Lighting candles

I have collected a lot of rss feeds but like news it's all become a drone of the evils of empire. I need to find some other feeds but when I look around none of them are where I've gone in needing something more spiritual.

See, the ordinary world I use to live in went up in smoke sometime in late May/early June. Unable to cope with this along with the growing inability to cope with caring for my dad any longer, I completely withdrew. I finally had to put my dad in the nursing home in August. I have been recovering since then.

During my recovery I decided to read Karen Armstrong's newest book "The Great Transformation: The Beginning our Religious Traditions." It gave me a look at what is going on in our world through the lens of history and what the people at that time did about it. I am hoping it won't take us as long to learn the same lessons.

The lessons, in a nutshell, are in Charles Dickens' story "A Christmas Carol." It is vitally important that we get back to those values and those kind of morals about caring. It may seem trite, but it is not as simple or as easy or as unimportant as it looks. A time is coming when these things are going to matter a great deal. And when it does, we will need a whole lot of people who are less interested in ownership than in simply giving a shit. I can't wait.

Until then, I will just continue to be spiritual and stay true to the real things of value in life, namely, humanity, benevolence, non-violence, sharing, caring, and helping others. It's all about love, not the romantic or the pie eyed kind, but the deep, compassionate kind. I will do my best with what I have. Other will have to find it in themselves and do what they can. But rest assured, it is going to take as many of us as possible to turn the country around. May you find that path and be candle in the dark for others to find. Let us light the candle of peace and life in others and keep passing it on until we have lit the world and stopped the killing. I hope it is soon.

A Great Reckoning

Human beings are heading for a great reckoning. See this article at Information Clearing House. Life is not based on money--that is a purely human construct, thoroughly arbitrary, and completely deluded. Unfortunately, the pursuit of it--money, profit, and the power it erroneously represents--has endangered us all. As MLK Jr. once said about an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, this principle holds true in the natural world as well in the sense that pollution and stupidity anywhere is a threat to life everywhere.

Of all places to find such wisdom is in the movie "Blood Diamond" though I am not sure what it is that resonates so deeply. Perhaps it is as much DiCaprio's performance as it is the subject of the film. But a great many things were encompassed by this film that juxtaposes humankind's place within the natural world with that of an artificial world constructed by humans. The movie Koyaanisqatsi is also just such a juxtaposition.

However, these are but threads of the greater fabric of human history. Karen Armstrong's "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions" provides an excellent view of the bigger picture in terms of our development as human beings and how well or poorly we have done since the Axial Age. The record is currently dismal. But as the Chinese and East Indians know that all things are cyclical, these things are expected. What I hope is that we are farther along now than we were then so that it won't take us as long to come to the same conclusions as they did.

Unfortunately, our technology today is far more annihilative, not only in terms of our weapons, but in terms of the way we alter the natural processes of our planet through technological, chemical, and genetic means. So we had better come to some wisdom pretty damn fast and wake up from the delusion that humans decide everything. They don't. The planet was here long before we got here and it will be here long after we are gone. The only decision we have to make is how long we'd like live here and how we'd like to do it.

This earth is a paradise and we have turned it into hell. The way out is to dust off the teachings of the great sages and get lucid on what they taught. Ultimately, it begins with non-violence and the Golden Rule and then stretches out to a sacred transcendence that is all encompassing. We all need love, friendship, and mutual aid. The sooner we understand this and start living this way, the sooner we can regain our lost humanity.