Clemencio Montecillo Bascar was a former Professor and Vice President for Corporate Affairs of the Western Mindanao State University. He is a recepient of various local, regional, and national awards in songwriting, playwriting, poetry, and public service. Several of his poems had been published in international literary magazines and journals such as, Foliate Oak, BRICKrhetoric, About Place, Torrid Literature, Mused-theBellaOnline Lietrary Review, and The Voices Project. He had written and published by the Western Mindanao State University two books of poetry, namely; "Fragments of the Eucharist" and "Riots of Convictions." In the Philippines, some of his poems appeared in the such magazines as Women's, MOD, and Chick. 
At present, he writes a column in the Zamboanga Today daily newspaper and resides at 659 Gemini Street, Tumaga, Zamboanga City, Philippines. He is married to the former Miss Melinda Climaco dela Cruz and blest with three children, Jane, Lynnette, and Timothy James.   

​"When the Spaniards found Mohammedans in the Philippine Islands, they called them Moros simply out of painful memory of the Mohammedan Moors they had fought in Spain."- Florence Horn, Orphans of the Pacific, Copyright 1941, Chapter 8.
In pre-colonial history, there was no state or nation called Bangsamoro in Mindanao and Sulu. Historical accounts however, confirmed the fact that there were two major sultanates that attained de facto and de jure status as manorchial states recognized  and known internationally, the Sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, which succeeded in defending their respective statehood and independence from the more than three hundred years of Spanish attempts at conquest, colonization, and Christianization.
The absence of a Moro nation before the arrival of the Spaniards is confirmed by a distinguished Muslim author, Salah Jubair on page 14 of his book entitled "Bangsamoro: A Nation Under Endless Tyranny, qouted as follows:
"By confluence of circumstances the Spaniards were correct as far as the issue of religious identification is concerned. But on the aspect of nationality, they probably erred, for there was no Moro Nation to speak at that time...there were only people of the same racial group, the Indo-Malayan race who happened to inhabit certain parts of the archipelago claimed for the King of Spain."
There is also no native or indigenous  tribe called "Moro" in Mindanao and Sulu because according to authors and historians, this term was only a monicker given by the Spaniards to the native inhabitants of these two ancient kingdoms on account of similarities in faith and other characteristics with the inhabitants of the ancient Kingdom of Mauritania, the Moors of North Africa who invaded Spain in the 8th century and placed it under Muslim rule for eight hundred years.
It is however, popularly known and a widely-documented fact that there are two major liberation fronts in Mindanao and Sulu which use the term  Moro as the initial word of the names of their organizations, namely; the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The origin of its first use as a revolutionary organization, is credited to a former Muslim Congressman as narrated by Salah Jubair  on pages 151-52 of his book entitled, Bangsamoro A Nation Under Endless Tyranny, as follows:  
"In 1970, Cong. Rashid Lucman organized the Bangsa Moro Liberation Front (BMLO). It was designed to function as an umbrella organization under and from which all other liberation forces must radiate. In 1984, it was renamed Bangsa Muslimin Liberation Organization, it frowned upon the use of the term Moro which was given by the enemies of Islam, and in its stead Muslimin was chosen." -SALAH JUBAIR, BANGSAMORO A NATION UNDER ENDLESS TYRANNY, Copyright 1999, pages 151-152.
Another prominent Muslim leader who was elected as a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1934, Mr. Alaoya Alonto, the Sultan Sa Ramain delivered a speech on the Moro problems of Mindanao. Part of his speech relative to the term "Moro" is quoted to wit:
"I wish to bring to the attention of the members of this Convention as representatives of the Filipino people that the Mohammedan Filipinos have been protesting against the name "Moro." We don't like to be called "Moro" because when we are called Moros, we feel that we are not  considered as part of the Filipino people. Therefore, I would like to tell the members of this Convention that we prefer to be called Mohammedan Filipinos and not "Moros" because if we are called Moros, we will be considered as enemies, for the name Moro was given to us by the Spaniards because they failed to penetrate the islands of Mindanao and Sulu."
To avoid being branded again as a charlatan or a peddler of historical lies, let me quote another distinguished  author and former highest   educational leader of our country to support the truthfulness of my  assertion that Mindanao and Sulu Sultanates were not conquered by Spain and not allies of the First Philippine Republic establsihed by Gen. Emilio F. Aguinaldo  ,  as follows:
"The Muslims of Mindanao and Sulu were not part of the revolution against Spain. Indeed, the Muslims had been engaged in war, not rebellion, against Spain since the latter years of the  sixteenth century. The outbreak of the revolution in Luzon forced the Spanish regime to pull out its regiments from Mindanao and Sulu, leaving only the outpost of Zamboanga. In this way the Muslims benefited from  the Christian revolution in Luzon and became freed, forever, of the Spanish presence. It is not correct , strictly speaking, to see the revolution as having spread and progressed in Mindanao and Sulu."  DR. ONOFRE D. CORPUS, former Minister of Education and Culture.
As I had many times in the past explained, discussed, and asserted that the Sultanates of  Sulu and Maguindanao  existed as independent and sovereign states, distinct and separate from each other hundreds of years ahead of the Spanish Colonial Government of the Las Islas Filipinas, the Federal System of the United States of Government, and the First Philippne Republic of Gen.  Emilio F. Aguinaldo which was not recognized by Spain and even by the very ally  responsible for bringing him back to the Philippines, the United States of America which declared war with Spain in April 1898. Without the presence of the American forces in the PHilippines, it would have been impossible for Gen. Emilio F. Aguinaldo to declare independence  on June 12, 1898 and establish the short-lived First Philippine Republic on June 23, 1898 because he was exiled together with his trusted officers to Hong Kong after he surrendered to the Spanish  Governor-General Fernando Primo de  Rivera  with all his revolutionary forces under the terms of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato concluded on December 15, 1897.
There is an overwhelming probability that only very few of our present generation know the historical fact that it was the Americans who convinced General Aguinaldo to go back to the Philippines to continue his revolutinary struggle against the Spanish Crown and to help them win the war against Spain with all sorts of generous offers. He boarded the American battleship, McCulough on May 17, 1898 which in effect marked the disbandment of the Hong Kong junta he organized while in exile and the second phase of the Filipino revolutionary movement against Spain
With due recognition, acknowledgment, and appreciation, Gen. Emilio F. Aguinaldo indeed heroically fought two wars; one against Spain and the other against the United States. Tragically, however, his revolution against Spain ended in his surrender to Spanish Governor-General Fernando  Primo de Rivera under the Pact of Biak-na- Bato on December 15, 1897 after receiving FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND PESOS (P400,000.00) which was half the amount promised by Spain for his surrender and all his revolutionary forces; and his war against the United States resulted in his capture by the American forces led by Gen. Frederick Funston in his mountain hide-out in Palanan, Isabela on March 23, 1901. 
It is educationally imperative for our present generation to know and understand that the proclamation of Philippine independence on June 12, 1898 was in its truest sense ,  no more than a declaration of the continuation of General Aguinaldo's revolutionary struggle against Spain for at that time, almost the entire Philippine Islands was still under the control of the Spanish colonial government. While there was the playing of the National Anthem (Marcha National Filipina) and the waving of the Philippine flag, there was no actual or de facto turn- over of Spanish sovereignty,  no formal lowering of Spanish flag and the hoisting of the Philippine flag, and no surrender of the highest Spanish colonial officer of the Philippine Islands for the last Spanish Governor-General Diego de los Rios surrendered to Gen. Vicente Solis Alvares, the commander of the Zamboanga Revolutionary  Army following the capture of Fort Pillar on May 18, 1899. 
 The irrefutable truth is: General Aguinaldo  did not win the war against Spain. He was still bound by the terms of his surrender under the Pact of Biyak-na-Bato when he declared independence on June 12, 1898. Such declaration of independence is no different from the declaration of independence  made by MNLF Chairman and Founder, Nur P. Misuari in Davao City several years ago... purely symbolic and aspirational. Virtually, we are  celebrating independence from the Spanish colonial  government on the 12th day of June annually for a military victory which General  Aguinaldo and his revolutionary forces did not win, and only because of Republic Act 4166 which changed the date of Philippines Independence from July 4, 1946 to June 12, 1898 hastily signed into law by then President Diosdado Macapagal in 1964.
 At this point, let me reiterate with emphasis the fact that Mindanao and Sulu were not part of the revolutionary struggles of the Filipinos for these two Sultanates had waged a war of resistance against Spanish conquest, colonization, and Christianization from the first time the conquistadores made their initial attempt in 1598. Unlike the Filipinos, these Sultanates never accepted nor submitted to Spanish sovereignty although some areas fell under the latter's control which eventually were recaptured by the Sultanate forces leading to the full recovery of their sovereignty and statehood when all Spanish regiments were withdrawn from Mindanao and Sulu to suppress the Filipino  revolution in Luzon and to face a more formidable military threat when  United States declared war against Spain on April 25, 1898. THis occurred before the sneak arrival of the American forces in Jolo on May 19, 1899.
On the other hand, the war that the Katipuneros and revolutionary forces of General Aguinaldo fought was insurrection and only started with the "Cry of Pugad Lawin" led by the KKK Supremo  Andres Bonifacio on August 23, 1896. It took a span of about 365 years of acceptance and submission to the Spanish colonial government before the outbreak of the Spanish-Filipino war which unfortunately only culminated in the surrender of General Aguinaldo and his revolutionary forces  under the terms of the Pact of Biyak-na-Bato on December 15, 1897 and immediately thereafter,  his exile together with his loyal and trusted officers to Hong Kong on board a steamship contracted for such purpose.
One thing that should be made very clear was the fact that the Sultanates of Mindanao and Sulu as sovereign and independent monarchial states, were never involved in the revolutionary struggle of the Filipinos in Luzon and Visayas and were not allies of General Emilio F. Aguinaldo's First Philippine Republic which declared war with the United States on Febraury 4, 1899. Of greater political and military significance and pride, these two ancient monarchial states were not conquered, colonized, and Christianized by Spain which make them until now illegal components of the Republic of the Philippines if the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris was the only basic diplomatic document used by the framers of the 1935 Constitution in  defining the national territory of the Republic of the Philippines.
In recapitulation, there is no native tribe or nation called "Moro" in Mindanao and Sulu because this was the generic term used by the Spaniards to refer to all the inhabitants of Mindanao and Sulu. In other words, originally the native inhabitants comprising all the ethnolinguistic or indigenous tribes of Mindanao and Sulu including those who already embraced the Islam faith, were all called "Moros" by the Spaniards. This term was also adopted by the Americans when they took possession of Mindanao and Sulu based on the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris wherein Mindanao and Sulu were furtively sold and ceded by Spain to the United States as part of the Spanish colony called Philippines Islands which is the root-cause of the outbreak of the armed struggle for liberation or self-determination in Mindanao and Sulu.    

​     “Well Mr. President Elect you got almost forty percent of the vote. Six out of ten people voted against you. I take that to mean that six out of ten people hate you.You certainly don’t have a mandate to rule.”
     “Don’t need one to rule Mary. Only need the necessary electoral votes and I got those. Besides I don’t think I did all that all bad under the circumstances. My worthy opponent, His Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, got only about thirty percent of the vote. Seven out of ten people voted against him. This is the first time that I’ve beaten Stephen at anything in my entire life, except for winning you of course dear. And I beat him by over half a million votes and he wasn’t even close in the electoral college. He even came in last there behind Bell and Breckinridge.” Though the President Elect said all this with a joking false bravado, it  was of  little comfort to him.
     Abraham Lincoln turned from his wife and stared out the window of their Springfield home that night and looked upward to the darkened heavens as if there was an answer up there somewhere in those storm clouds for him to all the impending doom that he would soon be facing.
     “Well they’ll always hate you in the South. Eleven states there didn’t even put your name on the ballot they hate you so much.” Here Mary paused, kind of smiled, then laughed, “You did get one percent of the vote in Virginia though. The only southern state where they did allow your name on the ballot.”
      Abraham Lincoln smiled too and came away from the window. His eyes back down to earth now. He refused to close them and shudder in fear. Refused to be afraid of what was yet to come.
     “It’s not just me they hate Mary. The whole country is filled  with hate. Too many factions. Too many parties. Each uncompromising. Each hating the other. Nobody leaves themselves any room to work things out any more. It’s become all or nothing for everyone. The house has been divided. And you know what happens when a house is divided.”
     “Well then Mr. President Elect what are you going to do about all this? This house divided.”
     “I don’t yet. I’ll  just have to wait and see what Buchanan does and go from there. Though I doubt he’ll do anything except be glad to hand over the Presidency to me.”
     “You can’t wait too much longer Abraham. Eleven states already gone and more  likely to follow. And they all seceded because you got elected. They didn't leave because of anything Buchanan did. This is a problem of your making. The don’t hate Buchanan. They hate you.”
     “I know that. But I still have to wait until I’m in charge. President Buchanan is definitely right about one thing though. The states do not have the right to secede. Where we differ is over what to do about it. Buchanan doesn’t think that he has the authority or power to stop them.”
     “And you believe you do?”
     “I don’t know if the President can prevent states from seceding or not. But I’m going to find out. I’m going to act regardless of the Constitution or any other law and you know why Mary? Because when I’m President, as commander of all our forces, I will have under my control the army of the United States of America. I can command it as I see fit. No law prohibits me from doing that. And with this army I will act.”
    “That means war husband you know that. A lot of people in the states that did vote for you won’t be for that. They’ll turn against you too. Won’t support a war. Won’t support  you any further.”
    “That may be true but I’m betting more will back me than won’t. If more people hate me, then so be it. Consequences be damned. Time to move ahead. Time to act, not to worry or talk.”
    Abraham Lincoln sat down. His shoulders slumped. The weight of his country’s problems and its future upon them. His mind was going a mile a minute as he contemplated all the issues before him and how he was going to resolve them. Resolving them one way or the other, with or without the law or any legal authority to back him up. That went against the grain of his lawyer training and reasoning. He wanted a definitive legal answer here. But there was none and he knew it. He and he alone was going to have make up all the rules and answers as he went along.
    His wife broke his concentration.
    “What about slavery Abraham? What you going to do about that? You made a lot of speeches about that. The abolitionists are counting on you.”
    “I don’t know just yet what I’m going to do about slavery. Again I don’t know if the Constitution gives me any authority to abolish slavery or if it takes an act of congress to do so or a Constitutional Amendment. But I do know this. I will do something about it when the time is right.”
     “And how will you know when the time is right?”
     “Trust me Mary I will know. I have a sixth political sense about these things. I’ll do the right thing, whatever it is, when the time is right, politically right that is, to save the union.”
     “Enough of all this political talk Abraham. It’s giving me a headache again. Besides it’s getting late. Time for bed. You can sleep on all this as they say.”
     “Well I can’t plow around this stump. That’s for sure. We better start packing tomorrow for Washington. It’s only a matter of time now before all this comes to a head.”
     “A matter of time before someone kills you, you mean. Oh I’m so afraid for you Abraham. You’ve had so many death threats. So many people hate you. So many want you dead. I’m so afraid that someone out there will kill you.”
     “Don’t worry about it dear. The Pinkertons will protect us. Mr. Pinkerton is in charge of security and for getting us to Washington safely. He’s worked everything out with the railroad as to the route and security precautions. We’ll be safe. We’ll get there.”
     “It’s not getting there that I’m worried about Abraham. It’s after we get there.” Mary Lincoln wiped a tear from her eye as her husband put his arm around her shoulder. He towered over her as he bent down and gave her a kiss on the top of her head.
     “You know that you may go down as the most hated President in the history of this here country of ours Mr. Abraham Lincoln.”
     “Well then dear I’ll just have to save the union won’t I and become the most beloved President ever.”
     “Goodnight Mr.President.”
     “Good night Mary.”
 
 

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

My older sister and I had not seen one another for a decade, had little contact during that time because of family conflict, and we were reuniting inside a hotel shaped like a pyramid.  Seemed appropriate as, when children, we once posed for a picture sitting atop a perisphere replica of a World's Fair logo with its trylon stretching upwards beside us.  Trylon and perisphere.  Flushing Meadow Park.   Las Vegas. We were meeting in a trylon-shaped building.
            From the air, as the plane was landing, that hotel looked like a geometrical piece from a child's game.  The brown desert only made its black glass triangle all the more striking.
            Tired from my trip of 2000+ miles, I slowly turned my neck from side to side to stretch muscles, then pushed sides of my limp blonde hair behind my ears.  I moved the locket, dangling from around my neck where it pressed against my skin, to the outside of my blouse;  I opened it, as I waited for my luggage to circle the conveyor belt, and looked at the tiny snapshots of my parents.  The locket was an amulet and I never traveled without it...not since I was eighteen and got it as a birthday gift.
            In less than a half hour, under a replica of the sphinx, a bellman took my bag and I went to check in.  A water ride, on the 'Nile', was inside the building.  Wonder if my sister would like to take that?  Was walking too painful since she said she was now disabled from spinal problems?  Could she stand on the long line, physically get into the boat?  Would she look old, stooped, deformed? 
            My parents had once said that time was a most precious commodity, and is irreplaceable.  But time had a way of passing without a relationship with my sister;  we'd had only time for our differences and hostility.  Might we now find anything at all to 'connect' then replace emptiness with sharing?  I fondled my locket;  the smooth gold surface felt nice between my fingers.
            Was the elevator cable about to break?  The ride, at an angle, moved the hoist from side-to-side as it went up to the 22nd floor.  I wondered why the architect didn't put elevators in the center of the pyramid so guests could ride up the usual way rather than on the severe sides of the building.  Glad to get into my Egyptian-motif room, I looked out at the view of the airport and hoped my sister's plane from Los Angeles would get in on time.
            Time again.  We can't make it up.  I was three hours earlier than my usual biological clock and mused about the gain;  I knew I'd be sleepy sooner than my sister, however.
            Would I recognize someone I haven't seen in a decade?  I talked to my image as I secured plastic combs into my hair.  Do we have anything at all in common?  Our lifestyles have been different:  I'm with the same man I wed decades ago and she's been divorced twice.  We didn't look alike as children, or adults, so, middle-aged, what features, if any, might show we've come from the same gene pool?  Did she also inherit the staying-natural-without-greying hair of our parents?  Would she make me self-conscious since I'm still skinny, and call me the childhood taunt Skinny Marink?  Should the conversation merely be polite or can we speak of sensitive things?  Would old rivalries surface?  I spoke to the bathroom mirror then washed my hands with the only soap provided;  it was perfumed and I sneezed.
            Glitz city.  Unreal.  Perfect for this meeting which seemed unreal, too.  I went down to the level which had restaurants and virtual-reality games.
            The restaurant area was made into a city:  New York.  My childhood.  I was seated in a section that was a replica in color, furnishings, awnings of my youth and a mural on the wall was of Manhattan's docks.  Wooden Venetian blinds with fabric tape reminded me of my girlhood bedroom.  Well, the restaurant sure had some pieces of past for me, although I still doubted my sister and I had any personal connection.  Was this unreal, as a movie set ... as the entire town of Vegas, as my meeting her in such a place?
            My watch indicated it was time.  Time again.  Feeling excited yet anxious, I went to the check-in area to search faces and forms to find my sister.  Should I run up to her and embrace her or approach with caution?
            I scanned the line, and my eyes stopped on a woman with a cane.  Her beauty-shop colored hair was pushed into a glamourous style.  Was it her?  No one else on line had a cane.  I quickly walked over, crossed the barrier's velvet ropes, and approached.  I looked at aqua eyes framed by perfectly applied eye make up and knew those aqua eyes belonged to my sister.  I hugged her with disbelief, then felt self-conscious when my plastic comb slipped from my straight, fine strands.
            She looked into my grey-blue eyes whose lashes were without mascara, as usual, and said "Is it really you.  Oh.  I'm so happy!  You're the same."
            "Except for jowls and a wiggly neck, uh, huh."
            She smelled fragrant, and I didn't sneeze from the scent.  This was not the image of an infirm, aging woman with a crippling disability.  This was not the stature of someone hoping for sympathy for her physical plight.
            Her nails were polished.  I hadn't done mine with polish since my wedding...I think about it, but typing, playing the piano, painting on canvas, golfing, doing domestic chores just don't go with painted nails.  She bit hers as a girl;  I suddenly remembered.  Now she had glamourous ones.
            Memory.  We do have that.  As a child, I loved her, I hated her, I giggled with her, I went out of my way to walk to school along a completely different avenue just to not have to talk to her.  No.  These memories should stay where time put them. 
            Time was a most precious commodity, and is irreplaceable.  Did she, too, know we didn't understand that?
            She moved toward the check-in when space opened;  she limped.  Would we discuss her future operations, limitations?  Might we talk about the many years our parents have been dead?  Would we try to find something in common or just ...  She opened her wallet to show a credit card.
            I stood next to this stranger whose genetic markers were also in my body although nothing on the surface indicated that, and saw, in the open wallet something that we two had that tied us forever.  I felt startled, for a second, as it was so unexpected.  I'd thought about so many differences, and wondered about anything shared.  I reached at my blouse for my locket, blinked as if I could halt tears, opened the clasp to expose the contents.  In her wallet's plastic picture inserts were photos we had in common:  our parents.
 
©1996 Palo Alto Review [LOIS GREENE STONE owns the rights]
reprinted: July 2010 in Senior Beacon, New Hampshire
reprinted: March 9, 2011 The Jewish Press
reprinted: December 2015    Eunoia Review

​Possessions are like money:  there’s no harm to them so long as you own them, and they don’t own you.  That was not the case with my friend Elena, from Estonia.  She had grown up in Tallinn during WWII in a state of constant privation.  This resulted in obsessively surrounding herself with things she felt she needed.  Her pantry was always stocked with canned goods, many long out of date, and her closets were bursting at the seams.  The worst manifestation of her fear was her shoe closet.  She had so many pairs of shoes that most of them were new, still in boxes, and therefore out of sight and out of mind, so she always wore the same ten pairs of shoes, comforted emotionally by the stacks of unopened shoe boxes.  After all, she might walk in a new direction one day.
 
It seems to me that hoarding stuff  is always a sign of lack.  Lack of necessities while growing up, as in the case of Elena, indicates lack of material security.   In our president’s case,  his presumed lack of parental reinforcement and love resulted in his need for palatial surroundings, lavish gold toilet fixtures, and adulation, not to mention the sexual implications of his tiny hands  resulting in a need to compensate with a show of aggression and power.
 
My husband and I had a renter years ago, and after failing to inspect the townhouse since the renter moved in four years earlier,  we decided we should check up on our property.  He’d always paid his rent on time, and had a good government job in Washington DC, but we thought he was rather odd.  So one day we decided to go and inspect the property while he was at work.  I inserted the key in the door and tried to open it.  It felt as though it was blocked on the other side.  After much energetic shoving, I managed to open it enough for me to squeeze through.  Inside was a chaos of epic proportions.  Stacks of newspapers and magazines completely covered the floor of the corridor beyond the front door, and of every other room.  The bathroom revealed a WC thickly encrusted with old feces, and a tub that was stained beyond redemption.  In the bedroom was a bed-frame with a bare mattress on it and a filthy grey sheet huddled in one corner.  We were stunned.  The tenant appeared to be middle class, educated, and ostensibly held a good government job.  We let him know that we had visited the house, without specifying our dismay, and he vacated it shortly thereafter.
 
Elena’s compulsion always stayed with me, however, and I started observing others, and their obsession with things.  Take my parents, for example.  Every time I went to visit them, it was my challenge and excitement to pull down the rickety ladder from the trapdoor in the ceiling, and go up into the loft to sort through their long-held possessions.  I used to disappear up there for hours, looking into boxes, reading old documents and letters, and of course looking at albums of photographs, some of my own childhood, but others going back to my great grandparents’ day.  My mother would invariably stand at the foot of the steps and call apprehensively for me to come down.  I usually managed to persuade them to get rid of just a few papers, an obsolete typewriter, or one of their ancient, real leather, heavy as lead,  suitcases.  As for my mother’s pantry, well, she had tins and jars of food By Appointment to His Majesty King George V, who died in 1936 and it was now the sixties.
 
Personally, I’m not really a hoarder, except for books.  I cull them regularly, and think I’m doing well to get rid of perhaps ten out of a thousand or more.  Lately, in view of a hurricane we experienced in Texas, I am viewing my possessions in a rather more clinical light.  I’m purging myself of geegaws, my grandparents’ china and silver, mementos of family vacations.  The more I purge, the lighter and more liberated I feel. 
 
But the truth is, we all own much more than we need.  In fact, we are sinking under our possessions.  There are entire islands of trash floating on the seas, while at the same time many of us go hungry and unclothed.  I firmly believe that recycling is the way to go.  Clearing away the outer clutter might help us to clear out the inner clutter of our minds too, for surely the one reflects the other.  The greater the insecurity the bigger the need for possessions to compensate.  Our garages are full of broken-down things we’re “fixin’ to fix” because we might need them one day, projects that “we’ll get around to one day”.  In the meantime, energy stagnates around them.
 
Everything is energy, and where it is stagnant, which is to say where it accumulates in piles in our garages, or in savings accounts, or in parts of our body, disease or imbalance can set in.
Energy needs to flow, in society and in our bodies. Money is energy, and like our blood or lungs, it has to flow, to breathe in and out, in order to keep the social body healthy.  I believe that our unconscious need to hoard material possessions signifies our unarticulated fear that we might end up one day with nothing. 
 
We also confuse wanting with needing.  We endlessly shop until we drop for things, but material things can never satisfy our hunger for the meaning and fulfillment we crave, which is more a hunger in the soul than anything else, an indicator of our inner poverty.  Without self-reflection this process remains a mystery, unconscious and unacknowledged.
 
For sanity to be restored, I believe we need to return to the more spiritual values of kindness, generosity, community, sharing, love, respect and humility.  Whether we are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist or Agnostic, the value of our belief system is only validated by the way we treat one another, not by facile, empty words.
 
Whether we know it or not, like it or not, we are challenged to be active participants in the ongoing battle between darkness and light, chaos versus order, materialism versus spirituality.  We need to look at the shadow side of our personality, acknowledge it, and integrate it, painful though that may be, knowing that as we do so, we are withdrawing our own shadow from the great collective shadow, and in this way contributing to healing and peace in our society, and by extension, the world.