Transformational; Spiritual
Release Date: September 21, 2022
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
In War in the Hearts of Men, Eli Coberly details his lifelong quest to understand the Maya culture and its impact on the present. The author shares his discovery of the artistry of stone-carved symbols on the heels of his extensive travels to both Central and South America. In this intimate and inspirational text, Coberly contrasts contemporary life with the past as he explores spiritual rituals that formed the framework of the ancient Maya culture. War in the Hearts of Men, which identifies and interprets the historical ideologies that suppressed the feminine, displayed the cultural imbalances caused by rampant colonialism, and resulted in the subjugation of Native populations over many centuries, furthers the journey of enlightenment sought by those wise enough to learn from the past.
Excerpt
In
August of that year, I headed back to Raleigh, NC to
visit my Army friends as the United States finally withdrew from Afghanistan. I
sat in my seat on the plane, feeling a jolt to my solar plexus and a pain in my
rib.
I
often meditate on flights to relax. When I meditated on this flight, I
remembered both the experience of the beating of my solar plexus and the cosmic
two by four reminders.
Winston
Churchill once said, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to
repeat it.”
The
cosmic two by four counseled me to remember the past and to speak my sovereign
truth. In my personal life I had leased a property that was about to be
repossessed, because the lessor did not own it. I was about to lose most of my
retirement, for which I’d worked for more than half my life. My business
partner asked me to give him everything so he could succeed, and I could lose.
He was like every other large man I had
interacted with. He was in it for himself. He viewed me as inferior, because of
my smaller size and because of my interest in love, friendship and camaraderie
above money.
Whether
true or false, I learned unequivocally several times during my life that large
white men can do what they want in business. Business is the modern-day version
of violent slavery. And if I wanted to succeed in that world, walking away in
peace was the best strategy besides using violence as a means to an end.
The
cultural irony has always been, I could simply destroy a man who rips me off
with my bare hands or carve him up with a knife just like the government taught
me to do. I learned that passive violence is just as bad, because it is
justified by the lies of society. The emotional pain of this truth was
manifested in my third Chakra of the ego as a lack of willpower. The
opportunity for change was at the forefront of my mind.
The
next day I sat in a Suburban with my fellow Airborne Infantry vets and the
father of one, a former Green Beret trainer. Before we left for the Dead and Company show, he put his Glock
with a high-capacity magazine and two ounces of psilocybin mushrooms in the
fridge. I guess he wanted to keep things on ice. Guys with this kind of knowledge are never
over it, always perceiving the next threat in an unconventional way.
Thunder
and lightning shook the earth and illuminated the sky. The rain came down as we
sat in the vehicle, waiting to get through traffic. All of us were in agreement
about a premature withdrawal in Afghanistan. Not because we wished for more
war, but because of the waste of our brother’s efforts and lives.
The
mushrooms started to kick in for Bob Senior, and we talked about the political
climate in the US being ripe for a coup d'état. He saw weakness and a lack of
follow through. The troops he’d trained had gone to Afghanistan to train the
locals to fight the Taliban and win with unconventional warfare.
“They were on target in the beginning,” he
said.
“What
happened?” I asked.
“Well,
it’s simple. The US, just like the Russians and Chinese, wanted the vast
resources under Afghanistan. The Pentagon didn’t seem to think that winning so
quickly would be the best or quickest way to the cool one trillion. We thought
we could get to it in less than ten years by being diplomatic about war. Boy,
were we wrong!”
About the Author
Eli Coberly is a world traveler and seeker of truth through adventure. At seventeen, he left his small Pacific Northwest town to fulfill his dream of becoming an Army paratrooper. At twenty, he was honorably discharged and began his search for a new dream. Eli’s writing has taken him worldwide to explore a few of the bigger questions of our human existence, and his prophetic worldview combines military service, counterculture, and the anthropology and archeology of the world’s religious symbols. He has studied the migration of the indigenous and ingested their medicine, absorbed their art, and embodied their cosmovision. A yoga therapist, Eli has been a student of yoga for over a decade. When he isn’t writing or practicing yoga, Eli can be found examining Tibetan Buddhist tradition, sitting in ceremony with Maya priests, and traversing caves deep in the Belize jungle. He currently resides in Northern California.
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