With a vitriolic flair of the nostrils, and a sudden panic and passion in the voice that seems only possible in this country when race is involved, my fellow middle and upper-middle class white citizens have worked themselves into quite a froth over this so-called immigration problem. Many accountants and dentists have suddenly turned social and legal experts. And how odd, and telling about the character of us as individuals and a society, that this is the issue to which we have turned our attention and copious powers of analysis and debate - as opposed to some other worthy social issue. Like, as an example, the war in Iraq. Where people are getting unnecessarily shot.

Fox News, and the legions of other conservative pundits clogging the airwaves of the 'liberal' media, has framed this debate as a legal issue carrying dire social consequences. The argument goes something like this: the U.S. has laws on the books, one sub-set of the population (legal citizens) is obliged to follow said laws, another sub-set (illegal immigrants) is not obliged to follow those laws, an immoral double standard which allows the illegal sub-set to grow unabated in numbers, flooding the country with undocumented workers who are bringing their families over to take advantage of our school and medical systems, which is sapping our collective resources and weakening our society and economy.

Though there are gaping holes and counter-arguments to this basic premise, it is more interesting to note that this logic is being directed at illegal immigrants. Not toward the powerful legal citizens running this country who also benefit from a legal double-standard - a double standard that allows them to aggressively pillage our country's assets.

Surely everyone knows by now that the President and his Cabinet fabricated reasons to drag us into the war in Iraq. They knowingly, and strategically, lied to Congress, lied to the U.N., lied to the Press, lied to the American people to justify a war plan they had concocted long before the excuses they cite (9/11, etc.) even happened. The war, quite obviously, was undertaken to secure greater control of the area's natural resources, establish permanent bases to ensure long-term domination of these resources, thereby further enriching the power and wealth of the private oil and defense industries to whom the Administration has such intimate ties and connections.

As a result of this fabricated war, more than 2,000 U.S. military personnel have been killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, upwards of $500 billion has and will be drained from our collective resources, and the safety of Americans everywhere has been compromised because of the radicalization of the entire Muslim World (more than 1 billion strong) in response to our rash policies. What do we call people who are responsible for the deaths of thousands, who endanger thousands more, who pilfer resources from others and keep the booty for themselves?

Last time I checked, murder and robbery were both illegal in the U.S. Most citizens in this country are bound by laws barring both. And yet there is a sub-set of society who seems not to be bound by these laws. This is the very double-standard being cited in the media by legal experts and dentists alike. Yet we are deciding to focus our shock and outrage regarding this double standard on the illegal immigrants pocketing $10 per hour - not our own leadership systematically assembling huge, illegal vats of power and wealth.

Perhaps this issue of illegal immigration is relevant. But if it is, what about the war in Iraq? What about our own leadership - responsible for the deaths of thousands, the endangerment of thousands more, and the sequestering of billions of public dollars for the enrichment of familial ties and allies within private industry. Who would a balanced, emotionless analysis name as the true social parasites weakening our economy and threatening the fabric of our social and national soul?

While these macro social and geo-political issues are interesting in and of themselves to examine, it is the interwoven micro elements that are of more pressing concern for the yoga practitioner. For while the macro (society at large) and the micro (individuals) are always reflections of the same substance, we experience and express life and existence in the micro. And since yoga is a subject to learn about life and existence, what is it that these issues of illegal immigration, and non-issues of holding our leadership accountable to the same logic, tell us about ourselves?

Our minds and egos have very little interest in critically examining themselves. These crude aspects of the self are much more interested in justifying and reinforcing the value and efficacy of our chosen thoughts and identities. It starts at birth. We are born into a relentless, unforgiving world. We are confused about ourselves, about reality, about the nature and worth of our lives, and so we become insecure. This insecurity is unappealing. So we begin to seek out and construct walls of security around us.

We choose a personality. We choose a set of beliefs and values to bolster us up, which we then reinforce and sanctify with rituals and the gathering of other individuals around us who hold similar values and beliefs. All in an effort to fortify a righteous sense of self we've created to fend off the original fear of insecurity and insignificance. And even though this veneer of protection is extraordinarily thin, or perhaps because the veneer is so thin, we attach ourselves to this persona with a reckless allegiance - it being the barricade between a well-constructed sense of safety, and the terrifying carnal fear that is its life-long nemesis, namely isolation and emptiness.

So why would someone be interested in self-analysis? What would happen to our secure sense of self and righteousness if we discovered that our behaviors, and more to the point their consequences, proved diametrically opposite to whom we've projected ourselves to be? This is why we spend so much time talking about others. Our heads are filled up with ideas and notions and criticisms regarding the thoughts and behaviors of others. Yet we have almost no knowledge of self. No knowledge of the bias in our own thinking. No knowledge of the dire consequences of our own beliefs and actions. It's much easier, and much more useful to the insecure mind, to set ourselves apart from people we see as different and un-useful to our sense of self. Because through that process of separation, we strengthen our own definition of being in relationship to what we say we are not.

This is how we end up holding other people accountable to values and laws to which we ourselves do not even stand up. If this analysis is hard to understand or reconcile with, we can simply re-direct our attention to the macro. Where we see the micro woven into its more visible fabric - the societies we, as individuals, have created. But we must be certain to choose to analyze the society from which we come. Not some 'other' one, whose flaws would be easy to see.

I am American. I am a white male from the upper-middle class. The privileged class. What I see now in my culture is this discussion of illegal immigration. We have fixed our gaze on the 'other'. While conveniently ignoring ourselves. (Just like we do as individuals.) Why do we work ourselves into a frenzy over the presence and behavior of 'other' people when we have created an infinite number of other, more pressing problems ourselves? Why do we get suddenly so concerned about the possibility of another group coming in to sap our resources when our own leaders collude to kill, rob, steal, and misinform us and the rest of the world in ways that are infinitely more destructive than the relatively benign effects of illegal immigration?

The answer to this macro question is the same as the answer to the micro. We have created and projected an image of who we are not only as individuals, but also as a nation. We are fearful and insecure as a society, so we have created a nation to help protect us. We project images of what this nation is and will be: land of the free, home of the brave, equality for all, endless opportunity, etc. And we sanctify and reinforce these images with our own collective rituals - the Fourth of July, the national anthem, veneration of the military, scores of movies, books, and television programs that so glorify America that to speak out against its individual policies and insipidly violent history has now become virtually blasphemous. Or, as it is called today, unpatriotic.

But the truth is, many of our past and present national behaviors and policies stand in direct opposition to the images of self we have worked so hard to create. Which is precisely why we avoid looking at ourselves, turning instead to the behaviors of others. Like, today, the illegal immigrants. Or, yesterday, the Iraqis, the Russians, the Communists, the Vietnamese peasant farmers scratching out a simple living in a jungle 6,000 miles away, the Socialists, Suffragists, Unionists, uppity Negroes, Confederates, or the 'savage' Indians daring to stand up to protect their homeland against the strange new immigrants churning their way across the continent, intent on slaughtering, caging, conquering every wild animal, river, and mountain in their way. It's always been someone else. Never, of course, us.

Which is all nonsense, of course. The only battles that can and must be fought are with the demons in our own minds and hearts. But these battles prove too terrifying. Generation after generation, we choose to ignore our own terrorist selves, our own violence, our own prejudice, our own dogmas, our own racism, our own lack of democracy, our own tyranny, our own policies and beliefs sapping the collective resources we now claim threatened by illegal immigration. We would rather adhere to our images of self than reconcile with the substance of that self.

But as societies and individuals, we will never truly find peace until we reckon honestly with this substance of our own, actual selves. Until we turn our abundant capacity to analyze others toward our own less than perfect reflections, we will forever be stuck in delusion and fear - thereby creating the very reality we so wanted to avoid in the first place. Imagine if the 500 billion plus dollars wasted in Iraq was re-invested to fight the problems and poverties in our own society. Imagine if the wealth and power being illegally funneled and further concentrated into the hands of a ravenous, ever shrinking group of men was forced back out into society where it belongs. Would we be stretched so thin as to make illegal immigration such a froth inducing, pressing concern?

It is true that there are certain groups and forces that pose a threat to society, and they need to be acknowledged and faced. In the same way that WE are that threat to other groups of people and societies, and also need to be faced. (e.g. We stated that Iraq might have weapons of mass destruction that they might someday choose to use against us, so we actually flew over there and actually engaged in the very use of said weapons of mass destruction we so passionately denounced.) Until we admit and reconcile with our own threatening nature, we will never be able to accurately gauge the intention and behaviors of others. It is that simple. Now, with the globally recognized debacle in Iraq raging in our laps, is the opportunity to stand up and face our fears head on. Now is the time to find out who we actually are as individuals and as a society. Giving blind allegiance to our self-image causes and perpetuates the cycle of suffering - for ourselves, and for others.