articles by Frank David Cardelle

 

 

 

 

 

SHADOW INTO LIGHT

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN we can choose consciously to be in this world... befriend our shadowed fears… let die archaic habits and wishes… find the challenges through lessons that life brings… speak honestly in all relationships and circumstances.

 

FILL up our circles with more creative possibilities that empower and heal… and forgive both ourselves and others for pain we’ve caused…

 

ONLY then are we ready to leave the darkness and move towards the light, our destiny and missions and take their lead.

 

Frank David Cardelle

 

 

* * *

 ‘Who is to Blame?’

Who is to blame for globalization’s blunders and misdeeds and September 11? I am to blame. Put the handcuffs on me and take me to jail. I am responsible for what happened September 11/2OO1 when two Boeing jets crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center causing the deaths of over three thousand people from America and sixty other countries around the world, a third one plowed into the side of the Pentagon causing the deaths of one hundred and eighty four people and a forth one that went down in route to the capitol with all passengers aboard losing their lives.

I am also responsible for the cold blooded murder of the young man in a Long Island gas station a day after the tragic event occurred. The sad part was that this man was not even Muslim but Hindu, and from India and not from any of the Middle Eastern countries. Unfortunately, he lost his life because of his brown color of skin and the fact that he wore a turban which was part of the tradition of his Hindu faith.

I am also to blame for the injury and death of innocent children and adults when the United States began their bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Not to forget the soldiers killed at the hands of their own troops. I’m further responsible for the young American who traveled all the way to Afghanistan to fight along side the Taliban forces against alliance troops.

I am also responsible for the later invasion of Iraq and the deaths of soldiers on both sides, plus the deaths of thousands of Iraqi troops in the first War who were buried alive during a massive bomb attack after they had surrendered.

I am also to blame for Saddam Hussein’s first invasion of Kuwait and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Kurdish people after chemical weapons had been sold to Saddam Hussein’s government by the United States.

As for the gross inequities that have been created between the world’s rich and poor because of globalization’s failure, I claim responsibility for this as well. It’s me, I am the guilty party. I’m also the one behind the deplorable working conditions in the sweatshops in Bangladesh. The damage to the environment, the gapping hole in the ozone, depletion of the rainforests and the many oil spills in different parts of the world. Yes, and don’t forget the Aids epidemic spreading the world and the recent SARS incident as well as the other killer diseases yet to strike our global community.

So, if you have not recognized by now, I’m the one responsible for all the problems that have existed in our world and exist now in the world. I also take on the burden for every wrongful step, and word that has caused misunderstanding among people everywhere from the United States, Middle East, Russia, North Korea, Ireland and Latin America etc., to the corner grocer and parking attendant, the conflicts existing between Christian, Muslim, and Jews, between white and black, Chinese and Philippine, Indian and Pakistani and the assorted scandals coming out of Wall street, the Corporate sector, CIA, Interpol, FBI and governments throughout the world.

BUT SO ARE YOU……., and everyone else on the planet, from Washington D.C., Peking, Moscow, London, Sydney, Madrid, Dubai and Bogota and Istanbul. Because as long as we share space together on this earth and participate in its functions and cycles, natural or manmade, we also have a stake in the problems and the challenges that come to us through it.

No, of course were not the ones who hijacked the planes and flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. No, we are not the ones who killed the innocent Hindu man whose only crime was that he looked Arabic because of his color of skin and his turban.

No, we are not the ones who made some bad mistakes in managing the World Bank and other international financial institutions that caused an additional billion people in the world to fall into despairing poverty. No, we are not the American ‘Market-Mongers’ who maneuvered and manipulated other countries flow of goods so as to free up their own.

 

I could go on and on as the list gets longer and more detailed but, I see no reason for this now. The point here is that we are all responsible, both directly and indirectly for the goings on in the world; some more than others.

We can cast blame out and on to the others throughout every region of the world. We can blame ourselves. We can blame the tax-man and the TV anchorman and woman, the politician, corporate boss, schools and the United Nations. Men can blame women and woman can blame men. The youth can blame the adults. We can blame our (and others) heritage and ancestry and our family upbringing. We can even blame Mom and Dad for being less than perfect. If this is still not satisfactory we can reach to our higher powers and hold Allah and God at fault with the Atheist blaming history itself. We can further hide under tons of excuse, we can deny our part and dive deeply into the safety of our unconscious realms and we can simply lie to ourselves and others; telling little ones and bigger ones. But, eventually we have to finally realize that we are part of everyone and everything, as Chief Seattle reminded us before. Thereby, we are in this situation we are facing today, together. We are also part of every event that happens no matter the cause or the outcome. Hence, with every breath, jerk or spasm the world takes and makes, we can feel our own and everyone else’s too. Until we understand this, our lives are led by shadow and an unconscious sense of reality that keeps us half awake and half alive in our existence on this earth.

We can be part of the solution or we can be part of the problem. Either way we will share and live with the consequences of the path we decide to take.

 

We all know that transition is a part of life.  We experience this from birth into this world until the end when we make the biggest transition of all, Death. To begin this chapter I have chosen to share two experiences from my life that relate strongly to the transition theme. One of them speaks to the hardest transitional kind of experience I have ever had in this life: My bout with a life threatening illness, cancer. The second one describes an experience I had once after awakening from a heavy night of dreaming. The first one‘s called ‘Resurrections power and Grace’. I wrote this piece about the lessons of my illness towards the end of the three and a half years with the disease.

 

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‘Resurrections Power and Grace’

 

“As I arise from the grave and awaken to the world once more. I am grateful for resurrections power and grace. As my eyes begin to open I notice things that I didn’t before or perhaps I did but wasn’t conscious of this as I am now.

It has been a long and arduous trek through the underworld dimensions, passing through countless cycles and recycles of life’s seasons, touching both inner and outer realms of existence and looking into death’s face so many times that I lost count. I’ve relived the pain of my blindness and immaturity and can see how much more I still need to learn, know and master while still here on this Earth. I realize now that we have many angles and views of both our past and future and must learn to see these more and more often.  I think a lot of us knew this before but for various reasons had forgotten and even denied this. I’ve done my best to atone for all of my past deeds, thoughts, feelings and choices. But this will take time to complete. If I see another movie rendition of my life story as I have created and lived it this will be too soon. I must confess that I wasn’t sure that I would return again and would fail in my attempt to traverse time and space. In the gravest of moments, madness or suicide seemed like a more noble choice: these feelings no doubt, not any less or different than others who have made the passage before. But when we go through our own initiation experience it is not so easy to believe that others have survived such a hellish ordeal too. How can we describe the meeting with the archetypal task master teachers of both dimensions of light and dark? How do we decipher the messages received in the great Void where the wisdom of the ages still prevails?  What do we do with what we’ve been given any way? How do we make the best use of it and apply it where it is most needed? So many questions both old and new, nonetheless, it is a very personal kind of venture, one that we will never forget in this life and most likely other ones to come.

I can recall long ago being told of the great effort and sacrifice that it takes to die and to be born again fresh and new in the world in body, heart and soul. Now, after having gone through this I know it to be true. It is really a time of great lessons and for understanding the natural laws and cycles of nourishment: those which govern all aspects and forms of life from the human, animal and plant to the elemental. Those of which our high-tech and overly mechanized world of today by-passes in its sometimes destructive and mindless haste to get to someplace not fully realizing that there is really no place to go. How long will it take our misguided species to accept this and to join again with the order of things?

While I am glad to be back and still in tact, it is quite evident that it will take some time getting used to being here again. Clearly, I am not the same person now as I was before. Or perhaps I am but now this is more pronounced. It will take some time to find my way, place and more of a sure footing. This will come but only on a moment to moment and a step-by-step basis with my apparent state of vulnerability setting the pace and direction. I will need to take heed, listen and pay close attention to signs that come both subtly and those that are more obvious. I cannot rush or push the flow of things. As they say, everything in its own good time. I will try my best to remember this.

In looking back I feel as if I’ve been in one too many campaigns on life’s battlefield.  My thin and bloodied bones ache and poke through what little skin still hangs over them: the demon ghost of stagnation still holding me in its grip while limiting me in breath, movement and expression.  But, I must free myself from this condition. I cannot be its slave regardless of my exhausted and diminished state. Yet I feel so empty and naked and liken to a child learning how to master the skill of walking all over again. This makes me feel even more helpless and uncertain as to what I must do next. In the meantime all that I can do is place one foot in front of the other and hope for the best.

As I begin to move slowly again into the earth’s domain my mind is flooded with so many memories of before. I am reminded of various events, struggles and crisis’s precluded by both choices and actions: some of these working for my benefit and others not: some bringing anguish and great pain and, one that goes beyond just that of my own to touch a deeper more collective kind, others bringing confusion and conflict while at the same time teaching me the lessons about human ignorance and suffering. The memory scenes burn my eyes and tear away at my gut and groin. The fact of our species innate capacity for cruelty and destruction overwhelms my fragile state of mind and condition.  I am left with such sadness that I can only grieve to myself for fear that if I dare let my emotions flow as they need to I could not stop and would weep for eternity.  But deep inside of me I also know that whatever pain and difficulty that I am confronted with during this returning passage it must be endured as others have done before and still others will after me. For the cycles and lessons of soul never cease and go on endlessly.

Continuing on I am aware of yet another kind of intensity welling up inside of me.  It has such a power that I feel it could burn a hole in me trying to get out. This is the hot fire of anger left over from all the times before when I said nothing or did nothing, when I should have or when I did and said something that wasn’t called for or needed at the time.  I kick myself the hardest for those moments when I let fear and ego have their reign.  But I’m also relieved to know that I’m not alone in carrying this burden and that others know too of the frustrated efforts to turn things around only to end up with a sense of helplessness, futility and being lost.  Although, in spite of this knowing I’m still bothered by the state of the world and the amount of injustice and prejudice that still exits. Along with the immaturity, pettiness and self-righteous attitudes that keep us chained to our unhealthy behaviors.  However, I also know now that I must find a way to balance action with resolve and discover a greater harmony and peace with myself and the world.  I am only one man and person and can only give and do so much no matter my desire or willingness to do or sacrifice more. It will take much more work and commitment on everyone’s part to heal the damage we have done to ourselves, nature and to restore the harmony between the forces and dimensions of light and dark.

As I step into the next phase of my re-entry, which is another rite in and of itself I will need time to reflect, to re-think, to re-imagine, to re-choose and finally to act.  But at times these may come in a different order. Then I will need an equal amount of time to digest all of these important and vital processes and to find their sometimes hidden messages and meaning. I will even need to hold time itself in my own hands remembering again that we are co-creators in the making of destiny. Our own and the worlds: as I do I will be alert in listening for the still voice of ancestors long forgotten and the wisdom and care of its guidance.

As I go deeper yet into the phases of the re-entry it is vital that I be open to a much needed source of support. From this I will need to be embraced from both worlds of spirit and matter. I will need to let go, to trust and to let myself be carried again by the eternal flow. To let what illusions that still remain from social, cultural and histories wrappings fall away from my being, and to touch again the purity and wisdom of essence and being guided by its focus and rhythm to the gateway of authenticity and freedom.

I will need the support from friends and loved ones sometimes of a gentle kind:  Those, who will not judge or condemn my actions. No matter how peculiar or unorthodox they may seem to be at times. I will need their faith and belief in me that I can and will find and do what I need to regain my strength and resources and take my rightful place in the circle of life once more. I will also need that they not demand or ask of me more than I am able to give. I will need some time and space to chart my own course, even if this means falling down and making mistakes.  I only ask that they stand with me throughout.  Lest we forget that we all have wounds to heal on both levels of personal and collective: And that we are the bares of new seeds of life design and purpose that must die from time to time for final fruits to ripen. So goes the journey and lessons for us earth travelers and seekers.

I will further need the contact with the healing energies of the earth and become familiar again with its many cycles and processes that I once knew: To be present when the early morning sun brings the new day and to fall prey to the enchanting spell of the full moon.  I will need to take in its breath and smell of its fragrance and to touch the moistness of its womb with my bare feet and to know again my grounding. I will need to attune to its grace and rhythm through sound and movement whereby my body resonates with its body and my heart with its heart.

I now know that to die to life and the world is something natural and part of the process of becoming more fully alive, awake and responding to the call of spirit.  It is a part of the lesson that comes with the interface of human and earth.  It is the means whereby we revive the wondrous state of joy and play that we had as children and so often lose and forfeit in our meager attempts to survive in the so-called adults manufactured world of half truths, false promises and empty dreams.  And to find again the true values that give us a sense of worth and what is real and more important for sustaining both our lives and relationships.  It also reminds us of our uniqueness in what it is to be human and the quality kind of connection we are meant to have with ourselves, others and the world:  The kind that we have to acknowledge, cultivate and reach out and inside for more. It is also another chance to clean body and soul of the residue collected from life’s many affairs and dramas.

To do this journey is something that comes with choice and that alone.  But once we do make this choice we have to remain fully committed to the task and staying the course.  Once we begin there is no turning back.  We have to then surrender all controls and desires to a source greater than ourselves.  We also must understand that there are no easy ways or shortcuts.  It is a total immersion experience.  It can bring with it great risk and peril.  We can even get lost and sidetracked along the way.  This can even be a threat to our very existence.  The Shamans kind of dying can only be in this manner.  It is a rite of passage as old as time itself.  It is about our participation in the healing of the earth and the human family.

It is a journey as always that begins with the heart and ends with the heart.  It has to do with the search for what we seek and need the most and is the greatest gift we can ever hope to experience on this earth.  It is the one thing that gives us our deepest fears and wounds but propels us to go on and to not give up.  Simply put, it is our need to love and to be loved.  But the main reason we need to take the journey in the first place is to remember again what we sometimes have forgotten and knew when we first came to this life.  That it is also deserved.  Once we have remembered this we will be on our way again in taking our place in the everyday theater of existence and uncovering one of the greater secrets of the universe. Then we will understand that while dying is also a skill that we must learn to befriend and to master in this life.  It is the “living” that takes the most courage, commitment and will to achieve. This is our real purpose and mission for being here.”1

 

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‘The Earth is Speaking’

 

Have you ever heard the earth speak?  It does you know.  Have you heard the shriek of the hawk in flight, during one of its hunts?  Or the blue jays song, or when the wolf howls at the moon, or when the mountain lion cries through the night?  It can be so magical possessing a power of its own if we are a-tuned to it.

But today in our modern enclave and hubris of horns honking, tires squealing, high pitched radios, harried and anguished voices, mobile phones, talking of mundane and frivolous things … ‘We hear nothing’… (least of all the earth, speaking)  except the long playing cassettes in our heads telling us ‘how to listen’, ‘how to feel’, ‘how to choose’ and ‘how to be’, the voices of societies, culture and all their rigid and ridiculous rules that are turning us from ‘human beings’ into non-thinking, non-feeling and non-choosing machines.

 

When was the last time you enjoyed the setting of the sun, the awakening to a new day, a rainbow after a hard and fresh rain, the first snow fall and the enchanting glimpse of the full moon? These precious gifts given to us, our species, so naturally, and through the earth’s stages and cycles, that have no price, for they cannot be bought or sold as they are freely given.

But we know so little of this because we humans are so dangerously out of touch with the rhythms and beat of nature, which we are a part and have come to ignore these basic but profound truths of our existence. In short, we simply don’t listen anymore to the earth, one another or ourselves even when we know this has great costs and consequences.

It is because of this that the earth has resorted to more drastic means to get our attention and for us to listen. Now, the sounds and movements get louder and more powerful; these coming through earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, floods and other radical shifts in the climate. All of these are signs for us to wake up and to take heed as to our misdeeds and destructive tendencies and begin to walk in a sacred way.  For the earth no longer is waiting for us to hear its voice.  It is beginning the steps it needs to take towards the cleansing and healing of itself and our abuse to its body and soul. Where we go from here is up to us.  Our destiny and future and the kind of relationship we end up having with the earth remains to be seen. This relationship will be reflected as a mirror reminder of what that can be. What we do or don’t do will have an influence on this outcome.

In the movie `The Day After Tomorrow` this point comes across with graphic detail. Although the movie was the more typical Hollywood sci-fi disaster film; its message had a great impact. It reminds us that if we continue to disregard natures, law and order of existence, we have better be ready to pay the price.

If there is one thing I have learned in all my years of being alive on this planet plus, traveling and working on it for over seventeen years, it is this: If we ever hope to awaken to consciousness fully or to take the next evolutionary steps into the place of i.e. Global Soul, planetary citizenship, universal human etc, then we must begin to listen and pay more attention to what nature and the earth is trying to say to our species-human and our world community in these times. We not only have to stop abusing the earth through our lack of concern and disrespect and let go of our “conquer and control” attitude we have used against nature for thousands of years.  We also have to become more responsible in our choices and conduct with nature now on a daily basis.

Today, nature is speaking to us through the changes that we can witness everywhere as its very order is being threatened by our selfish and thoughtless deeds. All we need to do is to look around to see what this is all about. We need not be a ‘geologist’ or some other specialists in the area of environment to know something important is happening to the planet.  We need not know how to use a crystal ball to see into the future either; nor do we need to be up on the whole line of prophesy from the Bible, Mayan Calendar, Nostradamus or others. All we need to do is look at what is the obvious. The earth is doing what it needs to do to heal and cleanse itself from the centuries of abuse and damage from our species. The one species of the multitude that has become hell-bent on its own destruction and through its madness has sought to destroy and cause the extinction of many of those others that comprise that multitude. The one species as well that has done a really good job of messing up the system of harmony and interdependence that has taken the earth millions of years to create and evolve.

 If the earth has one message for us today that we need to hear.  It is that this abuse and disregard for the earth’s eco-system has to stop.  If we’re not willing to take the efforts to do so, then the earth will.  This is what these dramatic changes going on with the earth are all about, at least in part. The other side of this happening is related to our role in the intensifying of these changes.  Such as: Nuclear bomb tests, depletion of the ozone, pollution, strip mining, destruction of rainforest etc. These have caused the necessary eco-balance in the earth’s cycle’s and stages to become more unbalanced and disconnected. I need not go into a big and heated discussion about these things. There are plenty of books and articles and organizations that have a great deal more knowledge about these subject areas. If anyone really wants to know more about what is going on all they need to do is to search out the sources. But, from what I have seen today, most people don’t want to know more about these things anyway. After saying this, I find that I have one more important point to make and if I don’t it will haunt me for days. Here it is:

The other factor that also has something to do with the apparent earth changes is that they are part of both the earth’s and our evolution and spiritual development. This means that they are part of the next stage or steps or leaps in becoming more conscious beings. In order for this to happen we have to go through initiations or “rites of passage”. In a sense, we have to go through necessary processes of transformation, which include the death of old ways and the preparation for new ways to live and states of being.

If we extend this more into the material arena of our existence it tells us that as the physical environment is passing through many different kinds of shifts in form and process, we too will experience these as well, being that we are a part of this species – environment connection; hence, the outside physical environment and our internal human environment are related.

 

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A Night to Remember

I awakened one morning some time ago with my head flooded with memories of my life and especially these last years of traveling and experiencing the world. These memories I found, neither to be negative or positive but at the same time some of them brought back the feelings and reactions I had at those times from both an emotional and mental level, along with a more physical and spiritual one. They came in a mix of anger, frustration, anguish, hopelessness and a sense of being lost, blocked and not being in touch with not only my life, but the life of others around me, i.e. friends, colleagues and the people who came to my workshops and assorted conferences and presentations at clinics or university campuses. I even had remembrances about people I met and/or passed on the street, in bus and train stations, in sidewalk cafes or in the flight cabins of an aircraft en route to Caracas, Africa or Moscow. I remember lying in bed as these memories flooded through my mind and body like a torrid and fast moving river.  Then for no apparent reason I began to take notice of another kind of feeling seemingly hidden but beginning to emerge more into my awareness.  This was “Sadness” a feeling that I had experienced before, especially during moments of when I experienced deep vulnerability. The kind of vulnerability that goes beyond just the realms of the personal to touch the one of the collective. When we feel the both the pain and joy of all, but at the same time can take us back to when we were small and felt alone in the world.  The time when we wished to escape from everything but for various reasons could not or we secretly desired to see what would happen if we stayed the course and connected to the process. I lay there for it seemed like an eternity but knew that it was only a few minutes, no more than seven or eight, as the vulnerability I was feeling began to bridge with some of the memories I had had before but with little or no feeling, only that which accompanies the mental process of memory. As this began to become greater so to did the vulnerability that was making me feel even smaller than before to a point at times when I believed I simply disappeared all together. I felt captivated by all the force and movement of the energy moving through and all about me. Then came another shift that felt like a large hammer hitting my head. This time a pain that was greater than the one coming through my vulnerability, the sadness and even the most intense of my memories, and yet what was also a peculiar thing to me was that the pain I noticed was also coming from a deeper place of my vulnerability. As if they both took up residence in that fertile place or they were really the same energy source, just expressed in different ways. The more I looked on I also began to see something else that was hidden from my view earlier on. While I recognized some of the obvious aspects that come with the whole experience, which pointed back to the lessons of my own life story, I saw further that while this was certainly true it was not the entire case. I could see that parts of my own story, pain and all that it comprised were a mere part of a greater and more collective one. One that we all share with one another throughout this life and world and the one that has both chapters from the past, ones we are working on now and those we are beginning to imagine, dream, desire and choose for our future. The ones that we have at times tuned into without knowing and realizing it and others when we are fortunate enough to know that we can experience these moments with others on a mutual basis and with greater depth of intensity.  In this place I could feel the pain of my own existence, coupled with others pain with i.e. friends, lovers, family, workmates and that which we feel when we touch the collective stream of compassion: The pain that comes with loss, rejection, betrayal and not being acknowledged in this life for who we really are: The pain that comes from the earth for being ravaged and wounded by our species ill treatment and disregard and disrespect for its existence: The pain that comes from the mountains being stripped of their minerals and resources and not being given anything back to restore its need for harmony: The pain that comes from the mighty oceans, rivers, lakes and streams being polluted so that their resources and gifts of nourishment to our bodies and senses become less and less.  I could feel the pain of the animals, so many in varied species cast aside because of our beliefs about ourselves as being more superior and forgetting and neglecting our own animal part that comes to us through our instincts. Finally, after experiencing so much of this pain of feeling and seeing; I could look or feel no more. I had seen enough and needed to cry and release this pain inside of me. I needed to take the steps towards healing myself, both my personal and collective sides and parts. So I did.

 As the tears began to flow down my cheeks I could taste their saltiness as they reached the corner of my lips.  The tears of sadness, part of mine, others the creatures of the earth and those of unseen domains: The pain growing stronger by the minute but this time more visibly in my body parts.  Mostly I could feel the ache in both my gut and groin and then it moved sharply to my shoulders and neck. I felt heavier, bowled over, as if I was carrying the weight that came from dis-connection, being separated from head and heart and feeling that disconnection as the gap that is created through this condition. The more I felt this weight, the pain, I could experienced more sadness that began to emerge inside of me. It seemed like a circular event with accompanying steps and processes.

Throughout this very intense episode I began to understand something more clearly than I had ever before. I understood that I was not alone. None of us are even when we are alone. This is just an illusion. A defensive mechanism we create and/or borrow or inherit in order to block or at the least to slow down some of the incoming impulses that we are being flooded with on a daily basis. i.e. mental, emotional and body as well as T.V., Radio, mobile telephones, Internet etc. and all of the interesting high-tech toys our world has become more dependent on today. The ones that are supposed to have brought us closer together but in many ways they have done just the opposite. Over time they have turned us into strangers to ourselves and our own “raw” creative potential. We keep forgetting sometimes that we created the machine and not the opposite.  I knew it was something to think about more.

This experience went on for some more moments. I’m not sure in what time frames or frequencies the depth of the pain, the vulnerability, the tears flowing down my cheeks and the sadness that was continuing to well up from inside of me went on.  Then strangely it all began to subside, step by step, in a slow motion sense to finally vanishing entirely from my view and body experience as if it were but a dream and hadn’t happened at all in a conscious sense. I even began to wonder if it was just my imagination so fresh as it can be on our first awakening to a new day or could it have been the remains of a dream that I had in some way or for some reason carried over from the dream time?  Or could it have been just a special moment in time when I could get a glimpse of the collective-ness part of our lives and the relatedness of all things.  Why had I had this kind of experience at this time in my life?  Was it a sign, a kind of calling to new understanding, a message for taking some kind of action? Did it have something to do with some new steps I was getting ready to take in my life and this was some kind of preparatory help?  Was it real, fantasy or both?  What meaning did it have for my life, if any. Did it have a message for others and something I could pass on?  Perhaps, even to the whole world.

So many questions I still have left from this experience. From time to time and these many years later I look back to that morning experience.  On occasion I have some insights that I did not then following the episode and I have added them to the everyday affairs of my life as much as possible.

So, what about you (the reader)?  Have you had any kind of experience similar to mine that has given you a glimpse of our personal relationship to the collective one?  Maybe this has come through some kind of prayer, meditation, drugs, near death experience, a transcendence episode, a crisis, etc. I personally believe that many people have and more and more people are having these today more frequently. The reason for this has to do with the times we are living through now and how each of us are responding to it. This is about the steps and processes that come from awakening to a higher nature and consciousness. The ones that come to us through our dreams, encounters with others, life changes, crisis, near death experiences and other events that cause some kind of shift in our attention and focus. These are the times of life’s transitions. The times and moments to let go, let die and surrender to a force and movement of life guiding us to and through new stages and cycles of our growth and development.

 

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The World of Us

 

It is a world where high-tech markets reign king and master and we are its obedient and dependent slaves, despite our “desires” and “intentions” to still be in charge and at the helm. A world where people talk, and talk, and talk, and often say little, other than the repetitions banalities of here-say and the mundane, though on occasion some chores get done, in spite of the disruption.

We talk on line… via chat rooms, the Internet, then voice mail, answering machines and the “mobile”. The one that we clutch tightly in our hands as if we must possess it, liken to a child, afraid that it won’t ring again and yet in moments of duress, when it does. We wait, we wait… and we wait some more testing our patience and weathered capacities for the next supposedly ‘important call’, the one that will make our day and give our spirits the freedom to soar beyond the body condition.  The one that half the time doesn’t even come, for some reason we know nothing about. It is all such a great and perplexing mystery.  But if and when it does come it does so unexpectedly and at the most inopportune of times; Like in the cinema during one of the most thrilling scenes, as we feel the tension from other around us, when hearing the incessant ring of the mobile as we are hesitant to respond. Then later on a-crowed bus, trolley on the underground… or when were in the car during traffic when it is at its worst and were trying to maneuver a turn with one hand, while trying to hold the phone to our ear with the other, not always the safest thing to do.

We talk and talk now but our ears have stopped listening to what is around us. Now we listen to the cassettes that play constantly in our heads repeating again and again what we have heard so many other times before.

The television blares night and day at home, in the restaurants and bars, and on the walls in the shopping plazas, the metro lines and the gigantic screens atop buildings in the Central Square. How often do we find ourselves listening in on someone’s private conversation?  Did we ask for this?  Of course not, but we get it anyway, whether we want it or like it or not. When all that we really want is some silence, just some precious silence, and a break from the aggressive and sometimes overwhelming pace of our high tech reality routines.

The one that isolates, alienates and at times provoke us to violence, the unpremeditated and impulsive kind that comes without much warning, like a reflex action when the senses and nerves can take no more.  But most of us are trained well and keep our true feelings hidden, and locked inside.  We do know the advantages of having to control our lives and world, for fear that if we don’t we will lose perhaps our grip on reality and not know what to do.

Our world today is bombarded with numerous sounds, images, movements that sometimes are “intoxicating” to the imagination, but over time, addictive, limiting and even damaging to our souls peace. There are even times when we are enthralled by some of the more masterful and brilliant inventions of the more high-tech mechanics of the world universe and the apparent interplay that seems to exist between us and them.  We are awed by this cosmic drama unfolding.  But, other times it is simply too much.  We cannot breathe and feel suffocated by the immense burden we must carry because of its assaults to our capacity of being.  We try to find some marker of protection and temporary defense from this onslaught of hyper- electric energy, its imposing rhythm smashing and flooding.  We further seek shelter for safeties sake, for at least a chance to pause and find our sense of internal calm again. But, at best, this too, is only a temporary reprieve and we look for a more effective means of escape. At first through alcohol, drugs, both hard and soft but when these no longer give us the solace our tortured souls need, we take leave of the world and reality entirely and find some kind of freedom, if possible through the masochistic, anguished type of pleasure through and within the void of madness itself. While this may not be the best of choices taken, it is the best that can be done under the circumstances being offered and available. So goes another sage lived by “us” in the world today.

 

Does this scene seem familiar to anyone? Do we find ourselves caught up in this routine from time to time? How do we handle it best? Does it have an affect on our relations with others in our lives? i. e.  family, friends, workmates… people in our neighborhoods, strangers on the street, in the shops, on the bus, metro etc.  Let us take sometime to think about these questions.  Maybe making a few mental notes about some of them wouldn’t hurt either. If we took the time to jot some of our thoughts and feelings down on paper this could even be better.