As we enter into this new year I have been looking back, evaluating where we have come in the last 20 years. This process was further emphasized by finally seeing the movie "Schindler's List", which dramatically, emotionally and emphatically pointed out the madness, the "evil", being once again replayed in Iraq, Bosnia, Guatemala and some 30 other nations, some 50 years later. We are still trying to solve our problems through ethnic cleansing or the disposal of those who may look or things differently than we do. This is not only a foreign problem, it is also being reflected in the vicious villification of the opposition in national politics, the seeming meanness and lack of charity of the political right, the senseless killings of the "skin heads" and the FBI and DEA run amok with orders to use deadly force.
This month I reviewed the book, Alternative Healthcare, A Comprehensive Guide, a sceptic's review of the field with totally negative conclusions about the efficacy of such alternatives. This too reminded me of how those that cannot accept alternatives, whobelieve such things as discussed within the philosophy of the transpersonal are "magico-religious notions." These skeptics are not above "sneak attacks", such as this book which is outrageously mislabeled, in order to set the public straight about such nefarious dangers.
No, this is not to be a "woe-is-me" column about the seemingly intrasigence of the old ways to the en-light-enment we believe the transpersonal viewpoint brings. Somehow, once again, in a moment of impatience and despair for mankind, I have to find for myself a way to understand this lack of progress in the world.
As always, when I am struggling for understanding the Universe lines up someone, or many someones to shout out the answer. First a copy of Barbara Maciniak's book, Earth: Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library shows up to remind me that we are all part of the Universal plan, the positive and the negative.
Some of you are petrified that Earth is dying. You want to build a big wall to stop the death of Earth and the deterioration of the enviroment. In actuality, all of the events that seemingly are distasteful, difficult and heinous, create the impetus that is needed to move and activate the Earth's six billion people into change.
Then, I also get a copy of Deepak Chopra's Seven Laws of Prosperity where in his discussion of the Law of Pure Potentiality he states:
Your true self, which is your spirit, your soul, is completely free of those things (fear, hate, power, etc.) It is immune to criticism, it is unfearful of any challenge, and it feels beneath no one. And yet, it it is also humble and feels superior to no one, because it recognizes that everyone else is the same self, the same Spirit in different disguises.
And then, if that was not enough, a little book pops out of a morrass of books, Praying with Paul, by Eugene H. Peterson.
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consumation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly, and the best of the three is love. I Corinthians 13:13
Paul was really the nail in the proverbial horseshoe that won the war. Paul is an archetypal model for me. His importance came to me later in my life. I am reminded that it was Paul that really put Christianity on the map. He really messed up in the beginning. He had to wait around for a longtime twiddlying his thumbs until he got the message to undertake his mission. He certainly didn't seem to make any huge impact in his lifetime and got terminated for his efforts. And yet Paul was responsible for fully a third of the writings of the best seller New Testament, and incidently disseminated Christianity to the Gentiles, thus saving Jesus from being just another potential Jewish Messiah. Just because it doesn't look like anything is happening doesn't mean that nothing is happening.
Without the ability to step out of this madness and listen to the magicaly delivered answers of the Universe and be reminded once again of the larger (transpersonal) picture, I would succumb to the overwhelming fear and pain that is the legacy of most of humanity. All those lives of quiet and not so quiet desperation, especially for those upon which Famine, Disease, War and Civil Strife, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, have been unleased. I am never far from the empathic connection with those persons and it is that empathy that sometimes overwhelms me with the sheer weight of the pain.
But as Paul states: "hope unswervingly". Once again, we have a brand spanking fresh year. My new year's wish for this year, is to continue to work on "loving extravagantly".