Our original earthly vocation was and remains  as caretakers of the Earth. She who feeds us also needs feeding and caring. Our mutual respect and recognition of the divine spark in her and each other helps to maintain the cohesiveness of our collective sovereign authority. Sovereignty is akin to the word "sacred"; it's an unalienable right given to humankind by the creator; it is not to be abused or controlled. Sovereignty is within, and manifests itself without. 
     According to the U.S. Constitution, we as a people are collectively the ultimate sovereign authority; the government was created by the people and is held in place by the Constitution. In other words, the constitution does not give us any rights; it guarantees our God-given rights. It also keeps a check on government to make sure it does not overreach the bounds of its authority. 
     There are movements in the country right now, such as the patriot movement, in which people express a lot of anger over what we have allowed to happen to our country, our Bill of Rights and the Constitution. This mirrors our feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy. We have to take responsibility for the fact that we have been asleep and have in essence allowed this to happen. Jefferson said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, yet we are a nation of complacent folks who would rather spend our evenings glued to the television instead of reading and educating ourselves. 
     Jean Jacques Rousseau said something about sovereignty in chapter two of The Social Contract: "Sovereignty is indivisible, and for the selfsame reason by which I have shown that it is an unalienable right, a given will is either general or it is not. It is either the will of the whole people, in which case it is an act of sovereignty and makes law, or it is the will of a fraction of the people only, in which case it is merely a particular will or an act of magistracy, or at the very most a decree." He also says, "Where therefore the people make a flat promise to obey, it thereby decrees its own dissolution and divests itself of the character of a people. The instant there is an overlord there is no longer a sovereign, which is to say that the body politic is then and there destroyed." So when people give over their power to another who is not God, then their freedom is dissolved. 
     I think of a scene in Out On a Limb in which Shirley MacLaine was standing at the ocean with her mentor. She had difficulty at first, but finally she outstretched her arms and said, "I am God." A lot of people would think that is a very conceited thing to say. They are still externalizing God and are not taking their place in creation. We are made in the image of God and therefore we carry a spark of the divine. In other words, we are God in essence. We are made of the same stuff of the universe. So we are always sovereign and sacred, and there is no division between ourselves and God. 
     Over the years there has been much confusion because people have not understood this. Jesus of Nazareth said, "Who are the brokenhearted and the captives but those who suffer daily and hourly in this wretched state of society through the instrumentality of the tyrants and impostors who abuse and shackle their understanding." This is a quote from The Occult Life of Jesus of Nazareth, a channeled tome from Alexander Smythe, copyright 1905. This basically means that if we don't learn from history we're bound to repeat it. If we subjugate ourselves to anything other than natural law, or God's law, then we become slaves to tyrants and their whims. 
     This is one of the reasons why Jesus was so persecuted in his time. He was allowing people to take back their power, but the powers-that-were at that time did not like that at all. The issue has always basically come down to money. My interpretation of money is as an energy and a symbol for love. How we love ourselves is how open we are to abundance in the world. Over the years money has become a symbol of power, lust and greed; people allow themselves to be controlled by it. When our money was based on gold and silver-something of substance-outside powers could not manipulate its value. A gold coin was a gold coin across the world. A troy ounce would always buy a certain amount of goods and services. Paper money, however, is worthless of itself, and can be regulated at will. This is another way of controlling the populace. 
     We can regain our sovereignty in a spiritual sense. According to an old Chinese saying, "A noble ancestry cannot guarantee a noble character." We can all be kings and queens in our own mind and heart if we allow ourselves to take on the mantle of greatness that is within us. We can all be whoever we want to be if we think and feel that way in our hearts. There's no reason for us to go through our lives feeling as though we are victims of society. Yes, society has become very gross and dense, but that doesn't mean we need to follow suit. We need to spend a little more time in reading and contemplation, more time with our families and the things that are really important, and not use outside distractions as an excuse to externalize our experience. 
     The original Thirteenth Amendment was referred to as the "Titles of Nobility Amendment." It threatened the monarchy of England by effectively shutting them out from ever participating in the new government and wheedling their way into positions of power. Titles of nobility included lawyers because of the addition of "Esquire" behind their name. (The American Bar Association is an affiliate of the International Bar Ass., which is located in England.) The founding fathers never wanted titles of nobility, including lawyers or bankers, to be in any political position of power. 
     This was the impetus for the War of 1812. The British created a war to make sure that amendment was never put into place. They looted and burned as many depositories of that original document as possible. To cover up its disappearance, the Fourteenth Amendment, added after the Civil War, was split in two. The new Thirteenth Amendment is about slavery. The original thirteen colonies as well as some subsequent states incorporated the original Thirteenth Amendment to their constitutions. This is a relatively unknown piece of history. The original amendment would have been instrumental in maintaining our sovereignty and autonomy from England. If reinstated, it would have major consequences in re-organizing the government, which is now run by lawyers. 
     Today's law schools focus on statutory law as primary. Contracts and procedures are everything-what papers to file when. Equity and admiralty and other forms of law that are used in today's courts all follow common law. If you get back to the fundamental law on which the U.S. Constitution was based, you will have a much greater understanding of your rights as a citizen and as a natural person in the world. Imagine an inverted pyramid with all the statutes, public laws, admiralty and equity law at the top. All of this rests on a golf tee at the very bottom, which is fundamental law. If you remove the tee, the whole thing would crash down. But the essence of natural law always remains because it's a constant in the universe. 
     More and more people are willing to be self-responsible. I believe that has a lot to do with the collective consciousness on the planet right now. As we move toward the end of the millennium, people are naturally feeling a sense of excitement and/or anxiety. In my observation, from family to business, people are choosing either to become more entrenched in or apathetic to the current political society, or to be more self-responsible by seeing how their thoughts and feelings are helping to manifest their reality. 
     In The Art of War, Master Sun Tsu said, "Therefore, when you induce others to construct a formation while you yourself are formless, then you are concentrated while the opponent is divided." If people take a really good look at themselves and do the inner work, they embrace their own formlessness. They let go of past behavioral patterns that no longer serve them. They become more malleable and more able to embrace their own creation. Putting effort into maintaining the status quo takes a tremendous amount of energy, and doesn't leave much room for creativity. 
     If you listen to CNN or National Public Radio, you hear the word "sovereignty" more and more. Five years ago it was a relatively unused term. But now, countries are standing up for their sovereignty. They don't want "UN peacekeeping missions" to come and tell them what to do or how to regulate their internal affairs. People are asserting their right to be sovereign and secure in their papers and effects. However, America is getting a bad name around the world because some countries look upon us as the power behind threats to their sovereignty, via the UN. 
     We need a certain amount of detachment to maintain our sovereignty and our center in the world right now because there's so much change, and so many seemingly chaotic forces at work. In The Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra says "In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty. In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe." This refers us back to an inner reference, an inner responsibility for what we create. Right now, the 3-D world looks to be in a pretty sad state of affairs. An understanding of fundamental laws and our right to maintain ourselves freely in society is important. But this is best balanced with detachment and an inner resourcing mechanism. 
     I feel we're reaching that "hundredth monkey" phase collectively, and are consciously embracing the idea of sacred spirituality and sovereignty. I also believe that women are going to take a big part in the future-not in an either/or scenario, but working in tandem with our brothers to create the kind of world we would like to live in. Marianne Williamson says in A Return to Love, "Love is our fuel. It gives grace to progress and blessings to our will for power. We fail in our deepest responsibility to God and to ourselves each time we fail to declare love and act on love and to witness love. As women we must keep this message alive. We must understand its importance and relate it to others, whispering in the dark and shouting it in the light of day." I embrace that passage because I feel that a lot of creative energy lies in women. It is up to us to show the way with regards to love-loving ourselves, moving past our shame and guilt, and embracing our power to create. We can be and show the way in that respect, embracing our own sovereignty and sacred space. 
     Power without love just doesn't work. Marianne goes on to say, "It's time for women to enter the worldly mainstream, but not in such a way that we contribute to the power that produces without meaning or strives forward without love of humanity in mind. . . . The love in our hearts is the power that matters." This is a free will universe and a place of ultimate choice. 
     The middle way is neither this nor that; it's neither angry about the way things are nor embracing of them. A third reality would allow people to have the freedom of choice while harmonizing with the universe, with what could be seen as the greatest choice. This is a win-win situation for all concerned; it is the way of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, and others. It is the way of the masters. Some people use scriptural passages to back up their stance of "us against them." But Jesus taught us to "love thy neighbor" and embrace our own divinity. He taught us to internally reference our outward experience, i.e., "Let he who hath no sin cast the first stone." It comes down to responsibility versus victimhood. It's fine to create outreach programs to help those people who seem less privileged than ourselves, but at the same time it would be most beneficial not to have an emotional attachment to the outcome. 
     People who are ready to raise their guns and kill to maintain freedom grossly misunderstand freedom. If you internally reference your sovereignty and your rights, you realize that you have them no matter what. You are a spark of the divine; you don't have to go out and fight for what you already have-"been there, done that." Just assert what you have, in a loving fashion. Whatever your circumstance, realize that there's a reason for everything that happens. We draw our experiences to us by the way we move through life, by what we focus on and what we attract in the form of experience for our own growth. Life can be seen as one lesson after another. If we see it that way, it can be very rewarding: How free can we allow ourselves to be? 
    In everyone's lifetime, whether born with a silver spoon in our mouth or under less than ideal circumstances, at one point or another we ask ourselves, "Is this all there is?" I heartily believe that at some point in each of our lives we're touched by the choice to open the door to self-responsibility or to ignore it. If we ignore it, we choose to remain in victimhood. We can go so far into denial and numbness that it becomes next to impossible to imagine any other way of life. Sometimes we have to sink to the very pit of despair before we choose to come out of it. 
     We are all inextricably intertwined in the universe. As one goes, so go the rest. When we choose to better ourselves each day through meditation, prayer, introspection, or just a walk on God's green Earth, then everyone who comes into our private universe feels a little freer to be who they are.