The remark spurring this post was uttered in Sante Fe, New Mexico, in the state capitol building during a committee meeting. The remark was unleashed in the middle of a ‘heated exchange’. The remark was racist and demeaning. It took two days for an apology to be arrive, and then in the form of a letter. The letter may be considered a veiled attempt to not apologize. Part of the apology reads, “I respect all elected officials and again I would say I am sorry…”  The apology per my reading of it is for the verbiage used, not for the attitude and feelings behind it, nor for the unidentified person it was directed at.

In my opinion this person has held this belief for some time. If they never join in interaction with another with respect to race, the offending comment would never have been thought, let alone verbalized. Remarks of this type are normally kept under lock and key by people holding this belief. These types comments are not meant for general public consumption by the person holding them.

People holding beliefs of this kind allow them to simmer under the surface. This belief is a tainted lens of the ego which defines ones world by race. They view interaction not through the eyes of one human being looking at another, but through a value set which should hold no importance.

These beliefs are uttered by their holders only at ‘appropriate times’. Appropriate times being when demeaning racist comments will only be heard by others who are accepting and agreeable to this errant thinking and belief. In this instance, one’s true belief was unintentionally unleashed in a moment of anger.

I would hope any public official and educator would conquer this churlish and petty belief before embarking on a public life path. There is no good outcome ( as has been made obvious) for an individual to hold this type of belief, and resulting behavior to fester, and become the primary measure of another.

A Representative represents. The People being represented, the majority of them, never imagined these beliefs were present in their representative. They never imagined they would hear of a disparaging, racist, demeaning remark uttered by their Representative.

An Educator educates. An Educator also imparts in addition to the curriculum, their private attitudes and beliefs which are transmitted via micro signals to students in their charge. Personal beliefs can not be masked or hidden over a period of time. What was passed on to hundreds of students daily along with the official lesson plan? Does a belief that some people are less than others belong in public office or education?

It is too much to believe in the moment, the uttering party is ashamed of their action, and they would own up to it. It is a slap across the face of all New Mexicans, especially those being represented, should be offended this rhetoric ever took place.

Martin Luther King,  who lost his life attempting to halt these acts of hate and hurt was forgotten in this debacle. Caesar Chavez in a different arena, fought daily for basic human dignity and respect for all peoples, and he too has been ignored.

Whether we agree or disagree with someone, whether they are a member of our race, a minority race, or mixed race, we must set race aside. One’s race has no place in a difference of opinion or other form of interaction between people.  If you read any of my posts about growing EcoHeart, you may understand why this is an important issue. Our world needs us focused on our future, yet too often we behave on like petulant, self centered children acting in the moment.

An argument or disagreement is a difference of opinion. A disagreement should remain focused on the area or item of dispute, and not be allowed to drift into umbrage or lashing out. If there is fact involved then an argument is no longer an argument, but ones refusal to accept fact.

No reasonable argument or disagreement has anything to do with the color of a persons skin, ethnicity, culture, or world view. We each have right to hold our own beliefs. We do not have the right to belittle others. It is imperative for the well being of all of us our beliefs are not tainted by hate. It is time for this hating minority to become Human, and treat other Humans with the respect and dignity they deserve.

One small thought for you consideration. Are you spiritually any farther along than your local neighborhood Atheist who’s believes you live until you die? As far fetched as it may seem to any “True Believers”, it is time truth be heard over popular fiction.

Some people keep their belief system in a box, taken out on the weekend for an hour or so, and then put back in the box until the next week. Other people try to be spiritual daily  according to their belief system, and for the most part they succeed.

We individually are sure we are the fortunate ones. Most people around us, family and close friends included are not in the same league as us spiritually. We do everything correct, and they do some things sort of correct. Due to our perception, we think we are correct and almost everyone else is wrong.

If this is true; if perception is stripped away, would we find each of us is pretty much the same? We all generally do the right things most of the time, and we individually feel we have the edge on everyone else.

In some small way those right things we do, somehow outshine our family, friends, and neighbors. Not to mention those people who live further away with whom we have no type of bond. Those far away people, well they live their lives in a way that does no good for anyone! Why do we think like this?

In truth, or at least my perception of truth, you and I, and everyone does what we perceive to be the ‘right thing’ as much as we are able. I accept I do not do the right thing all the time. I know no one who does do the right thing all the time.

Even people whom we pay to lead us spiritually, be they Guides, Guru’s, or Preachers, do not do the right things all the time. If they were interested in only doing the right things all the time, you would not be paying them for their services. They would be offering their services for free and working for a living as you are!

How many people out there, be they acclaimed Preachers, Guru’s or Spiritual Leaders of any type, offer what they know for free? They fall back, on the, “I need to make a living to you know” defense. I do not find that reason very defensible, having someone who wants to help me, demand money for improving me spiritually?

If there were no money involved, would these people still be there to lead? Some of these enlightened leaders are millionaires, and you probably have to watch your spending each month to keep your life on solid financial ground. There is nothing wrong with making a living, but not on the backs of people who struggle to find that space where they can become the type of person they want to be.

Which brings me back to the Atheist next door. Since Atheist’s generally believe we live until we die, there are no Guru’s telling any Atheist how to live a better life, and requesting payment in the process. Atheists do not need to review their belief system and see how it fits in any situation. Nor does an Atheist follow the rules and conventions of an organized belief system hoping for a reward in the after life.

The average Atheist is a lot like you or me with one small exception. When an Atheist does the right thing at the right time, it is done because they want to do the right thing, or think they should do the right thing. That one small difference more than levels the playing field of belief systems in the hope of living a better life, and having further reward at the end.

How empowering a concept that is? Having a belief system of nothing, no reward, no level of attainment, no eternal bliss for having a few boxes checked off a list of things we are supposed to be doing! Doing something good for another person because you want to, not because you may be punished if you do not?

Before you become angry and think I am promoting throwing away your carefully tuned beliefs, read to the end. The idea of holding up an imaginary Atheist as a spiritual leader for the rest of us to follow is an important one.

Not one figure who was/is seen as transcending the restrictions of living doubted for one second where they would be after their physical death. Few Atheists have any doubt about where they will be after physical death either. Grouped together, all these people did or do the right thing to make life better for someone else without any expectation of reward in the present or beyond.

All the rewards of this earth and beyond do not compare with doing service for another because you can and want to help someone who has a need. Helping someone not for the expectation of reward or advancement, but because you want to and are able to make a positive change in two lives at once.

None of us really have the ability to change anyone’s life. All we can do is place our intent with our action, and do what we are able to help people because we want to. The rewards that come from a life lived in this way are far greater than any checklist of actions to undertake than we would ever conceive.

That is not to say I would change any of my choices through my life. Generally, the only semi real attention concerns state of spirit from a religious perspective. It is possible that some religions are more holistic in their approach, but I have yet to encounter one at close range that is.

Authority figures in our life do what they can to raise us to know right from wrong and how to stay out of trouble. Their purpose generally is to make life easier for themselves rather than for our own good, excepting parents and other close family.

We are also led into achieving a certain level of achievement in our educational curriculum. What that level of achievement is for us varies from person to person and individual life circumstance, but generally we are expected to start making our own way as best we can once we reach a certain age, or achieve a certain level of educational mastery.

In all of this, with all our adult keepers, and societies watchful eye promoting acceptable behavior, no one really cares about our spiritual life. Most families, do not have spirituality hour, and there is not time set aside in the classroom where children are shown their life from a spiritual perspective.

Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to receive spiritual training throughout our life up to this moment? Having a mentor, or many mentors explaining to us with words and ideas that we understand, what our basic human purpose is and why it is important we nurture our spiritual self.

We would not wake up one day as an adult after a period lasting from weeks to decades of never feeling really comfortable with who we are and not knowing how to fix it. When we do come out of  our self absorbed life looking around as if for the first time, noticing something serious is lacking, we generally do not know what it is, or why we feel how we feel.

Right now, this instant wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to ask our spiritual adviser why we feel the way we do? I believe as children when we are not shy about asking questions, we are too busy learning about our world to think about our spiritual self. Along the way our spiritual self is hidden from us.

As adults we have a self imposed rule about admitting we do not know, and asking others what they think. That is with the exception of asking our closest friends who are our closest friends because they are almost just like us, or as close as we can find.

Spiritual development does not have to be a process of rebellion against everything you believe, were taught, or think is possible. What your spiritual development should be is learning how you live your life so you recognize the face in the mirror as yourself. You do not want someone acting as you, as you peek out from behind deciding what kind of job they are doing for you.

When I was a child someone told me never to marry an actor, because you could never be certain if they were being real or acting. I have come to realize that it applies to each of us. Being yourself is the best gift you can give to you. Being yourself you may not know where you are headed with any certainty, but you can take comfort in knowing it is you and not some shell living your life for you on the trip.

I am still learning about my spiritual self, and I imagine I will for a long time. I urge you not to wait until you see your end out on the horizon to start filling in the blanks about what your purpose to being alive is and the amazing power of your spiritual self. Start learning about your spiritual side of you now, so you enjoy the trip instead of an unhappy spectator in your life.

Crisalonso muses, then states:

There has to be a soul, a coded form of energy which preserves identity during and after this life.

Wow, what a position! It is one of those ideas that mankind has struggled with for centuries and I have no doubt better minds than mine have attacked this statement with more determination and a better plan than mine. A few minutes of searching on the internet, for thoughts of the greatest thinkers of our time answers would be laid bare, or not depending on one’s interest in understanding what is really being said.

I find the best explanation is the proverb aphorism from the Gnostic gospels about it being harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle fitting. How I think this applies to Crisalonso’s thought provoking statement is probably a little different than standard answers we would find.

As children growing into young adults we spend a lot of our time trying to find out who we are, and what we are about. We go through life trying to separate ourselves from everyone else, we want to be unique. I think this is where the eye of the needle comes into play.

If we truly believe we are separate from everyone, and everything else in the universe, then we are. We will never have moments of feeling we are one with the universe. If we happen to feel we are one with the universe, then we have never really been separate from everything, we only pretend we are separate.

If there is a universal something that keeps the universe as we know it, we are a part of it whether we like it or not. As we are a part of it, when we are done with our bodies, our souls must travel back to this all that is. I think the idea of standing in the middle of all that is, trumpet in my hand, proclaiming the glory of all that is while I am not a part of it, a flawed thought. Who would not wish to reclaim their part of all that is, was, and ever will be?

If we visualize a body of water large enough to jump in and imagine that body of water is all that is, what will we do standing next to it? Will we stand next to it, knowing that one step away we are a part of everything, and everything is a part of us, or would we walk away telling ourselves that we have no interest going back to being a part of all that is.

While a very few may decide, ‘I have no interest in rejoining all that is because I will lose myself as the water mixes in me and through me’, most people will be in the water as soon as they understand they can.

They will mix in with all the souls that are a part of all that is, sharing their lifetime experience, celebrating the feeling of completeness, mingling and rejoining all that is. All will truly be one with the universe as we know it, and we will know we have returned from our journey and experienced what we set out to experience in the manner we chose as we lived this lifetime.

As for Crisalonso’s question further into his post:

The question is, can we alter our past, present and future or is it all written beforehand?

I am of the belief we arrive with a specific plan, but we have the choice to follow it each step of the way, or not, as we decide. If this were not so, it would be a matter of randomness whether one turns into a saint or sinner to use common words for ideas.

Time has to be a human concept, there is no reason why we can not be born again in the same month of the same year in the same or different place holding the script we want to follow this time. To do any less would be a waste of our concept of time. Why would we want to wait who know how long for an exact set of circumstances to repeat themselves for something we want to experience when it occurred already exactly the way we wish it to?

Then one day I realized that no matter how much proof I asked for, and how many times in a row that proof would be given, proof made no real difference.

Trying to become something I was not did not make me a better person. I wasn’t any more popular. I never had a change of opinion on any subject that mattered. I realized little by little that asking for proof was like arguing with the wind. I could make a lot of noise arguing with the wind, but the wind would never care.

So it is with trying to become what I was not. Change did not make me perfect no matter how much proof there is to support my belief. Change did not really make my life better. Change did not really change anything that was important.

So it was with trying to be perfect. I chose to live the life I was living instead of the life I thought I should be living. I found that all trying to live the perfect life did for me was make me feel guilty.

I felt guilty about so much some days. I would feel guilty about how I felt about all the women I saw each day. I would feel guilty about wanting more in my life. I would feel guilty for not being satisfied with the way I looked. I would find myself feeling guilty for feeling guilty when I had so much and everyone else had so little. I started feeling like an pious fake, and that would make me feel guilty too.

Over the years I realized it is a study in futility to try to change me into something that may be more perfect for what I believe.

I am what I am, and that is enough. I am a perfect me in fact! Whether I am the picture perfect idea of what my belief system thinks I should be, or something less, I am what I am. What I am is the perfect me with my own uniquely perfect faults and flaws.

Competing with an ideal is a competition I could never win. God, and no one else should ever expect me to be different than what I am. If it was necessary for me to be someone else I would not be here to begin with. Someone else would be here, or I would be different. If I were indeed different what would be the point of being the original me to start with?

When I am gone from here…if I find out I am wrong about all this, I will have to cry foul. Nothing of such magnitude such as God – and I do not pretend to comprehend even imagine a sliver of the whole of God – would create or allow me to be created only to be changed into someone else. What would be the point?

But of course, this may be higher level spiritual thinking, or fooling myself, believing everything is perfect as it is?

Hmmm….or maybe Ommmm.

I remember the first time I had a religious conflict was when I asked the reasoning behind a story the class we were told by a Nun. I was sent to the priest for my indiscretion. As a Teenager, I had a lot of questions, and some answers were missing logic, common sense, or were not bible based. During my teenage years I drifted into something resembling animism. Little pieces of God sprinkled all over my little piece of the world, and across all earth and space.

Of course some people were not too happy with the idea that I could possibly think that God is everywhere, and not at some far off undefined spot watching how I spend my life, adding and removing weights to a scale whose purpose determines where I will spend eternity. My own life was complete though, because if I could see God in weeds growing in the yard, I could certainly imagine a little piece of God living in every human being in my world. That thought did not make some people happy, they felt I must be awful full of myself, to think God resides in each of us.

Slowly in the following years, God retreated from my life and reformed out in some distant undefined place. As this slow retreat happened, so did my dissatisfaction with organized religion which started looking more like a combination of a clique and business. Where belonging meant upholding the party line, and belief system, whatever it was depending on which church. The Church party line changed depending on where I went. This constant changing of ideology did not mesh with me for a church trying to have one unified face.

It certainly started looking once more as if God was in each human, plant, animal, rock, and piece of sand. Perhaps there was more to the idea of God than God hanging out somewhere far away waiting to decide my eternal fate. What if everything I knew or could conceive about my physical and spiritual self was because God had a thought once upon a time and I am a result of that thought? The idea seemed to tie up a lot of loose ends for me. God simply had a thought and everything I know is a result of that thought whenever and wherever it occurred.

I tried to put God on a scale I could comprehend and relate to. Something that was not as magnificent as the creation of the universe and distantly experiencing everything in it. My pets were a fair starting point. I decided yes, I do experience more with them than I could without them. Whenever I am around them I am part of them and they are a part of me as we share almost the same space. I saw them young and happy, I see them sick, I see them as they grow older. In a small way I experience their life as they live it.

I do not stand with a clipboard with a sheet of paper on it and a line drawn down the middle, one side good and one side bad, keeping a running tally of how I perceive them. My pets are, and they do not decide what is good or not. I do not have the trouble of trying to decide whether they are more good than bad, or bad than good. I do not have to consider whether they do something because they are tired, sick, distressed, or just mean and angry.

After I worked my way through this, I decided this must be how the world is from God’s perspective. It is not important whether I think God is in everything in the universe, that God is in some distant place, or whether God lives in me or not. Deciding those ideas is not important, and something that I can not really determine no matter how I try. Once I arrived at this thought, my beliefs became simpler, yet more encompassing.

Other posts of possible interest:

Scientology verses the right to believe what we choose

Basic truth, sharing, and the fundamentals of belief

I am always surprised about the groups of people who all feel they have the real version of Christianity and everyone else is peddling something that looks real, but does not quite get you through the golden gates into the promised land – whatever that may turn out to be.

In the past when the world was much larger, it was not unusual for a Town, City, Province, or even Country to be one religion. That was the way it was. The rulers ruled and the rest followed, or were put to death, or if they were lucky banished, which was about the same fate.

As the world became a smaller place, religion lost its iron clad grip little by little on people over the world. People were starting to think and have opinions and for the first time in history were not killed for disagreeing or having an alternative view about some facet of their religion.

Of course the fundamentalists never went away, they were always there pointing out the wrongs in any new thinking that flowed into town on the lips of travelers. Because the pen is mightier than the sword, some of those ideas took root, and people changed their thinking just a little bit about how religion should be. So here we are now, with more versions of Christianity in the world than most towns have residents.

Who is to say who is right and who is wrong. If you pretend for a moment to be looking at the earth from space, it is as we see in pictures, just a little blue and white marble surrounded by a sea of emptiness. It should become obvious when immersed in the view that we are all one, and connected to each other and everything contained on this little blue and white marble floating in space. It is also a little hard to find any supreme being when looking at earth from space.

Unless that is you take time to consider how exact and perfect everything about our earth has to be in order for life to survive and thrive. Or while gazing you think that we are really only a few hundred years from the way people on earth lived for possible millions of years, and how ignorant we really are. For all our modern knowledge there is so little we really can do. Then a Godhead becomes apparent to us, but the whys and wherefores are still a little hazy at best, with humans not much more advanced than an ant hill or beehive.

Back to the Sunday service I attended. It was focused, and fun. There was singing, music, a short skit, prayer and celebration. I found that what I watched unfold in front of me sitting as a visitor fit well with my beliefs. Of course I noticed some differences from other services I have attended over the years, no surprise there. All in all it was fun and I enjoyed the experience more than I have some other services I have attended. Try it out some time, if for no other reason than to validate your own religious beliefs.

I am sure in the face of our upcoming election for the presidency, the list would be much larger, and would now have political overtones as a deciding factor. If you are a Democrat, anyone showing signs of being republican are certainly going to hell. If you are a Republican, anyone with democratic leanings is certainly suspect, and most will probably go to hell also.
The heaven/hell thinking also pervades religious beliefs. No matter what religion one is and no matter what tolerance that religious belief promotes, most people are sure others that are not of their particular blend of religion are going to have a tough time finding those pearly gates. With the tens of thousands of flavors of Christianity, not to mention other major religions and their thousands of subsets, it looks like everyones vision of heaven is going to be a pretty empty place to live after we pass on.

As I get older, I have more friends and acquaintances develop some serious medical issues. Of course it is easy to determine the cause. They obviously eat wrong, do not exercise, drink, or do none of those things, and that is the problem. Likely they did drugs when they were young, and smoked different types inhaled products. There is no doubt why they became so ill, anyone can see that.

Of course in my case, my body was born in perfect condition, any probability of a future medical condition is non existent. I also have spent my life doing all the things I should do, and none of the those things which may have an influence on my health in a negative way. By golly it is quite a shock the first time something does not work as expected!

As I am sure most people do, I looked for someone or something to blame. Something they put in food, or something I breathed in when visiting some big polluted city. It was probably caused by eating some unwashed fruit, or consumed fish that had DDT, or mercury in its body.

Once I went through that list, it is on to the spiritual side of why something is not right. God is punishing me, and until I figure it out and made it right, I will remain ill. Once I figure out what it was I did that was wrong, my health will be restored, and everything will be good again with my body.

If I went through all my memories and can not find anything, then it must be God has forgotten about me. I did not actively practice my religion by going to church often enough. Or maybe I have too many differing views that stray to far away from the mainline concepts of my faith of choice. Once I get back in line with the mainstream majority with my faith, my health problems will go away.

If that does not work, there is the other side of religion. The Devil, or Satan if you will has been allowed to torment me by God. I am the modern day version of Job, and the devil has decided to get right down to it and attack my physical health in an attempt to make my spirit weak. I can not believe this was allowed to happen, but now that I have figured it out, I know all I have to do is wait and continue living a righteous life, and everything will be restored, just as it was for Job.

Finally reality starts to creep in, and the truth becomes apparent. Stuff happens with our bodies. We have one tens of millions of cells from disparate body parts all trying to function and reproduce, and sometimes a cell gets it wrong. It is nobody’s fault and there is no spiritual connection. It just happens….

I read a book put out by the founder of Scientology a number of years ago, and I have to admit, at the time it did not make a lot of sense and appeared to be a lot of smoke and mirrors. That being said, the belief system was already established, and my opinion of it accounts for little, as it still does.

Perhaps if I reread the book now, I am sure I would have a different viewpoint of Scientology. As I have learned over the years, the world is not always what it seems once you scratch the surface and actually look at what is going on, instead of ‘knowing’ what is going on in the world. Things are quite a bit different when one takes the time to observe what they see rather than simply placing what they think they saw into what they believe to be true.

Back to Scientology, I fail to see why there are so many strong feelings about this belief system? I thought maybe it was the name, Scientology, which I do not think you can find many people who would say Scientology sounds religious. So the word, Scientology does not sound very religious in nature so people could be upset about someone believing in something that does not sound religious. People have attacked other people both verbally and physically over a lot less.

Scientology sounds really foreign, way beyond some of those vague eastern religions. I think those ‘vague’ eastern religions are more tolerated because they have been around for a while, and were not invented within the last fifty years or so. This makes them more established, and possibly more acceptable because someone did not just invent them.

In defense of Scientology itself, a belief system sometimes takes on a life of its own. We grow up and are told what to believe and how to perform whatever rituals come with that belief system. When we grow older and realize there are other ways of perceiving in respect to a belief system other than what we were taught. If we are open to possibility it becomes obvious that most other belief systems have the same end goal in mind that our belief system does. Other belief systems simply they just go about arriving at the same end differently. This usually happens because they come from a culture different from ours and they have a different way of viewing the world.

Then there is the question of the actor himself. We determined a long time ago that people have the right to believe as they deem proper for themselves. That does not mean that someone can only have a belief system that meets within the narrow scope of approval of another person’s idea of what is a proper belief system.

People are free to believe what they want as long as it does no harm to others. If Scientology is a person’s belief system, we have no right, and we should have no public opinion on whether it meets our own standards or not. That is not something we as individuals have the right to decide for other people. As the popular saying goes, or at least as well as I remember it, “I don’t have to agree with your beliefs, but I will defend them to te death.

The King coughed and some blood sprayed, a servant wiped his mouth, and he started talking. When I was a young man, I came a cross a Dragon’s cave. I new of the dangers of either dealing with, or fighting with Dragons, but I was a young and and rash in my youthfulness. I came back to that cave entrance often, sometimes armed for battle,  sometimes dressed in finery for negotiating, but I never had the courage to enter the cave and search out the Dragon.

I was still a prince at that time, but the people of the Kingdom and the lands surrounding the Kingdom recognized that I seemed to have an uncommon wisdom. I convinced my Father the King to make small changes that really mattered little, but made the Peasants happy and they felt their life was better.

When I became King after my Father the King grew to old to rule with the vigor he once had, the people of my Kingdom wanted more. They were happy for the changes I made as a prince, but now that I was king, they thought I should be doing more. I was not sure what to do, but I felt it my obligation to do something.

I had a horse saddled and once more went riding across the country side. I determined that perhaps if the people in the Kingdom felt rich they would be content? I made small changes in the ruling of the Kingdom concerning money matters so everyone in the Kingdom would pay less in taxes. I secretly set up a rebate program so they would receive back varying amounts of money over time, so after a period of ten years they would be equally wealthy.

After some years went by, everyone was happy and the Kingdom was fruitful. People wore finery, and had nice homes to live in. Each thought they were just a little better than the people around them, but overall they tried to get along. Over these years though, a small thought held by one of the people started spreading through all the people.

The king coughed weakly, and a little blood flowed dribbled from the side of his mouth. A servant cleaned it away. One person a few years ago decided that the possessions and wealth were because he was a little more special than everyone else, and something he could not see was making sure he received just a little more than everyone else. It was not true, but he believed it

Of course this was not true, because it was my financial planning for the Kingdom that determined what each had received over the years. But that did not stop him from telling his neighbors that he was just a little better, and therefore had a little more than they did.

So the neighbors thinking it may be true, asked him where the extra came from? The peasant not really having a pat answer but needing a reason, decided to say the King had given him extra wealth and other valuable things. Most did not believe it, but a few did. Over the next decade I saw the Kingdom was split in half with people believing they had extra wealth that the King had given them.

This thinking among the people, with almost half of them thinking they were better than their neighbors was causing a problem. They wanted to prove they were wealthier than others, but when their wealth was counted they found this was not really true. This made them angry. Because they felt they were better than their neighbors. They started complaining that they all have the same amount of wealth and there was no way to show how rich they were. They must be poor and the King had used trickery and fooled them into thinking they were rich.

Things became worse in the Kingdom until the people were split in two angry mobs. One group was sure they were better because they were given extra, and the other group were sure that everyone was about equal, and no one was better off than the other.

A great war erupted, and there was terrible slaughter on both sides. After some days, the fighting slowed because there were no more people who had either not been in battle and were either wounded or killed.  The King finally met the Dragon he feared so greatly. As the King lay dying, the Dragon walked around the Kingdom collecting the treasure it had given out over the years to the People of the Kingdom. The Dragon had if one looked closely, tears in its eyes.