Archive for November, 2009

I’m always fascinated, awed actually, by synchronicity…the  simultaneous or corresponding occurrence of seemingly unrelated events that turn out to be profoundly related after all.   I’d like to share one.

This week I read “Cosmos of the Soul” by Patricia Cori.  Its a “channeled” book about the future of the Earth and all life living on the planet.  In it, Ms. Cori speaks about the “Earth’s (or Gaia’s) Desert Period” as a challenging transitional period we are about to live through.  What that looks like is not well-defined, although how we should prepare for it and what our roles in it will be, is.

This morning, I was listening to a radio interview with Bruce Feiler, author of “America’s Prophet.”   Apparently, the book is an historical look at the teachings from the story of Moses and how they parallel with the story of the Pilgrims who colonized America.

And it hit me.

In an instant I understood what Particia Cori’s channeled message was about.

As the Israelites went out from slavery and bondage to Egypt…as the Pilgrims went out from the slavery and bondage to a King… so are We about to go out from slavery and bondage to a government no longer in service to its people and our own addiction to raping the planet for personal satisfaction and gain.

The one thing that all three situations have in common is materialism.  The Egyptian consciousness, and the Israelites in service to it, were obsessed with gratifying every earthly pleasure and glorifying the human ego.  King George III of England and the aristocracy were obsessed with the same pleasures and goals at the expense of the dignity and freedom of those they governed. 

And here we are.  2009.

We have a government and ruling class comprised of financiers and other elitists who have long since stopped caring about personal liberty or the Will of the People but who, instead, are enthroned in a power structure that for hundreds of years has exploited, sedated and enslaved the general  population while maintaining that power base through fear and intimidation.

We, as citizens, are never without personal responsibility.  As did the Israelites and Pilgrims before us, we allowed the conditions of sedation and enslavement to entrap us in exchange for creature comforts.  The problem is that materialism is always a slippery slope and, inevitably, “more is never enough.”  We have been complicit in our own entrapment by our silence, compliance and greed.  We have injured the planet, and its other life forms, by our disregard and disrespect for their parts in this glorious experiment called Life on Earth.

Now we are about to make our own journey across the desert.  In reality, I do not know what the terrain will look like or precisely what obstacles we’ll find along the way.  But as the Israelites crossed their desert and the Pilgrims crossed their sea in order to go out from bondage and find their way to “higher ground”… so must we.

Growth is never easy or comfortable.  It can be life threatening.  But the alternative is no life at all.  I, personally, would rather risk mine for the opportunity to grow than to capitulate by default to something other than a fully conscious existence.

As we set out through “Earth’s Desert Period” let us learn from those who have gone before us on similar journeys:

With faith comes protection. 

United we stand. 

The Promised Land is no better than the effort we make to get there and the energy we invest in keeping it sacred.

 
Last week my  Mother passed away.  I don’t use that phrase because I’m afraid of death. I use it because I’ve always thought we misunderstand death and so I don’t use the word.  It think “passed away” is pretty descriptive, actually.  I think we do pass away from the physical, material world and continue on in pure consciousness where having a body is superfluous. 

I can remember when I was about 14 years old and my Grandfather passed away.  It was my first funeral and I had never seen a body in a casket before.  As I stood there with my Father looking at my Grandfather, I said out loud, “Now I know there’s no such thing as death. That’s not Grandpop. That’s his suitcase.”

But back to my Mother’s recent passing

We had an emotionally distant relationship, she and I.  She was uncomfortable with the giving and receiving of affection.  As she once told me, “I never had that growing up so I didn’t know how.”  Sad.  But true.  So, you do the best you can under those circumstances, as I tried to do.  In her final years, after my Dad had passed away, and she had 10 years on her own for the first time in her life, we shared a few genuinely Mother/Daughter moments that had been all too infrequent in the many years that preceded them.

For those I will always be grateful.

But here’s the important part.

Since the funeral, I can’t remember any of her personality that was distant or judgmental or just plain irritating to me throughout my life.  Since her passing, it’s as if it all never happened.  All I can see is the beautiful Soul that was the woman I called Mother, who struggled with the same human issues each of us struggles with, and who exhibited rather incredible patience and strength in confronting life’s challenges.

In a much earlier blog, I wrote about how wonderful it would be if every day an angel walked before every human being wherever they went announcing their arrival with a shout of “Behold the image and likeness of God.”  How differently we would see and treat each other, and ourselves, if that actually occurred,  And yet it does. 

We are each created in the image and likeness of God and so this is who shows up whenever and wherever we do.  Only by how we choose to act do we determine how holy the experience is for ourselves and others.

I wish I had seen that angel announcing my Mother throughout my life, I think I would have seen her and our relationship differently. I’m grateful to be able to see it now without all the earthly stuff that masks Its presence.

Perhaps what I’m finally seeing is simply the Angel… I happened to call “Mother.”

Lately,it seems that life is too frequently stranger than fiction.  When an institution of higher learning such as Harvard University’s Ethics Center chooses to invite Eliot Spitzer to speak, I find it difficult to overlook the dire implications.

Have we lost our minds… or have just Harvard’s Administrators lost theirs?

This public servant, this former Chief Executive Law Enforcement Officer of NY, willfully violated the law while in office while prosecuting others for the very same behavior.  Historically, I think we call that hypocrisy…not to mention, in this instance, a felony. Oh, yes, and also morally reprehensible since the felony was participation in prostitution.

I find the title of the advertised lecture particularly offensive. I am offended on behalf of Ayn Rand. Anyone familiar with the economic determinist views of Rand knows that Eliot Spitzer’s ethics and morals are the very ethics and morals Rand found disgusting and detrimental to a fully functioning society that honors, above all, the individual and a commitment to truth and integrity.

I am unmoved by Harvard’s attempting to justify their choice by claiming that Spitzer’s speech will be limited to economic issues and not encroach upon ethics.  Isn’t the Bill Clinton legacy fresh enough in our minds to raise a red flag about trying to compartmentalize a role model’s behavior to fit the issue at hand?  I think the economic boon of the Clinton years, in hindsight, was not worth the moral depravity exemplified by both he and his wife lying about a pattern of morally deficient behavior. 

Such was the slippery slope, one could argue, that brought us Reality TV. And we all know how helpful and uplifting that’s been working out for us.
 
I think Eliot Spitzer should stay home and not speak at Harvard. 
I think Harvard should rescind his invitation if he does not volunteer to doso.
I think sold out ticket holders should turn in their tickets.
I think students should protest his appearance.

I think how we respond to Spitzer’s scheduled appearance will say more about us than his appearance will ever say about Harvard, ethics, or our financial future.
 
As always, the choice is ours.

Lately, we’ve been facing a lot of really important ones.

Have you noticed?

There’s an indescribable freedom that comes from letting go.  I say this without hesitation because I spent decades trying to hold on to people and things or to control outcomes.  Having given that up, I speak with certainty  about the joy of surrender….a concept that engenders fear in so many of us and yet, ironically, is the only way to know and experience Life at its best… and as intended.

Ask most people to define surrender and you’ll hears words such as as “defeat”, “subjugation”, “giving up”, “abandon”, “relinquish” or “yield.”  Even Dictionary.com gives the preferred meaning as “

to yield something to the possession or power of another; deliver up possession of on demand or under duress.”

No wonder we fear the thought of surrender.  It’s gotten a really bad rap for, well, at least two millennia!

But what if we look at surrender another way?  What’s to lose? (no pun intended).

How many of us have sought, or striven for, something or someone only to find that the “getting” is not only less exciting that the striving…but also that the “having” isn’t all we hoped for…nor does it bring us the happiness or satisfaction we believed it would?

I’d say almost everyone can identify with such experiences and feelings…probably more times than we’d like to recall.  And yet, most of us just go on repeating the same pattern… simply changing the object of our desire or the intended outcome. 

In reality, trying to control either the process or the outcome just isn’t all its cracked up to be.

So what’s the alternative? 

Spiritual surrender.

We have been misled into thinking that surrender means weakness.  But, as power is to force so spiritual surrender is to weakness.  What do I mean by this statement?

Power originates from within and radiates outward. It’s source of supply is regenerative.  It emanates from certainty.  Its goal is harmony.  Force is finite, external pressure applied against resistance.  It seeks to dominate.  Its goal is victory.

Power has nothing in common with force.

Spiritual surrender seeks to go within.  It is a conscious choice freely made to align One’s Self with a Greater Knowing.  It’s goal is Unity for the sole purpose of experiencing Love.  It is predicated upon Trust in the goodness of All Creation.  It presupposes no harm.

Weakness is a reluctant relinquishment of One’s Self to an external force which, through imagination,  has been attributed inauthentic power.  It is predicated upon fear of the unknown.  It seeks to exchange autonomy for the illusion of protection.

Spiritual surrender has nothing in common with weakness.

As I said at the outset, my conclusion is based upon my knowing. It’s not something I’ve read…although there are many versions of it in various spiritual writings.  Knowing comes from direct experience.  It is, therefore, imbued with certainty and results in an expanded consciousness.

Like power.

Like surrender.