It has always been difficult, perhaps almost impossible, to gain a true perspective and balanced sense of reality or accuracy around current events and ongoing issues.

• Details of any event can be given out or totally withheld. Who makes that choice, and why?
• Even when details are made public there is no guarantee of accuracy or depth. Are only selected people informed? For what reason? The traps are many.
• Decisions are constantly being made by someone about what does or does not constitute news for any country, community or group. How much of the available information is given out, how much withheld/omitted? What are the motives underlying such selectivity?
• Whose perspective is it, who pays them, where are their loyalties, and therefore how much and what type of bias or deliberate spin is it given in the dissemination? Why?
• How discriminating or gullible are those who report events? What are their world views, their conditionings and prejudices, and how spiritually conscious are they?

Even fifty years ago we had yet to really wake up to the fact that we lived in one world. Reportage of events was relatively local, limited, unashamedly biased and, compared with twenty-first century expectations, incredibly slow. One could perhaps have expected that with vastly improved communications, instant access to background and current research material, and a far greater sense of global interaction, we would be that much closer to accuracy and thoughtful indepth coverage of events and global issues. But are we?

Perhaps segments of the serious press, radio and world wide web come closest, but media bias, and downright irresponsibility, is huge – either because of political expedience and pressure (such as that consistently exerted in dictatorships, totalitarian countries or in zealously loyal and isolated countries like the USA), or because the commercial pressure to gain and hold viewers overrides objectivity, balance, diversity of viewpoint, thoughtfulness and insight. It is sobering to realise the extremely narrow source base of most of our news. It is even more sobering to be confronted by the fact that in a very real way the world we live in is created by the incredibly few people who control that source base, and their agendas.

In this ‘instant world’, media coverage is in most instances designed to hit ‘breaking’’ news briefly and then move on. As a result follow-up and continuity are almost non-existent. Though we rarely pause to remind ourselves of it, many extremely significant world events simply pass us by, or are given some type of spin. This may be the fault of the disseminating voice; more often it occurs at source.

Even at a relatively straightforward superficial level this is so. Take the Iraq war. While news from the front was plentiful and instant, its source was almost inevitably ‘embedded reporters’. Such ‘embedding’ virtually guaranteed that we were fed the coalition ‘party line’ on events. The persuasive element in such reportage is often almost blatantly obvious, and while at times it is essential that the emotional response of the reporter comes through clearly, at other times such persuasion is simply manipulative. Often without our being in any way aware of it, someone has enlisted our support, sympathy, anger, solidarity, desire for revenge, loyalty, or gratitude.

If this is the reality for even the most ‘in your face’ and seemingly straightforward situations, ponder on how much more difficult it has always been to gain some kind of accurate appreciation of the deeper significance of individual world events and issues – to perceive the spiritual or inner side of happenings, trends and crises – as they form part of the ever-changing kaleidoscope of ongoing global unfoldment.

A short time ago, as scientific materialism reached its zenith and cynicism about things spiritual climbed to an all-time high, this was probably because virtually nobody interpreted current events from a spiritual perspective or saw that events even possessed an inner side.

Now the problem, rather than being one of scarcity, has suddenly become one of over-supply and even satiation in some areas as current issues have begun suddenly to be viewed and interpreted by many in religious terms. Note, I deliberately say religious, rather than spiritual. Religious interpretations are everywhere, and the internet, in particular, has gone crazy as myriads of exclusivist religious groups, cults etc push their own interpretations, angles and conflicting, but often disguised or hidden, agendas. This is particularly true for those, of whatever religious persuasion, with extremist, fundamentalist, jihad or ‘end-time’ mentality. All of these individuals or groups align with outmoded Piscean perspectives and all espouse solutions which are no longer valid as we move into very new times. Sensing an imminent loss of control they are, without exception, desperate to aggressively push their cause.