Everyman's Journal 2011, #45
© 2011 Rev. David Seacord
March 22
I have lived these past few days with a deep gratefulness for the presence of my death (as author Carlos Castenada wrote) "on my left shoulder". He wrote those words as an allegory of the Toltec shamanic journey, but when I read them in the 1970's as a young man, I was much to immature to truly understand what he was talking about. And while I have had a deepening sense for it for many years, recently I have had a breakthrough in the whole domain, due to the impact of the events in Japan (by which I mean, for the benefit of any future readers, the devastation in that country caused by earthquake, tsunami, and the currently still unfolding nuclear reactor disaster/accident at Fukushima).
Before their demise as a free people, Sioux warriors would go into battle knowing this presence of death, and would stand before The Great Spirit knowing (if it be Thy Will, Grandfather) that today was 'a good day to die'. That awareness gave them a powerful gift, the gift of being AUTHENTICALLY ALIVE. And it is a gift of that nature that I have been receiving as a result of the Japanese tragedies. While in a sense nothing has changed.... as in 'before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.... after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water'.... yet I have no recollection of anything ever impacting my personal reality quite like the inescapable conclusions that my soul-searching about these events have led me to..... and which have altered my world forever.
What am I talking about? From inside of a life-context of 'no accidents, ever'....I am talking about my recognition.....the horrible recognition of the magnitude of our human blindness... that in my lifetime while I have personally adventured and discovered life in relative ignorance of the nuclear issue---I am now facing the fact that mankind (through our collective 'leadership') has chosen to commit planetary genocide, but because of the egoic greed and power drives that blind them, they still DO NOT KNOW this and continue on committedly pursuing the insane 'option' of playing God with 'the nuclear fire' without the slightest true recognition of what they are really doing. They still do not recognize the impact of this: that they have sentenced our descendants--- yours and mine and theirs--- to tens or hundreds of thousands of years of terminal nuclear threat, that they have created such a proliferation of this threat in the name of economic profit that we now exist upon a planet where no area is 'safe' from it, and that it is only a matter of time.... as in 'when'... but odds-on not as in 'if' (given our current course), that we or our descendants shall find no place habitable left upon this earth.... for any species...let alone mankind. These are my inescapable conclusions, as I have studied and pondered and prayed....
It is overwhelming to see this, for it changes my perception of everything. The birds that I love so much still sing in the tree above my bed in the morning, but I now know that they and I still exist 'only by the grace of God' in a kind of 'borrowed time'. I am becoming a living prayer of thanks for this Grace, and I am no longer able to be not so. I feel the right-now-radioactive-free wind in my face, I have conversations with the people in my life, I make promises that I will fulfill in the future... but aside from this Grace of God, I know I have no power to guarantee that my intentions or promises shall actually ever be, for I, like almost certainly all of you, live close enough to a nuclear reactor to be terminally affected.... should it be there that 'the next aging-reactor accident' occurs.
But even this is still a very small perspective, for it is only considerate of my lifespan. So... perhaps another massive life-taking history altering accident will not come during it. Perhaps it will not even come during my son's lifetime either, or my grandchildren's (should I have that gift given). But who in their unclouded clear consciousness can say we humans now have the wisdom and the knowledge and the capacity to guarantee to our future generations for the next 100,000 years that they are safe to incarnate upon this planet, that we have lived our best good life, and we have left to them a world of beauty and abundance, instead of a future hellish nightmare where there is little left of the natural world that our Creator gave us In The Beginning.... who can say that.... while the nuclear fires are still being played with like a campfire unwatched that then becomes a million-acre forest fire? While we still wage war with each other? Or while we still exploit another's suffering for our own personal survival or economic advantage?
And for what? To boil water to make steam to drive electricity-generating turbines, that what. Only for that! I am compelled to agree with Ralph Nader (whatever his politics) that 'this is institutional insanity'. And I must also agree with Carolyn Myss that 'what is in the whole is also in us'. It is exactly this that we must find the courage to be responsible for.
For where can this lead... this massive institutional insanity? I say thank God for the Possibility that it's exposure (and this disaster) can lead us back to actual sanity! For in God's Name, what can it profit aspecies to allow itself to completely self-destruct in the name of individual and personal profit making? Only a very very tiny view of life through the eyes of intense egoicness could possibly be persuaded to perceive as truth such a reversal of Divine Intention. Divine Intention is far beyond such personal fantasies.... Divine Intention is for Life to Be, and Be of Love. No ego can possibly understand this, until it too discovers 'today is a good day to die'.
And, in so discovering the willingness to give of itself completely, enter the path to transfiguration and holiness.
Namaste,
David
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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.
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Rev. David Seacord
Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag
(my fine art website)
www.davidseacord-everymansjournal.blogspot.com
(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)
www.davidseacord-acimcommentaries.blogspot.com
(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)
www.everymansjournal2011.blogspot.com
(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)
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