The Animal Us

THE ANIMAL US

How do we know that we don’t have fur just underneath our smooth skin? I mean the fur of a black bear, smeared with berries and the blood of fish. Oh, the x-rays won’t spot it. It is rougher than coarse stone, finer than air: this animal body in our bodies, this connection to a miraculous creation.

Part of our brains are on a brilliant kind of autopilot… just brilliant, inventing a million ways to keep insanity going in the world. I mean the oh so familiar dysfunctional disconnection that someone soaked us in, an incessant washing of the brain with the milk of discontent. And so the familiar conditioning says, don’t look too deep into the most of you, you might find too much trouble there, while the symbol making, music loving, heart-beated, drum thumped, danced crazed and wild heart of us goes on whistling dream songs beyond the reach of us, luring us through luminous looks and moments of confusing clarity.

There are birds in our blood, the trees are kissing us with every breath. Great beings watch over us from realms where a thousand earth years are one very interesting day. Some of us are kings in these worlds, some queens, some wizards, some prophets, all adventurers, who signed up to be diminished into flesh, squeezed into this world of forgetfulness, this place where we learn the hard lessons of willfully destroying the web of light through every little discourtesy, with each lie, continually shattering the wonder-child’s trust with this twisted insecurity that drives our greed.

It is closing time now: the night has fallen and we don’t even miss the hidden sun. World makers beat the dead horse and shout, it is bound to get up any minute now. But it is over. The whole system is collapsing. Time to wake up. Time to turn it all around, get down on our knees, look into our children’s questioning eyes, refind the deep soul of us, nuzzle earth. Time to let sharp claws tear our skin open from the inside. And in the dark eyes of the animal us a smile will appear, reflected in each eye, lighting up the distant horizons, spattering golden beauty all over the world.

Illuminating Happiness

"Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after
years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief,
of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which
has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game,
is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip.
Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of
darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul,
when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a
dream, and the gulf of darkness reality."
Wassily Kandinsky

We live in a time of tremendous uncertainty smeared over with thick veneers of ever whiffle-waffling confidence that science and the purveyors of technology will find the way to solve our exponentially escalating problems so that life will continue ever upward towards its peak of material prosperity and thus some semblance of peace for all. There are real lives at stake here: the hopes and dreams of countless parents for their children’s right to live out their lives in a harmonious world.

The “feeble light” that glimmers is the same Light that Moses knew burning in his bones, that Buddha discovered beyond all form and emotion, that Jesus proclaimed himself to wholly be. It is the Light of Life in all of our eyes, purified of the deeply immersed trauma birthed emotions and their pernicious defense mechanisms and strategies.

How shall the Light emerge and harmonize the body-mind with its own inherent nature of Freedom, peace, spacious bliss, and beauty making instincts?

I wish, wish, wish it could happen because people stretch their imaginations, open up their intuition, affirm the facts they don’t want to admit to and thus start waking up from the corporate spell woven by the super rich, the carrot dangled on the end of their enticingly extended sticks. I wish it didn’t have to come through the intensities of pain inflicted when mutual dreams collapse as the oil-based economic systems of ever increasing growth cough, and choke, sputter and sigh into exhaustion.

It is such a small shift, and yet so momentous, when people put Spirit above money, peace above material prosperity, time for leisure above acquisition, the highest good of their own children and all others above their own self interests. But it will take something powerful to enact it, like economic collapse, like total disillusionment, like the anarchy of despair.

This is just how the majority are, so this is how it will be. But there are many, many people out there, right now, who sense what is coming, who are awakening to a deeper realism, who are thinking for themselves, who are making the time to get in touch with their souls. For them the ancient words of the prophet Isaiah hold true:

“Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory (beauty) of the One Light, the Great Love will shine upon you. For though dense darkness covers the earth, the Light will arise upon you…”

In the original language of Hebrew this could also be translated:

Be Luminous for your illuminating happiness is come and the splendor and reality of the One who becomes in time is shining upon you. For the dark that obstructs the Light will fill up the world, but the Eternal One(ness) shall arise upon you, and his splendor shall be seen on you.

Materialism as the controlling paradigm of existence is a dense dark. We have enjoyed the bright side of it, for the material sphere is not evil, of course. So much good has come in the form of tools, knowledge, expertise… and yet, because of vested interests of powerful entities, mankind has been exploited, medicine poisened and drug warped. Massive economic ponzi schemes have been developed which are money making machines for the super rich. Do we really realize that for every corporation that flourishes there are countless small, family run business that go bankrupt and with them dreams destroyed, families stressed, marriages failed, children traumatized?

Do you know that during the recent economic crises the number of billionaires have increased in the world? Just recently the news quoted Warren Buffet as saying, “When it is raining gold it is time to get out the buckets.” His wealth has vastly increased as has most of the most wealthy people in the world. Do you realize that his opportunities for profit come at the expense of millions of poor and middle class families who are losing their homes, their business, their hopes? When are we going to wake up to how things really work in a system of ruthless competition?)

The collapse of a civilization is a major historical event. We are in the midst of one. But the future is very bright for the bright and clear souls who are awake to the true nature of the Universe and the laws of Love that govern the higher good and harmonies. This is one wild ride!

SPIRIT IN OUR NAKED CENTER

A new time is upon us:
a time of spirit in our naked center,
land in our circumference:
feet deep in earth, heart in open sky.

In this time of extreme urbanization, when the dream time of merchants which so forms our collective consciousness draws us to the edge of a precipice—will it take the rising roar of waves beating down city streets, filling gutted department stores with foam to wake us up from a truncated vision of what is real, this materialistic spell? Will it take the extinction of the polar bear, or the walrus, or the robin or the bee before we awake to realize the supreme peace and Life-presence inherent in the quick of every cell in our bodies?

Our economies are driven by the myth that mankind’s most natural state is an ache of constant need; that the true nature of man is a ravenous consumer. Is it possible that this belief acutely enhances perpetual, restless, human unhappiness? Could it be that this perception, expressed through the artistry and endless repetition of the advertiser’s barrage spills over into bleak, grieving pain passing itself on: the blind longing for an unknown, missed cohesion in Light, grinding out more pain, inflicting our children through dangerous, degrading words, the harsh slap, the snapped and sapped issuance of loving awareness, plunging adolescents into needless alienation and densities of soul?

I am convinced that what is essential to creating a more just and beautiful world is staring us right in the face, reflected in the Light of our eyes, but our minds are mesmerized by a illusionary worldview propagated by merchants. We are so used to a consummeristic way of beholding life we assume it is “normal”. You need a better this. Life will be better with a better that. What you now have is just not good enough. More and more is obviously better and better. Of course, don’t we all know that this is just how civilization must advance: new inventions driven by human nature’s inherent thirst for something more? But is it? Can we safely assume that we need more and more and more to be happy, that we, by nature, are bereft and bored and need lots and lots of things to stimulate us into happiness?

As long as we believe the lie that who we essentially are in our most naked essence is not enough, that our inherently natural, unbent nature is not relaxed and open, fluid, creative and harmonious, but rather wounded, tense, constricted and in constant need, we will continue in our mutually created and increasingly dangerous dream. We will continue to act out a cultural conditioning foreign to the actual nature of our essential existence at the expense of the Earth and future generations. And we will never discover the profuse and free nature of Life itself as it can be, unburdened from mental illusions, pouring as Love and liberty through our open energetic beings.

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A Passionate Call for Revolutionary Change

"We need a new economic system - one that is embedded in the care of all people and also in the care of the Earth and all of life upon it."
Presentation Sustainable Living Group, Ireland

I passionately agree with this statement, and also recognize that due to the inbuilt inertia of the familiar and fear of radical change a new economic system can only come from a tremendous shift of perception. Humans must "wake up" and embrace realities that will inevitably cause huge personal and social shifts. Our addiction to the familiar and fear of the new must be recognized and rejected out of a sense of deep moral necessity. I believe that once it dawns on us that we really are in a rapidly accelerating world-wide crisis, once the spell of denial is broken, needful human changes will accelerate. But will it be too late to prevent wide scale suffering and irreplaceable loss? That we will see.

The business community is the servant (or should I say slave) of profit. If the average person is unthinking and allowing the business community to manipulate social thought and feelings through clever advertising then the business community will not initiate radical change. But when enough people stand up and say, "No more!" no more repression of Earth friendly technology, no more social manipulation by powerful international corporations for the sake of their own profit no matter what the cost to mankind, no more false dreams of ever increasing material abundance for all through mindless consumerism, NO MORE! We demand non polluting, renewable, inexpensive energy production; we demand and require to restructure our laws so we are free to build the super inexpensive, energy efficient homes now possible out of natural materials that are freely available so everyone can have their own warm, human nest. We require access to the earth, to have our hands in the soil, that each of us can have our own garden full of singing birds and honey bees and grow our own organic food. And we demand this because we have woken up and recovered our passionate love of Life. We are now awake and recognize we are part of a miraculous, interdependent web of Creation.

We require more leisure time to study the wise ways of Life inherent in Nature and recover our sense of the miracle of existence. We require time to express the natural creative instincts that arise from Light-filled, Life inspired, Love bloomed hearts. We require freedom and peace of mind to deepen our meaningful relationships to the Divine Oneness of Life, to each other, to our own eternal, pilgrim souls, and to create beauty for ourselves, our communities and our children who trust us with their future.

It is time for change, for waking up, for shifts regarding where we place our attention and what we value. The transformation of the planet can only comes through the transformation of each one of us.

These are dangerous and exciting times. Will we continue to sleep in the mental/emotional spells created by the business world to drive its unsustainable economic systems, or will we return to that which is deepest, highest and most real within us, the Light of Life, the Love of Life, the reverence for the miracle of all existence?

We do not “have Life” in us. We are Life. We are the Light we see in our own eyes. This is our essence. And Life is, by its own nature creative, harmonious, playful, peaceful, joyful, and nourishing of more Life. Life is a miracle beyond comprehension because it is limitless in spiritual dimensions waiting for our discovery.

Everyday over 350,000 souls die and arise through the sky into higher dimensions of consciousness. Everyday around 400,000 souls come down to this earth to be born. All this movement of Life goes on in realms that our mortal body/mind systems cannot perceive, test or prove. But those who have left their bodies and entered super alive states of consciousness are telling us this over and over again. Read any of the Near Death Experiences sites. NDE, NDE Research Foundation. Read the spiritual mystics of the ages, the awakened ones. Read the awakened poets and writers. Get your attention off dangerous, status quo ways and put your attention on waking up to the larger picture and truer perspective. We must each embrace our own responsibility to do so and our changing lives and the crises of our times will inspire others to enact the same.

Imagine This

Imagine a world where: all religions realized their founders and visionaries were ultimately pointing beyond tribal concerns to a greater reality, a Oneness of all humanity in Love and freedom as the supreme goal of their visions and dreams.

Imagine a world where the Universe is understood as an open, multidimensional system, and that the Spiritual world is as alive and real to our minds as the realms we perceive with our bodily senses.

Imagine a world where our miraculous human body is seen as the physical expression of higher and more refined levels of energy and awareness that open into realms of inexpressible beauty, harmony, health and Light.

Imagine a world where the dominant paradigm is of service in Love and growth through mutual support for the greater good of all.

Imagine a world where being forgiving and kind to yourself and others is the first rule of healthy existence.

Imagine a world where happiness is understood as the natural results of seeking to contribute to a beautiful environment and the happiness of others in all that we do.

Imagine a world of self -governing local communities that lovingly support all members and trade with other communities in a win/win situation for the greater happiness and welfare of all.

Imagine a world of clean, free energy that is usable on small, local scales, therefore disbanding huge, polluting industries and dysfunctional urbane living isolated from the harmony and beauty of the natural world.

Imagine a world where skilled craftsmanship is highly valued because of the human spirit that is held in it through prolonged attention.

Imagine a world where living simply is widely loved because it frees the mind and heart of non-essential clutter to be available to develop and enjoy deep, meaningful relationships.

Imagine a world where family is a unit of lasting love, mutual support and joyful celebration linked through mutual love and respect to other family units.

Imagine a world where giving loving attention to children and playing with them is a top priority for all.

Imagine a world where effective education and joyful play is one and the same thing.

Imagine a world where the gift of sexual ecstasy is seen as a pure mirror of a deeper tenderness and ecstasy of spirit and is never repressed in fear nor exploited for profit.

Imagine a world where when young people sexually awaken they are never shamed or isolated but rather celebrated by family and friends and given wisdom about how physical ecstasy can unite with a deeper, instinctual opening to God as the pure bliss of Light, Love and endless beauty.

Imagine a world where the making of beauty for the joy of others is as natural a part of daily life as eating or breathing.

Imagine a world where developing artistic expressions of Love and wisdom for the good of all are highly respected and sought after trades.

Imagine a world of community wisdom gathering circles, where every perspective is carefully represented, from the creative, playful artists, to the women and children, to those concerned with economy and communal integrity—and mutual decisions are made as all perspectives are honored and a sense of wisdom and balance illuminates every heart.

Imagine such a harmonious world of beauty and joy. If you can, then simply desire such a world, right here, right now and hold this ideal in your heart as a sign of personal health and you will naturally find yourself part of the immergence of a new world of human happiness and beauty as the old order crumbles and passes away. Never underestimate the power of vision, desire and imagination, nor of the human will united to the wisdom of the Great Love that has conceived this bountiful and beautiful Universe and is for us all in every way.