Tag Archives: social commentary

Earth School

Do you believe your soul is returning here in various lives to work out all that you need to learn to evolve? Or, are you a person who perhaps believes in only one life, but also the eternal aspect of the soul after that one life? Or, are you someone who does not believe in either; there is one life and no afterlife?

I’m not here to say what is “right or wrong”, or what someone else “should or shouldn’t” believe, but only to share my own process on this idea of the evolving soul.

From a very young age, I always felt within me the presence of a higher creative power at work in the world. (If you’re sensitive, you can feel it between the lines in everything. The Native peoples call this “the web of life”.) However, exploring my feeling of this higher energy within the Christian church as a child, and again later as an adult, did not satisfy within me a suspicion that we need way more than one life to encompass all the learning a soul needs to perfect and move back to the One. I also could not accept the idea of a punishing God. (What truly loving being “punishes”?) I also could not accept the idea that such a God would dole out a life of poverty and strife to one person, while giving another a life of relative ease and wealth.

I think we have various experiences, over as many lifetimes as we need, to learn the important principles that various spiritual masters have come here to teach us. And, within each life we, and only we, are responsible for our choices, and the outcome of our lessons. (Taking responsibility eliminates the victim mentality and blame.) Ofttimes we also have other souls that will return to us again within several lives, different bodies playing different roles, so that we can work out our lessons together.

Religious institutions, although they play a role of bringing people together to explore spirituality, can also be one of the great dividers in society. What religion who is truly oriented to nurturing a spiritually evolved society, would condone or promote hatred of another? There are many paths to becoming spiritually evolved, and should we not be simply all helping each other on that path, if the positive evolution of humanity is indeed the common goal?

Eternally

We don’t remember
our other soul lives spent here,
alien Earth plane.

Swaths of sand smooth and
soften hard edges of lost
civilizations.

We visit, then with
infinite impermanence,
return to dust too.

Soul Mate

Eternal surprise,
all the hellos and goodbyes,
right there in your eyes.

Eternal Rhythm

The golden leaves fall,
fearing not the decay of
a coming winter.

Death is essential
to the renewal of life –
All will spring again.

If each in nature
can feel this simple rhythm,
so can humans too.

Why do we resist?
Our fears overshadow the
truth of our being.

But the fall leaves know,
they show us that we too will
green the tree anew.

Read it online, or download the PDF here.

The Day Humanity Decided

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An excerpt from The Day Humanity Decided:

This tree exuded a demeanor relentlessly proud. In a strange way, the tree gave the people a feeling of hope that there was something beyond smallness. Over many generations, small had become quite wearisome. It was boring, and well, small. Of course it was against the rules to think about anything outside of small, so it was best to keep those feelings to one’s self.

The biggest problem with the tree (for Tyrannicus) was, of course, that it was altogether contrary to The Rule of Small. Here was an object that defied The Tyrannicus Rex Official History of The Land of Small (kept in a special hall, separate from The Tyrannicus Rex Family Record Book for safe keeping), which stated that everything in The Land of Small had always been small, and in fact, small was the most natural thing in the world. What other way could or should it be? If the history books said it was so, then it must be so.

The narrative of small may have stuck ad infinitum, except for that darned tree. For reasons Tyrannicus could not fathom, more and more the people were beginning to question it. If everything had always been small, and it was natural to be small, then why was that mysterious huge tree in the middle of the square? Where did it come from?

It was not man-made; it was a tree for heaven’s sake, and a tree (being of Nature) was about as natural as you could get. Beyond that, why were the Tyrannicus Rexes so obsessed with removing it? Secretly The People of the Land of Small loved that sad, big tree, so it did raise questions.

To say that this whole situation was very irritating to Tyrannicus would be a massive understatement. He just wanted to live the easy life, but when the people questioned, this required making up new rules. Rules took time to make and enforce, but what else was one to do? It was exhausting, really.

Tyrannicus decided to delegate some of the rule making work. At first it started small, just a couple of people to oversee The Records of Rules of the Land of Small. They’d come to work and pore over the existing records, and then they’d put their heads together to suggest some new rules for the King to edict.

He was very pleased with their work. What he noticed right away was that as The Committee of Rules for the Land of Small made up new rules, it was pretty much impossible to publish them daily. The People of the Land of Small would dutifully wait for the next proclamations, but if they happened to miss an announcement and accidentally break a new rule, it wasn’t his fault, was it?

He hired more rule advisors, and rule making took on a life of its own in the kingdom. The people were now more fearful, which worked in Tyrannicus’s favor. They were so preoccupied trying to keep track of the new rules and the fines they might get if they broke them, they almost stopped thinking about the big tree in the square. Almost… but Tyrannicus would soon discover that in another part of The Land of Small, Nature was conspiring against him…

This has been an excerpt from The Day Humanity Decided. It’s a free download as both PDF and EPUB in my ebookstore. Here is the link.

Or if you just want to read the PDF online, try this link.

Diversity vs. Conformity

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One big melting pot for humanity? What a shame it would be to lose the beautiful diversity of various human cultures and history.

Yes, there is great value in mixing, appreciating the sameness and differences, learning to live with each other in harmony. The biggest lessons may be cooperation and universal love.

But in order to do this successfully, respect for each other’s uniqueness and cultural differences is essential. If we ourselves, and our world leaders, require that everything and everyone be “all the same”, then where is that leading us? Conformity is a soul crusher. Observe the world of nature around you. It displays diversity to the nth degree.

This is the challenge that faces us in building new societies: To orchestrate a harmonious blending of humanity, but also retain the valuable diversity. Appreciating the uniqueness of others helps to make life an expansive and rich experience. Travel is a valuable tool for building this understanding.

Inspirational Quotes:

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.” ~ Wade Davis

“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.” ~ U. G. Krishnamurti

“Being different will always threaten the institution of understanding of a closed mind. However, evolution is built on difference, changing and the concept of thinking outside the box. Live to be your own unique brand, without apology.” ~ Shannon L. Alder

“The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something – such as goodness, truth and beauty – by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness – by loving him.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Why Would I?

Why would I want
to be like
everybody else?
By some miracle
of Creation,
I am unique,
I came here to
make my own
contributions to
the world.

If you and I
think like
everybody else,
we all become
a goopy,
boring,
stagnant,
uncreative,
unproductive,
homogenized,
mishmash of
conformist
hive minds
wearing the same hat.

Why would I?
Why would you?

Poem Why Would I? is from Soul Journey: The Poetry of Life. (It’s a free ebook.)

Save or Savor?

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“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world, and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” ~ E.B. White

I know exactly what E.B. White means…

Must it be a choice? Perhaps the answer to E.B. White’s dilemma is to savor the world every day, while we save it. Or maybe savoring it, in actual fact, saves it? (Gratitude and reverence.)

It’s a very delicate balance. I believe we are here to do both.

What do artists and writers have to say about the world? Speaking as both, I think they fall into two main categories. They either want you to see the beauty, so you’ll savor it. Or, they want you to see the ugliness and pain, so that you’ll help to make it better. I think there is value in both approaches. My art (drawings and paintings) have always been about the beauty. In my writing, I try to walk a line of showing both sides of the coin, because life is hugely complex, and we cannot truly appreciate anything without tasting its opposite.

On days when the state of the world gets me a little bit down, I come back to thoughts of purpose. This is a very beautiful world (the Earth and we humans who inhabit it), one to be savored (life is a gift), and therefore one worth saving from that which craves to destroy it. Part of my personal journey has been one of finding the correct balance of save and savor, because if one is not careful, “save” can begin to overtake.

I hope you have a beautiful Sunday, however you spend it. For me, Sunday is purely a savor day, one of rest and to focus on the beauty.

Inspirational Quotes

“We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.”
~ Joseph Campbell

“What I’ve come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion.”
~ Chris Abani

“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.” ~ Amal El-Mohta

Life Is a Gift

It’s a blue-sky day,
one of those
beauteous blue-full,
joyously jocular,
splendidly splashy,
exceptional days –
I long to shout
LIFE IS A GIFT
in unmistakable
letters across the
blue shiny yonder,
to imprint them
indelibly on your
mind, so you’ll –

Remember when
the dark clouds roll
in, on a day when
life feels pissy and
oh so problematic,
to take a deep breath,
and close your eyes,
and gently pull the
gray gloom aside,
to see those big
oh so true words
I etched on blue
for you, so that
you’d never forget –

Life is a gift.

A World of Grace

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There are several definitions of grace, an obvious one being elegance or refinement in the physical state, particularly in movement. Another is an internal state exhibited by one’s behavior, which we may call “courteous goodwill.”

Courteous goodwill. This state of grace seems to be sadly falling by the wayside, as various factions in society bicker, squabble, and attack each other. Sometimes the behavior reminds me of children when they don’t get their way. In the past few years it seems that there has been a rise in bullying, shaming and coercing others psychologically. Where is the grace?

Those who bully others to get their way are not service to others, even though they may use narrative to paint themselves as such. They are service to self. They simply want the world to be “their way”, because they believe they have all the answers. Well, in a world of 8 billion people, how can that be true? There are many viewpoints on this planet.

A state of grace comes from a place of allowance, that others might have another way of being. It also is rooted in a true caring about other people. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, grace flows from love. Achieving a state of grace in one’s self moves us to a real place of service to others.

Inspirational Quote:

Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

By Your Grace

Dear Pachamama,
it’s unnerving when
you rant and roll,
rattling your saber –
An empty threat?
I feel Earth slide,
my life tenuous
beneath my feet.

Tornados & floods,
hail & hurricanes,
this earthquake
another reminder
that we live always
by your grace, so
live today, death’s
a tremor away.

Grace-full

May Grace shine on you,
smiling like the sun, lifting
your heavy heart light.

Poems are from Soul Journey.