Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27KJV
When I ended Saturday's piece with Jesus' call for forgiveness, I felt an uncomfortable inner cringe. We obviously cannot just up and forgive ISIL for the bloodbath in Paris. What does Jesus mean? Could He mean that as all of us become strong and empowered, whole and healthy, lifted up and out of our own internalized anger and enslavement (and we are all enslaved by many things) we could gain the inner strength, similar to theirs, which would make our ability to love more powerful than their pain and anger, and more invincible, and an antidote to their pain-fed pseudo-invincibility? And, since that's the ultimate goal for humankind, there's a promise inherent in this situation, and that's this is not the end. It is a terribly painful stage. How do we midwife this planet's birth, into a new planet? Forgiveness is born out of an inner state of love which creates such a powerful all pervasive peace that it chooses not to be bound down by unforgiveness. Consequently, forgiveness becomes a powerful intention, a choice to see and understand by comprehending the bigger picture and realizing this is a frightening stage in the development of the human race, and specifically the maturing process of oppressed people. Forgiveness is a wise decision not to react but to choose love in response to another's reaction to the oppression of imperialism, racism, elitism, and religious persecution.
Theirs' is an uncritical reaction. It is a state of out of control anger so strong that it overwhelms any sanity or wisdom. It is the scapegoated Black teen who bolts out of the house, hungry and angry, and robs a 7-eleven, and then takes the fall from a magistrate of the white imperial court that has caused the whole system which has oppressed his people to an intolerable point. An Arab friend once said we ordinary American people don't understand the whole picture of what has happened historically in the Arabian context. I asked him to explain it to me, and he shook his head and declined, saying, I wouldn't understand.
So, there is another outcome we can hope for. I realize ISIL wants an Armageddon. And, sometimes I think the right wing Christian fundamentalists do too. I want a Golden Age. I want us to realize this is a stage - as terrible and dark and horrific as it is - and see that it's not the end of the story. It is not the end, despite what the media and religious fanatics say, it is only the birth pains that precedes the whole world's birth into the Golden Age, a new Genesis. If creator of the Universe, the great Parent of life itself, and more specifically a Parent who loves us, knows us, and is urging us to grow up, then our God always knew we would go through this terrible collective, global adolescence of rebellion against abusive, evil, control. It is an important, yet volatile stage, and one which our God has called us to do for more than 5000 years. If that's the case, which I think it is, then there is another stage to get to, the stage of reconciliation, of whole planet empowerment, of ultimate creative aliveness that will plant the flowers on the graves of all who have been lost in this huge global uprising. If it exists, the golden age promised in the Book of Revelation, that New Jerusalem, and if that's part of our global development, that would mean that we will get to that stage. It is part of the plan. So, whether or not the suicide bombers want to end life on the planet because in some strange way that would eliminate their anger, it is not the end. It may feel like it. It may feel like we can't come against this terrible consolidated power raging through the Middle East and Europe and taunting our U.S. shores, but we can.
I feel that we have to get to that place of pure peace and light and then stand tall and strong together in it. We have to grow up, become enlightened, empowered by the ultimate love of the universe, and stand up and allow that power, that awesome creative power, to flood the planet and flood these very angry men.
I only know one thing for sure. This is not the end. Humanity's God who loves us beyond our ability to love ourselves or each other is asking us to trust, to wait, to love, to believe, even to know God's love and infinite mercy, and with that full knowing, rise up and walk with His power.When we react, we feed the fire. When we watch and wait, listen with our hearts open, and learn to see our face in the face of our enemy, and love ourselves despite what we see by forgiving ourselves, we can authentically love them.
Then, maybe, hopefully, one-by-one we can begin to mitigate this great and terrible outpouring of pain and together give birth to a time of peace, thriving in the light of God's perfect love.
Religion, as we know it, may be a sham. But, before you lunge or laugh at that statement, let me explain. To begin, the canonical teachings of Jesus, on which the Christian religion thinks it's based, are not the whole picture. Since no one can appreciate anything that's unfocused, let's focus it and then live it, if we're going to live it at all. And, I truly believe fervently we need Christ more today than at any other time in the world's history. Fortunately, He's here just as much as our need is for Him. I know that's a wake up to anyone who has been reading Tiger Lilies, but Tiger Lilies has never advocated religion per se. It has rather called for universal enlightenment, some of which is found in most religions and is in all human beings as an a priori condition. Enlightenment requires a sound and liberated mind to begin with. So, I have offered thoughts on what has enslaved us and thoughts on how to break free of that inner enslavement. Human enlightenment seems to always have been an illusive dance between shadow and light, cast from within another dimension, another reality, while at the same time calling for compassion as our guide - a compassion for ourselves, individually, and collectively. If compassion is a religion, then it may be a reflection of a deep and powerful truth, far more powerful than any religion could ever be. It doesn't steal your soul. Rather, it opens the door of your heart to eternity, something religion offers but too often doesn't deliver. Tiger Lilies is based on what I believe are the real teachings of Jesus. For the mainstream that may sound heretical, but there is sufficient sound evidence that the Gnostic Christian teachings and writings offer the world a very different, and important, understanding of what Jesus really taught. So, I've maintained what I have come to believe are the authentic teachings of Jesus as the Son of God. Adding to that understanding, is one that He is a fully realized Son of God, and fully enlightened, as the Buddha was. While he stands apart from us, He is also always drawing us closer to him, opening the path to truth, enlightenment, total immersion in the Oneness of universal eternality. He does not need our worship. He does not need our sacrifice, nor does God. He wants us to take possession of our own minds and lives. He wants us to honor ourselves, and when we are ready, to open our minds and allow our hearts to breathe in the Holy Spirit which is the substance of creation itself. Nothing is more powerful or life-giving. When we worship in the old way, we give our power away, including our self determination, our psychological underpinning, our own owned interpretation of life itself. We become subordinated. Many of the saints of antiquity, who followed the old religion, died giving their power away to a God who did not require it. Jesus always wanted us to take back our power from the false power brokers. It was everything he hoped we'd understand. He knew the way and wanted to show us how to become whole, strengthened by that wholeness, and empowered by a personal integrity. Rather than the rigidity of an old religious moralistic legalism that demanded subservience to a religious law, just because disobedience meant punishment, He called us to an individualistic integrity stemming from a self determination built on knowing and honoring yourself that can only come at that point of authentic freedom from outside controls. It's something like, "Know yourself, honor yourself; know your boundaries, honor your boundaries; love yourself, love each other." When you are whole, you are strong; when you are strong, you can love; when you can love, you can forgive and heal yourself and the whole world. When the whole world is moving as one, it will dance with God in a way that I can't even imagine, but truly and earnestly hope for. But, there is a single, mind-blowing thought I want to leave with you here. Christianity as we know it has led to a ritualistic practice based on the wrong idea that Jesus was "the lamb of God," a sacrificial victim placed on the cross to absorb and absolve us of our punishment for our sins. This terrible idea comes from another terrible idea, which is that we are born sinners. What a sad state of affairs. Why would God create sinners? So, Christianity is a victim-based ideology. The more pain, the more gain. The more you suffer, the more you liken yourself to Jesus, it suggests. Martyrdom was and still is the cornerstone of the faith. However you want to define martyrdom, it is based on the idea that you give yourself away to a more noble cause and in the giving of yourself away you gain eternal life, regardless of the pain. So, during the Middle Ages, you went to be burned at the stake. In the Roman era, you were ripped apart by lions or tortured in other unimaginable ways - that's until ISIL came up with some new ways. And, that brings me to another terrible idea. ISIL terrorists are gaining recruits based on the same ideology, as wrong now as it ever was. The terror inflicted on the world recently in Paris, is an outrageous mirror to us of what we always believed ourselves, only packaged differently. Why else would someone blow himself up in a suicide vest? As we react to ISIL's terrorism, let's look at how we've terrorized our own minds for these past 1600 years, as Christians. You can say, "Oh that was a long time ago. We don't put people up to burn anymore. We don't kill in the name of religion anymore." Are you sure about that? As long as the over-riding ideology of the faith, which I maintain is an error made by the Church Fathers around AD 325, and cast in stone in the Nicene Creed, is based on a complete misunderstanding of what Jesus' death (crucifixion) was about, then we are upholding a victim-based, heroic belief in martyrdom which is identical to the idea that is fueling ISIL. We are looking our own false religion right in the face of every radical Muslim terrorist. Again, I'm not saying authentic Christianity is false. I'm saying this pivotal belief, which also keeps the mainstream away from a full communion with the divine, is based on a huge error, an error so big and so malignant that it has created an inflamed planet theologically and ideologically. So, back to Jesus. His last words to us were, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." I think that's where I begin and where I leave off. "Father, forgive us all - Christians and Muslims - because we didn't know what we were doing." But, now we do. Where do we go from here? (Continued tomorrow)
There are many kinds of
poverty. But the worst deprivation is the lack of a childhood. It is even worse
than financial poverty. It is the lack of an inner autonomy, an integrated and creative interiority, stemming from the sheer absence of adult love and guidance in the early formative years of a child's life.
Even if a child is languishing as a refugee in poverty, blighted by the most heinous terrorist regime ever known to the modern world, if that child feels loved by his parents, if he survives physically, that child has a good chance of success later in life. He may be deprived of other things, but with the love, acceptance and support of his parents, he will develop the inner skills to thrive. He will grow up with an intact "self," and his childhood will naturally develop into adulthood.
But, a child who is neglected or abused will not. He will remain trapped, imprisoned in whatever life stage he was in when he encountered traumatic abuse. Part of his inner self is frozen, paralyzed in that time and place. Psychologists can almost pinpoint when a person encountered abuse because a part of that person's self is stuck in that stage of development. Maybe that's what "adult child of an alcoholic" means, even though that's not what it was meant to mean.
Children learn to survive by doing whatever it takes to keep their parents happy. It may mean anything, even picking up glass shattered all over the kitchen at 2 am because one of their drunken parents had exploded in rage at the other. Clearly, that's shocking and ridiculous to subject a child to cleaning up shattered glass because the drunken raging parent threw all the glasses on the shelf at that other parent. Yes, it's shocking. But, the child accepts it as normal because it wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.
The child learns to listen to the parents talking in the driveway at night as they return home from another party. The child listens for any signs of anger in their voices. When he is sure there isn't going to be another big fight, he can slip off to sleep. But, even then, he can not be sure. Sometimes he's fooled if he's not careful, and the angry parent might not sound like he's angry with the other parent, but might just appear at his bedroom door, horrifically casting a long shadow on the bedroom wall by the bright hall light in the doorway. Then, throwing on the overhead light, staggers in raging at the child. He might demand the child get up and clean his room, or sweep the kitchen, or do homework. It's always unpredictable. Whatever it is, the child does it to avoid a beating or raging.
This is hard to believe it ever happens. It is pure insanity, but the child learns to accept that insanity - even though he doesn't know it's insanity - and does whatever he can to avoid it ever happening again. But, it does. Somewhere in his little heart he wishes his parent loved him, but for now just avoiding the inevitable seems to be his main goal in life. He doesn't know he's not being loved. He's just trying to survive the horrors of the night. Maybe someday it'll all make sense, but then maybe it never will.
It happens again and again and again. As the child grows, sometimes the abuse gets worse. Often the beatings are painful.Teachers notice, but don't ask, about the black eye or the deep finger nail scratch across the child's face or the poor attention in school. As the child withdraws from any social interaction, fearing abuse from the teacher on whom he has projected his fear of authority (which later he'll project onto future employers) or the bullies at school, he finds his only peace is in being alone. But, there's still the awareness, always there, that he has to go home after school. Life becomes survival, just survival, nothing more.
Unfortunately, by the time the child has managed to get out of the house in his late teens, the inner damage is done. Fight or flight begins and becomes the child's way of dealing with any future stress resembling that of the parent. And, that is just the beginning of the horrors that child will encounter as he tries to "fix" what happened to him. On a deep inner level, that child will always try to please that unloving and unavailable parent, however he turns up in his current life.
And, he always shows up - in the behavior of a partner, an employer, almost anyone. His world is flooded with these kinds of people. The subconscious, in an effort to correct what happened, will continually send into his life people like that abusive parent to give the child (now an adult) a renewed opportunity to make it right. What he can't know is that he can't make it right.That parent was unable to love at all, was most likely psychopathic or narcissistic at best, and it wasn't the child's fault. The child doesn't know it wasn't his fault and will try and try and try until he kills himself trying. Unless he's lucky or blessed by grace.
He will attract into his life partners that have that same unavailable cruel behavior which will trigger in him an attempt to please to win that person's love. It's become an automatic response / reaction. It's the fractured part of the child's self that is stuck in childhood. Even if, and that's a big if, he comes to understand his behavior, he is most likely unable to change it. It is bonded deeply within his psyche.
That child's inner self was split by the inner frustration of not being able to make his parent happy and receive the parents love. He will often find himself in relationships with people who are abusive, but can't recognize the person's abuse because it feels familiar, strangely meant to be, almost like soul mates. And, when that relationship fails, the next one is the same only packaged differently. Each time each relationship fails the original parent's damage is driven deeper and becomes increasingly more life threatening.
Dr. Phil recently said these children usually grow up to develop a chronic disease, autoimmune illnesses, addictions, high divorce rates, poor academic outcomes, and ultimately die five years earlier than other people. Essentially, these children are on a fatal life trajectory. Their parents start killing their little one's souls, and then seal the damage by teaching that child not to love himself by selflessly serving others at their own cost. They teach the child he is unlovable, and never will be, and how to abuse himself and endure slavery and abuse. The child becomes a master at that and never learns to love himself. The frustration, the failure, the drive to please those who cannot be pleased is a severe downward continuum.
The child (who is now an adult) may become an addict, live on the streets, or try to be successful at a job or career but never find any positive response to his efforts. He earns a low wage and is unable to sustain a real relationship (only abusive ones) and eventually reaches a point that he feels so physically and emotionally drained that he doesn't have the strength left to go on.
Living itself feels like an impossible reach unless, by the grace of God, he is able to endure that final moment, that "dark night of the soul," that single moment when the inner torment is an unbearable agony he wants to be over. The depression, despair and pain has completely overcome him and he is completely out of resources. He can't manage. The anger has been internalized for so long creating an overwhelming, insurmountable depression. He can't breathe. He can't go on. He wants to, needs to, desperately has to, end it all.
If he's lucky, just when he would end it all, commit suicide, he might manage to counsel himself that this will pass, as it has before. And, if he can survive, endure it, just long enough until it passes, he'll get another day to try again. Maybe he can, maybe he can't. Maybe that child (now an adult) finds a wise and loving adult or friend in life who is there in that darkest of moments, when he absolutely would end his miserable life.
That all sounds like a scene presented by Dicken's future ghost. But, sadly, it's really too late at that point. Maybe the child (now an adult) can begin to heal. But, there are those moments of such overwhelming grief at the lost opportunities in life that he is so badly destabilized, he is unable to change his life. He looks back and knows he can never have those years back. He realizes how under equipped he is to work the kind of job he wants, or have the kind of life he wants. It's too late.
The words, ideas, thoughts, voices of all the abusers in his lifetime still whisper to him. He had unwittingly invited and allowed them all into his life at various stages in his blind effort to win the love of and please his unloving parent, who by now is most likely dead.
The horror of the all pervading life devastation is overwhelming. It's condemnation is so enormous. He can see all the dead on the battlefield of his inner mind. It looks like Gettysburg. How can he pretend it isn't what it is. He can not lie to himself. He can see clearly the endless, vast ruined inner landscape. Any denial he used previously to get through daily life is shattered, like that glass on his parent's kitchen floor.
He is in the grip of a terrible loneliness because he hadn't been able to trust anyone. This single effort to protect himself led to a life of isolation. He was unable to stand up for himself and fight and there was no where to go. He was stuck. His only resource was to hide.
But, the grace, the hope, is now he is closer to something else, something real. Strangely, he is closer to God in a way he doesn't see yet. It all was such a terrible shortcut. But, now, in this emptiness there is nothing standing between him and God. Either it had all been ripped away from him or he had nothing left to surrender. Finally, without any effort, on his part, perhaps driven only by the stark reality of his devastated life and his own grief and emptiness, he finds or awakens to that "great unknowing." There is something in that dark nothing that is all around him. It's almost tangible, palatable. There issomething there.
Then, there's a brief moment of awareness, a glimpse of something, something fresh, like a breeze lightly brushing his cheek. He feels something - maybe for the first time in his life. Inexplicably, he intuitively knows that something is love. He wants to hold it as you would hold, if you could, a delicate butterfly. Internally, he grasps for it, but it's gone. He's used to losing things he loves, but instead of grief, he feels a flickering, yet fleeting, joy.
It may be awhile before he feels that again. But, he is sustained somehow by it, even the memory of it, which he reflects on for hours, along lonely walks on the beach or the park. Life is starting to get a bit better, just a tiny bit, day by day. He knows it's going to be a long road away from what he's learned is his lifetime in "co-dependence," which he has discovered in every aspect of his life.
He is learning new coping strategies and behavior choices that are leading to empowerment how to love himself - just because he has to learn it, not because it feels right or good. It's a new path. It's the only hope to life. Somehow in all of this newness, he chooses life, or maybe life chose him. Maybe the real truth is, it was grace that allowed that person to call when they did - even the words out of the mouth of the abuser gave him the respite in that moment of need, just enough to lift the heavy mantle of the overwhelming depression enough for him to catch a breath and move out of its path. It seems God will use anyone and anything to help save a person.
"What's next?" they ask him. "What do you want in your life?" "What are your goals, your dreams?" Tears flow down his ruddy cheeks. He has no idea. He wants to feel the breeze of the butterfly again. That's all. He wants to feel that feeling again. That's all. Isn't that enough?
Yes. It's more than just enough. It is everything. In that delicate tiny embrace of the wind fluttering under the wings of the butterfly, is heaven. It is the first kiss of the Holy Spirit. It is a rebirth. It is birth into life, into what is real, the calm after the storm, the hope after the devastation of a lifetime.
Jesus replied, 'I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' . . . 'The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.'
John 3: 3, 8
Never again, will he feel glass under his cherubic little knees or under the palms of his coupled hands as he crawls in the glass to clean it up, the big pieces first, then the shattered ones.
Now, he can breathe in peace. Others who had not endured what he had, those seemingly so much better off in life than him, who chose their dreams, their illusive goals and agendas of power and greed, will not know what he now knows. He has found personal value and peace at last, the only real and enduring, heartening peace. On that, he will rebuild. On that, he will ascend into the arms of the great lover, the true divine parent who is always loving, always there, waiting for the inner child and the adult man to merge and look up, and look within, and realize how precious and beloved he is.
That place of realizing that he is precious and loved and that he can live a life of self love, is the opening at the mouth of the cave in which he's lived all his life. It is just the very beginning, the tip of a new life. Life will rush at him next, like a river that's been dammed for a lifetime. But for now, to just breathe freely, exhale all the anxiety and fear, and breathe in the knowledge that God is love and that He is loved, is enough.
There is more, so much more, awaiting him. The answers to what are his goals and dreams will come in time. But, for now, to just breathe and "be still and know" (Psalm 46:10), that God, who is in him and with him, holding him and loving him, healing him and leading him, onward onto the real path of life, is all he needs.
This reflection on peace is offered as an earnest heartfelt call for peace today, especially for the children who are refugees, strangers in a strange land. They need our love and our prayers, more than ever. In these days of war, we are all refugees from the terror that stalks us everywhere. We are all seeking a new world, a paradisio, in which we can create beautiful lives, a new home that honors life itself. It is that seeking that gives us hope for a better day - for us, our children, and our world. It is the most ancient human journey, that searching that has driven us for millennia. Today is no different, but where we are going is. We are going to become One, at last. I pray we are all lead by the divine light of love and that deeply profound and generative inner peace whose light we can all chose to live by, be guided by, enriched and healed by. I pray, and invite all of you to pray and live in love and peace. It is the Christian's good fight. It is all of humanity's shared global destiny. It is our holy peace, waged with love and prayer on our knees. It is our true essence to which we are all called.
The lovely thing about thinking of ourselves as artists is it cuts us some slack against that persistent plague of self recrimination waged by an inner critic, who is too quick to condemn us, beat us into submission to the world's "norm," which is anything but normal.
If we each tuned in to our own center, listened to the heartbeat of God which is one with ours, the sheer levels of joy and freedom, wisdom and power would open our minds to levels of experience formerly unavailable to those who wander the barren plains alone, without comfort or counsel from the Holy Spirit, who lives within, wedded to the Great creator of life.
Artists have a reputation for being raw, real, outspoken and almost self indulgent with their art. They have "poet's license," unspoken permission to be true to their art at the expense of good manners. They are purveyors of an inner truth and prophetic in their art. Why is it OK for them to express their truth prophetically on canvases, films, books, dance, music and not we, ordinary, folks? That question answers itself. It is OK for us to express our deepest truth in our lives, which is our art.
Because authenticity is a kind of birth right for artists, they can get away with irascible behavior. If we all claimed to be artists, since the world is comprised all of artists, rather than warriors (which is outward directed holy war, rather than inward where it needs to be), we would all be on a fast track to authenticity, and I bet the human race would accelerate in its spiritual evolution almost over night.
We have, from the beginning of history, been heavy on projection rather than introspection. We project our inner world outwardly. And, while that's great if your inner world is fully enlightened, self realized, beautiful, radiant and whole, but when it's wounded, fragmented from years of individual and collective abuse, the outward projection pours too much blood on the battlefield and leads us to build walls (as in big houses with tons of stuff) against each other, because we're steeped in fear. That fear is a phantom from within, not a real threat from outside.
I think if we reflected on that and reached for it, the time would quickly come when Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jain's and the hundreds of other religions, would find that at their deepest, most inner core is the same "voice." We are all connected to God, to Allah, because we are all the same.
If we could see ourselves individually as artists, is it even remotely possible that we could see "our self" as a single human being, a single Self, that one face that emerges when we merge all 6.8 billion faces together and come up with a composite face. In that face, we see the child of God, who is an artist. As we grow up individually, raise our individual awareness and liberate ourselves from the controls on us, set by tradition, old religion, clan or tribal culture, styles, fads, materialism and capitalism, and reach for what is true, we will come together. We will find the common denominator that makes us human.
I think that when we put aside all that is foreign to us, and reach for what is common, we may all find ourselves at a kind of communal table, sipping wine (or grape juice) and sharing bread (or rice cakes) and hugging our children and participating in a great banquet of life, like a wedding party, simply celebrating the happy times, the good food, the great music, the dancing, the singing, the laughter. Listening to the stories of the old people and watching the children play and grow, holding our husband or wife, loving the animals, watching the radiant sunrise and amber sunset.
Life is so beautiful and when we step into what is common, the shared life as artists, who have that unique vision for life, for peace and for love, the whole world would change in a single heart beat.
I think the one obvious thing we all share is life together on this beautiful planet under the same sun. It is the Earth herself that we all share and as we war among ourselves, we are not only risking running ourselves into extinction, but we are killing her. By facing down what separates us, and clinging to what unites us, what we share in common rather than what we hold differently, we may be able to grasp a vision for our future together.
I wonder if we can share that vision? I wonder if we can face down our own inner "holy wars" to heal and evolve those parts of our collective (and individual) wounded psyches that react to others who are different? I wonder if we stopped fighting externally and rather, faced the demons within, would all wars stop? Would they? Is it possible? Can we look out into our own life canvases today, and ask ourselves where do we react? to whom do we react?
We all have so much work to do. We have many "holy wars" to engage in within ourselves. Holy war was never meant to be fought outwardly, if we are honest with ourselves. Among Sufis, holy war is an inward struggle to holiness. We must all give each other a break, enough of a break to stop, gather our thoughts, center more, speak more lovingly, speak more truth, go to those deepest plains of truth within, and come back out to the world and share what we find there, even if we have to paint it, sing it, dance it, write it.
(Please check out their website. It is a beautiful, elegant call for peace, love, if only for our children, who are suffering everywhere on the earth. It begs us all to wake up.)
Sometimes it is just grace, a gift from God, when you stumble upon a wisdom so profound that it shakes your world and wakes you up. Paul Ferrini's teaching is that gift. I share this with you because I love you.
It's not a secret, nor a mystery. It's out in plain sight. Our land is drained of its vital minerals and nutrients. Our rivers are seriously polluted*, our air is toxic, and the Ozone hole is bigger than North America.
We know this. We already know this. But, that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about us - you and me. It's about honoring ourselves, loving ourselves so much that we won't let pirates enter our inner harbors, we won't let a big steamer enter to dump ridiculous amounts of stuff on our shores or let the huge Monsanto corporation plant genetically modified crops which is actually affecting our own DNA, and further poisoning our bodies. That all sounds overwhelming, doesn't it? And, I haven't even gotten started. But, that's not what I want to talk about.
I want to talk about honoring yourself. If you honor yourself, you will not subject yourself to following the crowd, reaching to be part of the status quo, playing the global board game that says he who has the most money wins. It's a dead end street, and we all know it. And, if you don't know it, you know that too - that you don't know it. So, there, you do know it. It's the thing that kind of haunts you when you search your soul. The longer you do what you hate, the more you hate yourself.
So, the way to heal the world, is to heal your own mind, your own heart, your own soul. And, paradoxically, you can't really love another until you open your heart to yourself. This is not vanity or narcissism. It is recognizing that the God of the universe has a direct line to you through your heart. When you open your heart to loving yourself, honoring your own integrity and dignity, you are inviting God in as well. As the great creator of the universe and more loving than we could ever imagine or even receive, we will clean up our lives, our bodies, our pasts that still haunt us from within our own deep beds of unconscious material. We might have discovered by now that we do have sediment poisoning our lives (like the Willamette's Superfund) but how do we clean it up?
I would suggest that we start by loving ourselves and inviting God into the picture. God will also serve as your underwater searchlight and help you interpret what you find, bring it to the surface, explore what it means, and then let it dissolve in the sunlight. God will lovingly hold you as you realize what happened to you. And, then God will pour love into that wound, that gap, until your entire inner seascape is coated and enriched with God's love, God's healing balm.
It's a process, and it may be a slow one or a fast one. That depends on your willingness to face the truth of what's happened comparatively against where you want to go, how fast you want to get there and how to live your life purpose - that's after you discover what that is. God will show you.
As we each clean up our interior lives, choose to live authentically and explore what being authentic really means for each of us, we will grow the courage to stand up to the big global polluters out there - and there are many. And, don't be fooled, they are enormously powerful, and won't go down without a fight. But, if enough of us wake up, take back our lives, refuse to be prostituted to these evil giants (sorry but that's what they are) then we can take back our own souls and that of the world.
But, we can't do it alone. It can only be done through the heart with God at the helm of our hearts. I can promise you that God is more than capable of doing this. Sometime I will write about the miracles, the many miracles that I have heard and seen in mine and other people's lives in which God healed and helped us grow and heal and reach much higher levels of empowerment and enhanced abilities to act on behalf of our families, communities and even world.
But, as for now, beginning the clean up - first in our minds, then our lives, is a great start. Next, we reach beyond our own individual lives and connect with each other. Of course, that will happen naturally, just as naturally as God will fill you with love, and that love is contagious. All you have to do is invite God in. God does the rest.
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*The Portland Harbor Superfund Site in Portland, Oregon, is the result of more than a century of industrial use along the Willamette River. Water and sediments along Portland Harbor are contaminated with many hazardous substances, including heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), dioxin, and pesticides. These compounds have been found to be harmful to human health and the environment. Because of the contamination, some types of fish found in Portland Harbor, such as bass, carp and catfish currently pose a health risk to those who eat them. Portland Harbor was added to EPA's National Priorities List in December 2000. The current study area extends from the Columbia Slough to the Broadway Bridge. EPA and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality are working with potentially responsible parties to clean up contaminated sediment and control sources of additional contamination.
For millennia, the river has flowed into the Canadian rockies in British Columbia and then wound its way south through Washington State to the border with Oregon and then west until it empties into the vast unlimited Pacific Ocean. There, in that wide junction, it forges a turbulent entrance as well as a vital seaport for the northwest. The Columbia most profoundly and powerfully staggers the imagination. Time travelers, past and present, find her mysterious power compelling. Is it her ability to take life that draws our breath away as we experience her substantial and timeless flow? I grew up on the Niagara. As powerful as she is with her capricious currents and terrible under toe, she can be cruel, occasionally tragically taking life in her roaring falls. In winter, when the falls glisten in the frigid moonlight, her dark depths are forgotten in the delicate magical essence of her frozen mists glazing everything nearby. Unlike the Columbia, the Niagara doesn't hide her power. It is on display as a warning. Both have a mysterious past which entice the imagination and invite deeper reflection as we plumb the power inherent in their depths, spiritually matching our own inner, watery worlds. There is a dramatic beauty about the Columbia that speaks to me every morning as I cross from Washington to Oregon for work. East of the bridge I travel on, Mount Hood either hides from view or rises proudly in the morning sunrise. I have come to look east for Mother nature's wisdom in the merging dance of light and dark, grey clouds or sparkling sunshine on the dark, often moody river. So, why? Why does the river fascinate me so much. Why do I love her, fear her, listen to her, but I would never swim in her. Her depths terrify me, but above, on a bridge or a boat, I can flow with her, watch her. I have come to find an answer to that question. In my awe of the Columbia, I have come to realize the river is a symbol of Neptune's mysterious abode. It is alluring in the mystery of its contents. If nothing were down there, then there would be no fear. But, there is something down there - a lot of something and that's where my fear comes from. Recently I read Underworld by Graham Hancock who is a leading underwater archaeologist. He has explored underwater ruins throughout the planet that stem from predeluvian civilizations that were flooded and remain submerged in oceans around the world. They serve as evidence that the great flood really happened.There have been at least three global floods. One especially haunting underwater structure is Krishna's Dwaraka temple off the coast of India. For thousands of years, historians thought the ancient temple was myth.There was no evidence of it. Then recently, Hancock discovered it. He rationalized that given the water tables had risen since the last flood, logically it would be in a certain location off the coast. He talked to the locals. Some of the fishermen said there's a certain spot off the coast where their fishing nets get caught on something. Hancock began scuba diving there and found it. He has done the same around the world and found pyramids and other ancient temples and structures just off coast lines in Japan, the Philippines and in the Mediterranean, among others. And, seriously, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Neptune does have a world down there - our world, our history, stories long forgotten, and yet for the world they contain essential information that reveals from where we have come, what we valued and did, and perhaps warnings we should heed. And, that's only on the external, global level. We each have buried in our own minds ancient familial relics and personal messages. As we trace the flow of our own timelines, as a river, we may uncover things we have just assumed were acceptable, but aren't. Without challenging them after discovering them, our lives would continue down a trajectory to a destination we would choose not to go. A friend and I traveled a good distance along the Columbia, where the Lewis and Clark expedition once traveled. We explored where the Oregon Trail struggled along, until ultimately ending in Oregon City. We saw history with new eyes, an enlightened vision, and gasped at the terrible cost in Native American lives, and loss of life among Buffalo herds. We saw the meaningless cost of those early covered wagon trips to come to a completely undeveloped remote part of the continent. Why did they do that? Was it necessary, we boldly asked. But, that's all another story. That's our American story. What about our own deep internal buried memories? What holds me back? What holds you back? What is blocking each of us from our encounter with the great ocean, to where the I Ching says we need to flow? What is holding us back? What ancient submerged temples are catching our nets? The answer is what lies undiscovered in our unconscious, those sunken ships or temples that are still actively seeping their beliefs, ideologies, religious myths, their judgmentalism, their messages to conform to a past that is gone, but still haunting us. By listening mindfully to our thoughts and the events of our lives, our intuitive leanings, all comparatively against where we want to go and be and do, we can identify what is blocking us. As we look at what we have magnetized into our lives, we hear what the old haunting messages are. As we reflect on them, sort them, and analyze them for what benefit they offer, we can trace the emotional pain or the nonworking parts of our lives back to the source. As you explore the past by tracing back to your own early life and the unconscious programming there, you may find beliefs and ideologies that have informed your beliefs which are drawing certain circumstances into your life which may not serve your goals, dreams, hopes. Our lives' vitality and purpose, joy, peace and power depend on it. Our ability to fish out of life what we want and need might be impeded by ancient temples that catch our nets. Maybe we will learn not to fish there, but we can't know it until we disarm the power they hold lurking there. Wisdom says to listen deeply, mindfully, and with respect for your past and love and longing for your future, which you can create when you cut the strings with which the past is mysteriously still controlling you. One thing is certain, once you've heard the old stories those submerged ancient structures have to tell you, and you forgive any ancient, buried, grievances you still hold, your bondage will disappear. And, as you release the old ghosts, sending them into the light through your forgiveness, your power will surge up under your own control, and your life will flow unimpeded into a brighter future. And, maybe then you, and I, won't have to work so hard at life, and reaching our dreams.
What lies below the surface of our inner harbors, submerged in the watery dark unknown? Are they war ships or mercy ships, submarines, or crashed airliners? Maybe they once carried refugees fleeing a heinous dictator, war or corrupt government.
Recently a friend and I visited the mouth of the Columbia River as she empties into the Pacific Ocean in Astoria, Oregon. On a map, markers indicate more than 2,000 ships have sunk there over the last 300 + years. Many are old English sailing ships, some are merchant ships carrying beaver pelts to China from the rustic interior of Oregon, and some are simple sailing vessels. The marker said more than 700 people died when those ships sank. The currents are strong in that port.
I shuttered at the image of 2,000 ships sitting on the bottom of that dark watery opening to the Pacific. Something mysterious lurks in that dark river bed, something haunting and invisible to the surface. The unknown has a raw power, drawing and pointing to our own untapped power.
Marianne Williamson wrote in her acclaimed book, Return to Love, that we humans are most afraid of our own power, from which we try to hide. It is almost as though we know how powerful we really are and don't know what to do with it, like a loaded gun that we can barely hold.
We all have sunken ships in our subconscious, and they all are still loaded and contain an enormous amount of power. After I wrote yesterday's Tiger Lilies post, I realized as much as watching our incoming and outgoing thoughts mindfully is important, it just barely scratches the surface of an important topic. It is a kind of "first thought" on a long continuum.
Previously, I've discussed our deep subconscious, describing it as an invisible partner, a silent cook in the kitchen of our lives, or as I just have as a huge submerged strata of unconscious material. It is indeed like a sunken ship that's still radioactive. But, since it's unknown and seemingly untouchable, we remain its puppets, controlled by an unknown power, placed there when we were children by parents and authority figures whose instruction then is limiting our lives today.
This "sunken ship" contains their beliefs which are now our beliefs until we go deep sea diving to explore and disarm the ships magnetism. It holds active all our automatic beliefs about ourselves and the world and God and money, and just about everything. It contains early life programming from birth until six years of age, and most likely through to 15 years.
In our teens, we begin to think for ourselves and often attempt to rebuke any authority's attempt to brainwash and dictate to us - that's if we're healthy enough emotionally to rebel in order to assert our own autonomy.
As we remain mindful of our thinking and feeling, we might be able to hear those old ships whispering their tales to us. They may reveal themselves in a particular message pattern which shows up in our lives. Are we magnetizing, unaware, those messages, people, events?Do we want them in our lives? Are they helping us create our dreams with power or are they limiting us, keeping us frozen in fear, afraid to move beyond the status quo only to remain in the dark?
