Credible or not?
I’m still impacted by the interview that Stephen Cook and I had with Geoff West on his most recent special edition of Cosmic Vision News in which we discussed the probabilities of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad having transformed and his recent U.N. speech being a sign of it. I feel the need to comment further, if you’d permit me.
We face a very onerous task, I believe, and one that will only get more onerous as we hurtle toward the end of time as we know it (those who ascend into the continuum of the Fifth Dimension). It’s onerous from several different vantage points.
As Geoff pointed out, many statespeople are in containment. They will alter their direction. We will be required to honor that alteration and honoring it will definitely spark controversy among those who know nothing about containment.
There’ll be many people who’ve been brutalized by these same leaders and they may feel as if we’ve abandoned them. And they won’t understand what we’re trying to do. The only thing we may be able to do to assist them may just be to listen to them.
I’m not trying to harp on my experiences as a refugee adjudicator but I can’t avoid mentioning them because they are the bedrock of where I’m coming from with all this. I’ve listened to people whose treatment at the hands of certain regimes I can’t even talk about here. It would disgust you.
Listening to some of their accounts traumatized the Members of the Refugee Board who had to listen. I know two accounts traumatized me and I had to seek counselling to get over the effects of them. I’m still crying as I write this, thinking how cruel we people can be to each other. And I cannot bring myself to say what they said.
It isn’t my intention to rehearse what goes on in Evin Prison to a woman, say, who simply has coffee with a man she was not married to. It was often brutal and would have meant the end of whatever shreds of normalcy she may have had in her often-oppressed life.
But I am willing to say that, as late as five years ago, when I sat on claims, there was no justice in Iran, no freedom, no security. And Iranians inside the country and Iranians who had fled the country depended on us to speak out for them and not to be taken in by the regime’s attempts to hide facts or misrepresent themselves.
Mr. Ahmadinejad reminded his audience of the wonderful poets and spiritual leaders that have come out of Iran or Persia. And there have been many and they have been sublime. But if they were alive today, he might very well have put them in Evin Prison as well. They would have been a threat to his regime.
It’s no reflection on him, I think, that Iran has had great poets and mystics. And I don’t want to be lulled into complacency by his references to them.
But that isn’t why I write today. I write because of the extreme delicacy that’s needed to approach all sides of a discussion of these matters. I have no desire to abandon Iranians who’ve suffered and continue to suffer. But I also have no desire to be loose in my discussion of it and tar other people or religions in discussing these matters.
For instance, what Mr. Ahmadinejad does in Iran is not a reflection on Islam. Even what the mullahs or theocracy in Iran do is not a reflection on Islam. And it is so easy to slide from commenting on the “Islamic Republic of Iran” to appear to be saying something about world Islam. But that would be a gross error.
I don’t regard the Islamic officials who lead the Iranian regime … I can’t bring myself to say government … even if they claim to be representing their religion or interpreting Sharia law as being representative of Islam. Any more than I regard Christians who hate as being representative of Christianity. Or Hindus who riot against Muslims. And so on.
By the same token, when we oppose “Zionism,” I think we need to be careful not to tar the people of Israel with that brush either. Or to assume that the population of any country that has an oppressive regime are to blame for their silence.
A Falun-Gong practitioner in China who criticized the Chinese regime could expect to die a horrible death in prison. And their body would even then not be allowed to rest in peace. But let me not go there. Which one of us would speak out under these circumstances?
Seeing things in black and white will never be more of an impediment than it is now, as things change terrifically and not all the changes can be detected or measured or even known. It’s a finer and finer line that we walk as we approach higher and higher levels of consciousness.
It’s going to be more challenging for us than anything has ever been to arrive at hopefully-accurate assessments while everything is in flux and our sense of things refines. The really advisable short-cut, I think, is to follow the advice of the masters who are addressing us daily and asking us to refrain from judging.
But at the same time, we also have to decide and act and to do so realistically. We have to be non-judgmental but not blind.
Well, I’ll be darned. That’s just what a refugee adjudicator has to do. Another insight into why I was probably guided to do that work. Thank you to my guides.
A refugee adjudicator had to be difficult to snow but constantly on the alert for the genuine article and open to hearing the case newly. They had to be a closed door to the fabricator and the persecutor (who also may try to enter the country) but an open door to the truthful and the persecuted.
In fact, so fastidious is Canadian refugee law that adjudicators had to be willing to accept that in some countries lying is a common practice. Adjudicators had to be willing to set the lies aside and ask themselves: is there a credible remainder of truth upon which to base a positive decision? I don’t know if one can get how fair that proviso is and how far that body of law is willing to go to get it right.
Adjudicators had to be willing to admit that their initial assessment was wrong if faced with testimony or evidence that was convincing. They couldn’t go forward with a false initial estimation after it was shown to be false. There couldn’t be an attempt to hide or deny or justify in the face of compelling proof. That’s what goes on in oppressive regimes and cannot go on here.
So we’re entering a time when we need to be non-judgmental but still cautious, awake but not polarized, closed to abuse but open to plights, with a very, very fine-tuned antenna. And we need to see our own shortcomings, be willing to own them, and to make amends for any damage we did to the innocent.
I remember one claimant who sent me a note after he was found to be non-credible in my hearing room. He acknowledged that he had made his story up and congratulated me for being able to see through it and yet not be disrespectful to him in my decision. He said he had learned something from that and wished me well.
It’s that kind of fine dance that we’ll be asked to do over the few remaining months of this year. And as lightworkers, I think, we need to be willing to deliver on the task expected of us. Tough task but necessary … no, vital.