residence." (The Ravaged Bridegroom — by Marion Woodman — p. 40)

At the energetic level poverty is quite clearly a survival issue, one that is directly related to the Root Chakra. For at least two billion people that chakra has been put out of commission by whatever they have been forced to endure. How can Spirit 'take up residence' in a vessel that no longer has any means by which to ground that radiance securely into the Earth? The separation that occurs between the impoverished and the Divine appears to be an inevitability caused by survival issues that are to overpowering to process. And when one third of the human population has been cut off in this way, it isn't just their problem. For a number of reasons, it becomes ours too.

Those of us who ascribe to the belief that the whole planet is in the process of Ascension can't ignore the fact that billions of our brothers and sisters have been rendered incapable of holding space for the Divine. Higher consciousness has to reach critical mass before Ascension can occur. If at this point, over two billion spirits can no longer lay claim to their birthright, and are no longer able to ground Spirit here in the physical, Ascension appears to be out of the question. No matter how much we might wish it were otherwise, the bottom line is this; whatever we do to heal ourselves, and anything we might wish to do to heal the planet, will not serve any purpose whatsoever until we figure out how to heal every aspect of poverty.

Poverty of the Spirit

The physical poverty that we see all around us is just an outer manifestation of our collective poverty of Spirit — and it isn't only the poor who are at risk when it comes to catching that disease. Look around. How many people do you know who have everything a person could possibly want? Who among them appears to be fulfilled by it, or any closer to God because of it? Mother Theresa once said:

"I find the rich much poorer. Sometimes they are more lonely inside. They are never satisfied. They always need something more. I don't say all of them are like that. Everybody is not the same. But I find that kind of poverty harder to remove. The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." (Mother Theresa — from and interview with Time Magazine)

One-third of the Earth's population may be starving and homeless but according to the woman who dedicated her life to the poor the rest of humanity is in worse shape. Money, power, fame, position, and even education do not exempt anyone from poverty of the Spirit. Material things may loan us some measure of safety and joy, but nothing we own is real or permanent — and none of it is worth anything compared to the deep sense of peace in the Heart and the inner contentment that fills the person who has found the pearl of great price that lies within.

There's so much about the way we lives that makes it seem as if having more is the answer. That illusion is so beguiling we get sucked in by it and wind up measuring our worth and others' worth in material terms. We acquire wealth, knowledge, or whatever it is we are wanting. We stack it up and hoard it believing that when we have enough we'll feel safe. This materialism gives birth to greed, and greed spawns every other evil in the world. Poverty of the Spirit lies hidden underneath all of them, sleeping at the root of all evil.

Mother Theresa was right. That kind of want is harder to cure because, unlike its physical counterpart, poverty of the Spirit is always masked by achievement, fame, fortune, position, and worldly goods. An all-pervasive, invisible disease it infects the Spirit by ignoring it or denying it altogether. This brand of poverty is everywhere. And it seems as if it is the more serious epidemic because it knows no boundaries — all of us are susceptible to it. If we want to heal things here, we have to find a way to heal that form of destitution as well.

What Can We Do?

This work we do from within is no longer a private affair. It never was to begin with but none of us knew when we set out on the spiritual path exactly where it would lead us. The expansion of consciousness begins when we open up to the idea that we are all connected to each other and to something at the Source. When we get further along in our development the concept of connection can't remain theoretical — it has to be felt. And there also has to be something in us that knows that nothing we wish for our selves will meet its highest good unless we enfold everyone else in that vision.

When we go into our Hearts, what do we wish for? We have our own reasons for maintaining that connection but perhaps they need to be broadened to include not just what's good for us, but what's good for all mankind, and all of life. If we go there to heal some aspect of our own lives that isn't working could it be that our focus is too narrow? Cleaning up our private mess is necessary for sure — but in our efforts to 'get right with God' are we hoarding light, the same way some people hoard money and possessions? There's too much out there to remind us how far away we are from oneness to delude our selves into thinking that our personal enlightenment is the only thing that matters. If what we seek to create when we're in the Heart Chamber does not include all of life in the equation, our prayers will only serve us — and serving only our selves benefits no one.

Those of us who feel connected to something higher can't keep the secrets of the Heart to ourselves anymore. So now, when we ask the Creator to fill us with more light and thereby allow us to be a channel for whatever that light contains, could we wish that all humanity, both the rich and the poor, be blessed in the same way? Could we feel that light pouring into everyone simultaneously and see every living thing grounding its radiance into the Earth? What if, when we go to that place of inner safety we imagine that all of life is there with us, sheltered, and able to feel as safe and protected and loved as we do in our moments of oneness? Could we do for others what they don't know how to do, or can no longer do for them selves?

"You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing." Mother Theresa — from and interview with Time Magazine.

Drunvalo has made it very clear that the number one problem in the world is poverty. He feels that no planetary healing can occur until we solve every aspect of that problem. All of us can't be Mother Theresa. It may have been her purpose to work in the trenches and face the darker horrors of want and destitution, but everyone has a different row to hoe. If what lies at the root of this awful epidemic is in fact poverty of the Spirit, we may be able to do more about it from within.

From the Heart all things are possible. Those of us who are fortunate enough to know this need to think about sharing that space and the safety and light we find there with everyone now. If we include all of mankind in every wish that we form for our selves, through our inherent connectedness whatever we imagine will flow out and touch the consciousness of all who are bereft in body and in Spirit. Are we generous enough and big enough to do this? I hope so — because poverty is our problem too — and nothing we yearn for will come to pass if we don't do what we can to heal it.

Poverty Statistics

1. Half the world — nearly 3 billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.

2. Less than one percent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child in school by the year 2000 and yet, it didn't happen. (It still hasn't happened)

3. 1.7 million children will die this year because world governments have failed to address the poverty crisis.

4. According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day because of poverty.

5. The combined wealth of the worlds' 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999. At that time the combined wealth of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries was $146 billion.

6. 12% of the worlds' population uses 85% of its water, and these 12% do not live in the Third World.

7. One out of every two children on the planet lives in poverty.

8. People in the US spend $780 billion a year on Defense, $8 billion a year on cosmetics, and $6 billion a year on education. With the exception of what we spend on education, all those numbers have increased in the last 5 years.

9. 1 billion children live in poverty. 640 million live without adequate shelter. 400 million have no access to safe water. 270 million have no access to healthcare. In 2003, 10.6 million children died before they reached the age of 5.

10. The Gross Domestic Product of the poorest 48 nations (a quarter of the worlds' countries) is less than the combined wealth of the worlds' three richest people.

For more chilling poverty statistics go to www.globalissues.org

About Cal Garrison

Cal is a writer with four books to her credit. ‘The Old Girls’ Book of Spells’, ‘The Old Girls’ Book of Dreams’, and her latest book, ‘Witch On the Go’ were published by RedWheel/Weiser Press and are available in bookstores or on Amazon.com. In addition to her own work, she also writes for Slim Spurling. Her first book with Slim, ‘Slim Spurling’s Universe’ is being followed up by their second book together which, with any luck, will be out in 2008—2009.

A professional astrologer with 35 years experience Cal has cast over 6000 charts and is one of the best in her field. She is also an expert on the Tarot. When she’s not running the Spirit of Ma'at office, or working on her books, Cal spends her time doing in depth astrology and tarot readings for people all over the country.