Tag Archives: society

A Free Mind

We owe it to ourselves to expose our minds to many points of view. Reading widely and diversely is a good starting point. In a time where everything is increasingly politicized, mass media narrative can easily become a form of advertising for political agenda.

A free mind yearns to see beyond the consensual narrative and reality.

The public narrative, and particularly on social media, is becoming deeply divided. So many people seem to be locked into their chosen echo chamber, parroting what they hear from their particular group of friends and political party. Where is the independent thinking? Where is the open-mindedness, where people can at least consider a differing point of view, instead of viciously attacking the “opposition”, trying to make them conform?

Observing the meltdown in society right now, it seems that the answers will not be found in the same old paradigm, the normal duality of “it’s either A or B” choices. We need to find a meeting ground, a creative way of melding diverse ideas into a new model for humanity and society.

True to Yourself

Are you being true to yourself? This year 2020 has magnified everything – people who are critical and judgmental if we don’t adhere to their opinions (or worse, they are outright aggressive), events in our society that do not feel right, they do not ring true, but we stuff it down inside and quietly acquiesce.

These little betrayals of ourselves, our gut feelings and own wisdom, eventually add up and take their toll. It is called selling our souls, piece by piece. We can ignore the discomfort in ourselves about it for awhile, but eventually it’s time to pay the piper. At a certain point, we just do not feel good about how we are treating ourselves.

Be true to yourself. No one is going to hear you or respect you if you don’t do that for yourself, first and foremost.

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.
~ Walt Whitman

Your Sacred, Sane Place

Technology does not only offer us speed and a wide array of information. It also gives us distraction, noise, and confusion.

Do you have a place where you can go daily to claim a quiet interlude, far away from the fray and anger of the world? Our modern world is always a noisy place, but someone turned up the volume full blast on us at the beginning of 2020. When you add it onto the discouragement and loss around the COVID scenario, mentally and emotionally it can feel like just too much some days.

People often equate the word sacred with church, but have you considered, finding the sacred has to begin with your own internal landscape? If you do not honor the sacred within you, if you do not recognize that you are to be honored first and foremost, sooner or later you will have nothing left to give to anyone else.

If you have not already done so, establish a sacred place where you can find some quiet and cultivate peace within yourself. where you can start to hear your own voice again. A little piece of nature may be a very good start.

As the famous nature enthusiast and writer John Muir said, “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”

“Your sacred place is where you can find yourself, over and over again. ~ Joseph Campbell

Photo courtesy Stijn Dijkstra, Pexels

Hero in the Making

A quote for our times? You be the judge.

Euripides apparently lived from 480 to 406 BC. A tragedian playwright in Ancient Greece, he has influenced drama into our modern times, especially the portrayal of mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

Make no mistake, history repeats itself until we decide to do it differently. I think we will see many heroes emerge in the coming days, people who never dreamed they had greatness within them. Will you be one of them?

Inspirational Quotes:

“Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.”
~ Alan Moore

“Heroes are ordinary people who make themselves extraordinary.”
~ Gerard Way

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
~ Tom Robbins

Becoming Civilized

Are we a fully civilized society? We assume because we have advanced forward in linear time that it is naturally a given we are also more progressed in terms of our knowledge, wisdom, and sophistication. But are we?

How sophisticated is it to indulge in the kind of social behavior we witness in society at the moment? As our buildings get taller and our computers become faster, we are forgetting the fundamental human skills needed to build a truly great civilization. In short, we are losing touch with our humanness, our decency, our respect for the Earth that serves us.

There are societies we label as primitive that have or had a much greater grasp of the ethics and integrity of a respectful and fulfilling society. I suggest that it is time to put our inflated egos aside and learn from them, in order that we may incorporate some of their higher principles back into our modern life.

Additional thoughts:

Star Trek fans, remember the “Prime Directive”? It is a law of noninterference that dictates that there be no interference with the natural development of any primitive society. In the Star Trek stories, the defining line is to have achieved warp speed technology on their own. These days I wonder what civilizations might be observing us and just shaking their heads. “Sorry, we would really like to help you, we see you are floundering around and it is really painful to watch. But, you haven’t figured out certain things on your own yet… Give us a call when you get it.