US Special Forces: First (New) Earth Battalion for World Peace?

Published Wednesday, 14th March, 2012 | By Susan AKA Peacefull

Welcome to those who will dare to think the unthinkable,
the awakened warriors, and you evolutionary scouts.
You are in good company.
I want to thank all the “players” in our network of scouts
for their work then and now as we continue into a new century
striving to bring this world of ours into the vibrance it deserves.
I encourage you others of similar mind to read the manual
and accept the far-reaching challenges that fit for you.
WE are all at the shift point ….make your move!
—Jim Channon

I walked into a secondhand bookshop, I had a feeling to go in, not sure what I was looking for. I found a DVD called ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’. It starred George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. It was about a Special Forces unit that used psychic skills and human potential based on the state of being as a means of preventing war and gathering intelligence. To my surprise the movie is based on a true story about the First Earth Battalion proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, a U.S. soldier who had served in Vietnam. His idea was for a new military to be organized along New Age lines. He speaks of states of being rather than states of doing. To listen to him speak of his story go to http://www.firstearthbattalion.org/?q=node/6

This is about the military stepping out of the box and seeing differently. I have to say I was very interested to hear words of love and peace and developing the Jedi within, or fighting the inner wars to create success in the outer realm. Of course this is an accurate depiction of how spirituality works, it is advanced thinking but could easily be discarded as New Age fluff. What I liked about Jim Channon was his courage in creating a special unit of this nature and embracing the ancient mystery arts as a means of enabling soldiers to deal with chaos. I can think of no better time to implement such as strategy as 2012 and beyond. Moreover, it can only be effective if it is undertaken with positive, or what is termed, pure intent. If officers decide to use it as a dark art, it will indeed return to them.

I have to say I have great respect for the US military for having the courage to undertake such a project. It made me reflect deeply on the fact that many soldiers face death and may well have mystical experiences, as did Jim Channon. It would be extraordinary if the US Military seriously took on the mantle of peacemakers. It is definitely about dealing with the war within. If they can come to a shared wisdom on this, they will never experience a Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan again. They will see clearly how important their actions are, their intentions and the energy they project at those they have imagined as the ‘enemy’, to find it only turns back on the aggressor. Some call it Karma or if you wish to use solid ground, try the law of cause and effect. That is, in my view, the spiritual lesson of the Bush Administration. It is important that World Peace is the mission now with genuine intent on behalf of all people and the planet. The world is experiencing climate change, water shortages, top soil losses, melting ice caps, projected increases in economic and ecological collapse and increased refugee flows. The military could serve a vital function and initiate a new form of leadership which serves humanity rather than oppressing others with the objective of winning unwinable wars. Our world has changed and the public globally won’t accept any country dominating anymore. That is evident from all the public protests around the globe and the use of social media to exercise their voice. We are awakening to a New Earth and perhaps this New Earth Army is one of the ways forward.

Here is an overview from Wikipedia of this very surprising unit. Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Earth_Battalion.

The First Earth Battalion was the name proposed by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, a U.S. soldier who had served in Vietnam, for his idea of a new military to be organized along New Age lines.

[hide]

Principles

LTC Channon believes the Army can be the principal moral and ethical basis on which politics can harmonize in the name of the Earth. Since “Earthkind” has grown from pack to village, to tribe, to territory, and then to nation, LTC Channon envisions going from nation to planet next, and thereby declares the First Earth Battalion’s primary allegiance to the planet.^[1] Making the planet whole requires the ethical use of force based on the collective conscience. In his operations field manual titled Evolutionary Tactics,^[2] LTC Channon lists some of the important missions of the Earth Battalion as:

Urban pioneers
Counter hostage force
Disaster rescue
Eco pioneers
Animal rescue

The First Earth Battalion will organize itself informally: uniforms without uniformity, structure without status, and unity powered by diversity, since its members will be multicultural, with each race contributing to “rainbow power.”^[3] As a guiding principle, members of the First Earth Battalion seek nondestructive methods of conflict resolution because their first loyalty is to the planet.^[4]

The Warrior Monk Ethos

Service members of the First Earth Battalion would practice meditation, yogic cat stretches and primal screams to attain battle-readiness, and use tui na or shiatsu as battlefield first aid. First Earth Battalion trainees would learn to fast for a week drinking only juice and then eat only nuts and grains for a month. They would be able to: fall in love with everyone, realize the different paths of spirit, perceive the auras of living organisms, attain the power to pass through objects such as walls (phasing), bend metal by using the power of the mind (i.e. psychokinesis), walk on fire, operate based on spirit communications (e.g. mediumship), become a peacemaker, actually change a violent pattern in the world (e.g. the Maharishi Effect), organize a tree plant with kids, calculate faster than a computer, control their heart rate—including making it stop—with no ill effects, intuit information from the past (retrocognition) or future (precognition), have out-of-body experiences, live off nature for twenty days, be 90%+ a vegetarian, and be able to intuit other people’s thoughts and feelings via telepathy^[5] LTC Channon coined the term “warrior monk” for these new service members of the First Earth Battalion,^[6] which is anyone who has the presence, service and dedication of a monk and the absolute skill and precision of a warrior. In “The Warrior Monk’s Vision,” Channon imagined an Army made up of awakened warriors.^[7] Channon’s ideal warrior monk would be proficient at every level of force.^[8] The warrior monk will learn different self-defense systems of martial arts (such as taiji, aikido, etc.), which are based on the notion of using the force of their attackers against themselves. To alleviate negative stressors and promote healing in self and others, the warrior monk will employ various affirmation, relaxation and visualization techniques, as well as a number of methods like yoga^[9] qigong and reiki^[10] to help strengthen and improve the mind/body connection with spirit.

The Credo

According to the book Mind Wars by Ronald McRae, each member of the First Earth Battalion is sworn to uphold the credo of “high commandos and guerrilla gurus“:

I have the capacity and therefore the duty to contribute to the development of myself, my associates, and our planet, simultaneously, now!
I will organize a self-supporting high commando group that will create and perform evolutionary breakthrough actions on behalf of people and planet. One people, one planet.
I will then pass on this concept to others who are capable of generating further self-organizing commando teams.
I will await the time when my group can connect naturally with others at higher and higher levels of awareness and performance—the Natural Guard.

SAMURAI

One highly emphasized teaching of the First Earth Battalion is known as the New Age Synthesis for a Samurai:^[11]

Seek your own spiritual path of God.
Actively improve your physical condition.
Master mental self control for combat.
Understand others.
Reinforce team interdependence.
Actively serve people and planet.
Indulge in happiness and humor.

Earth Prayer

In the operations field manual Evolutionary Tactics, it states that members of the First Earth Battalion will practice non-denominational techniques for spiritual bonding. One spiritual practice of the First Earth Battalion is called the Earth Prayer:^[12]

Mother Earth… my life support system… as a soldier… I must drink your blue water… live inside your red clay and eat your green skin.

I pray… my boots will always kiss your face and my footsteps match your heartbeat.

Carry my body through space and time… you are my connection to the Universe… and all that comes after.

I am yours and you are mine.

I salute you.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

According to the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (ISBN 0-330-37548-2) by journalist Jon Ronson, Channon spent time in the seventies with many of the people in California credited with starting the human potential movement, and subsequently wrote an operations manual for a First Earth Battalion.^[13] This manual was a 125-page mixture of drawings, graphs, maps, polemical essays and point-by-point redesigns of every aspect of military life. In LTC Channon’s First Earth Battalion, the new battlefield uniform would include pouches for ginseng regulators, divining tools, food stuffs to enhance night vision, and a loud speaker that would automatically emit “indigenous music and words of peace.”^[14] Warrior monks will carry the best equipment modern technology can produce into the battlefield: lightweight laser stun guns, hallucinogen mortars, acupuncture kits, dowsing rods for locating hidden tunnels and mines, etc. Rather than using bullets and munitions, Channon envisaged how this new force would attempt to first win the hearts and minds of the enemy by: using positive vibrations, carrying “symbolic animals” of peace—such as baby lambs—into hostile countries, greeting them with “sparkly eyes,” and then gently place the lambs on the ground and give the enemy “an automatic hug.”^[15] If these measures were not enough to pacify the enemy, members would employ the use of unconventional but non-lethal weapons^[16] to subdue them. Lethal force was to be a last resort. Intuition would be consulted first and foremost by battalion members.^[17] A movie based on the book—released in Autumn 2009—starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, retitled the First Earth Battalion as the New Earth Army.

New directions

A number of Channon’s ideas on training were investigated by the Pentagon, and the First Earth Battalion had over 800 officers and bureaucrats on its mailing list, including eight generals and an undersecretary of defense.^[18] Some ideas proposed in the writings of Channon later found their way into military procedures for psychological warfare. Within weeks of the publication of the First Earth Battalion operations manual in the spring of 1979, soldiers throughout the U.S. Army began seriously trying to implement his ideas. One example was when the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) began developing its own remote viewing program in 1979, which was a parapsychological intelligence gathering method that had already been experimentally tested at Stanford Research Institute since 1972 by parapsychologists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff. Channon’s principles may have even contributed to the Army slogan Be All You Can Be.^[19] A Special Operations experimental team, dubbed “Jedi Warriors,” after the Star Wars craze, was trained in a wide array of Eastern oriental martial arts and meditative techniques, combined with strenuous physical training programs.^[20] Ronson specifically cites the First Earth Battalion manual’s proposal to use music to effect “psychic mind-change” as one.^[21]