The light of love within us

 

image via KatieDaisy

 

“We need to resonate with another collective field within us, one that is much deeper than fear – a field that is still hidden at the moment. It’s the collective field of trust, the matrix of life, which Dieter Duhm refers to as the “sacred matrix.” For, despite all the suffering, all the horrors of the past and all the threats, life is still oriented towards joy, curiosity and survival. There is a core within us that knows this. This core is called trust.”  –Leila Dregger, The Esperanza Project

Today I tidied up my gmail inbox. Mail from many of the organizations that I am subscribed to showed me how suddenly life on Earth has changed. In the space of a couple months (and in America just about 4 hyper-real weeks), we’ve gone from looking at the distant storm clouds with some worry, to standing, sitting or lying directly under the mother of all storms. We are collectively watching (and for those who are ill, directly experiencing) the tempest as it rains down upon us. Apocalyptic and prophetic in proportions, the coronavirus and its fallout is affecting everyone on Earth, and we will be forever changed as a result of this time.

By now, many authors have written about this crisis from a myriad of perspectives. Depending on one’s ideological, moral, religious and political perspectives, this pandemic can be seen as the end of the world, or a great personal tragedy of health, wealth and all things good and pleasant. For others, it is being hailed as the Great Wake-Up Call for humanity; The Moment we’ve been waiting for as humanity pushes the reset button on the way we’ve been living and methodically destroying our planet. Looked at from this prism lens takes the ability to step way back from your own, personal life view, and instead see the big picture of Earth and humanity’s evolution as a species. I’d like to suggest that this largest perspective, although difficult to wrap one’s head around, is the most beneficial view to take as we move forward.

Yet, I humbly acknowledge it is easier said than done. Getting above the fear, anxiety and even hysteria of this current moment of our evolution is a Herculean task. I am personally beset with doubts and fears, as well as moments of despair as I hear the relentless newstream of mortality rates and untold suffering. The bottom line seems to be: there is literally no way out of this, except to walk nobly through every moment of human suffering that we are collectively experiencing with our heads held high; our faith in ourselves and in our divinity as strong as it has ever been.

Dear Readers, I imagine each of you are going through your own version of questioning, worrying, anxiety, fear and pain during this extreme period of coronavirus. I thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts and feelings about it. I’d like to remind you again that for this we were born—it is for the express purpose of raising up the collective consciousness of humanity that we have come to Earth in this age. Many souls are now leaving the planet, and many more are coming to reinforce and bring the new age of Gaia into manifestation. It is not incorrect to embrace this moment as a Great Purge of old energy, an enormous clearing of darkness, power and control programs that have resided within humanity for countless eons of time. The excellent news is that we are finally at the tipping point, the moment when we collectively decide Enough! We are done with grossly unfair living conditions for the vast majority of society across the planet. We will no longer stand for a tiny percentage of humans hoarding nearly all the wealth and power of Earth’s treasures for their own selfish ends. We, The People of Earth/Gaia, are declaring, throughout all lands, that this crisis moment when many are sickened and some are dying, is heralding in The Time of Enlightenment for eons to come. From this horrific place of pain and suffering, we actually have the amazing opportunity to change our entire planet’s operating system in earnest. The lessons inherent in the pandemic are here for all to plainly embrace. People must be cared for by society as a whole. We can no longer look away and pretend things are okay when they are so clearly broken. We are broken at the bottom, and from this place of brokenness we can build a human society that actually works for everyone. We have all the tools and ingenuity we need to do it. Up until now, we have sorely lacked the political will. But the coronavirus, which is nothing more than a packet of RNA wrapped up in a film of fat so small it is invisible to the human eye, is crowning us with a vast opportunity for a new operating system for us all.

Don’t let cynicism and denial prevent you from dreaming into this vision. In these weeks and months, people everywhere are awakening and seeing (perhaps for the first time in their lives) that this dream for an equitable, clean, and healthy world is not only possible, but that we can and must make it become real. Look how quickly everything changed in the world during the past two months!  WE DON’T HAVE TO RETURN TO BUSINESS-AS-USUAL EVER AGAIN. This pandemic is showing us there is a more beautiful world within our reach. A world based on the principles of love, compassion and fairness. Let us not lose the momentum for real, lasting change.  I leave you with a prayer I heard today,

Fear is not real. I rest in the light of Divine Love,

and that is the only Truth I embrace.

May the Light of Love rise up within My Heart,

and the Hearts of All Humanity.

 

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A note of thanks and encouragement

via 123rf.com

Hi Readers and Bloggers! Today I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has read my blog, interrelatedplanet.org, over the past year. This blog has a tiny readership by most media standards in today’s world. I have done very little to promote it, other than sharing posts via my FaceBook and LinkedIn accounts. The purpose of this blog is to give me a platform to inform, inspire and share my opinions about the world we live in and how we are all connected and interrelated at the core level. The fact that during this past year people from 51 countries have read this blog is, in my mind, pretty amazing!

There are days when I admit to giving into the feelings of despair and isolation that crop up when reading mainstream media on the internet. It’s clear that we are collectively going through a period of chaotic and intense change, unlike anything that humanity has known since recorded history began. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all and lose hope that our world will one day soon become a global society based on equity, justice, the rule of law, compassion, care for all life, and respect for all people. I’ve written before of of the United Nations charter , created 74 years ago, which lays out the blueprint for how a world based on these qualities and principles could be for humanity. In these times of great change, it can very much seem as if the forces of darkness and evil are, indeed, winning the battle.

Today, dear Readers, I want to encourage all of you who take the time to read my words to NOT GIVE UP on ourselves and our world. Yes, terrible atrocities continue happening daily across the world. Yes, the corruption, greed and power-mongering by the richest world actors and government leaders continues, as news outlets’ daily headlines clearly show. Yes, climate change is happening faster than we can keep track of, with extreme weather affecting millions of people across the planet. I could go on and on, but you understand. These are crucial times, extraordinary times, and exceedingly difficult times to be living through. Our current systems allow for and even promote oppression, inequity, and environmental degradation. Given all the factors and actors vying for power and control of the world’s precious resources at all costs, how do we find hope that a future world based on peace, justice and love is coming?

This week, most of the world’s leaders have gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York City for the 74th annual General Assembly. The UN is committed to transparency, and want all people to be able to know and understand the global issues and challenges we face. Towards this end, they post all the speeches made by each country’s representative on their You Tube channel so anyone with an internet connection may watch them. This week I’ve taken time to watch some of their speeches, but perhaps even more interesting, I scrolled through their channel to look at the faces of the people who are leading our current world society. I have to say, the vast majority of them look unhappy, tired and perhaps even a bit desperate. Only the smallest fraction of their faces are smiling or seem positive.

World leaders would do well to find their inner child, who remembers how to smile.

The conclusion I draw from this experiment is, most leaders in the world today know our current system is broken, highly unfair, and unsustainable for our collective future. While some continue to display ungracious arrogance and stubbornly refuse to listen to reason or science, for the most part I believe that the great majority of people on Earth today sincerely desire us to change for the better. Most of us are beyond weary of war, power struggles, violence and living in fear. In our deepest hearts we know we are better than this. Problem is, how do we get from our current state of chaos, violence and inequity, to the more beautiful and peaceful world we know is possible?

It is a long, tedious, and painfully slow road from where we are now to where we want to be. But it is NOT impossible. The beloved Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hanh, reminds us that smiling is very important. If we cannot smile, the world cannot have peace.  It is step one. How I would love to suggest to the world’s leaders this week that they ought to begin their speech by finding one thing to say that is positive about our world at large, and smile as they do so. Even such a small gesture would have resounding impact on everyone in the hall, and everyone on our planet.

Again, I wish to thank you all who read this blog. I would love to read your comments too, as long as they are respectfully given. I encourage all of you to continue doing your good work in our world, in whatever field you are working. In order to change everything (for the better) we truly need everyone. Namaste and blessings to each one of you, from my heart.

We Are Star Stuff

via https://www.passiton.com/inspirational-quotes/6104-the-molecules-of-your-body-are-the-same

“We have seen what we thought was unseeable,” said Shep Doeleman, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and director of the effort to capture the image, during a Wednesday news conference in Washington, D.C. The image, of a lopsided ring of light surrounding a dark circle deep in the heart of a galaxy known as Messier 87, some 55 million light-years away from Earth, resembled the Eye of Sauron, a reminder yet again of the implacable power of nature. It is a smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity.  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/black-hole-picture.html

The New York Times reported on the first image ever revealed of a massive black hole at the far reaches of the galaxy Messier 87 this week.  Titled Darkness Visible, Finally: Astronomers Capture First Ever Image of a Black Hole, the article, by Dennis Overbye, was written with language that at times approached poetry and science fiction, with overtones of awe and wonder. Overbye used descriptors like monster, phrases such as portal into eternity, and described the image as the place where “according to Einstein’s theory, matter, space and time come to an end and vanish like a dream.”

The results of years of work by astronomers working in collaboration on several continents, Wednesday’s news was announced at six locations on Earth simultaneously. Overbye wrote, “When the image was put up on the screen in Washington, cheers and gasps, followed by applause, broke out in the room and throughout a universe of astrofans following the live-streamed event.”

It has taken a century of scientific investigation to prove that Einstein’s theory of relativity, from which his theory of black holes arose, is indeed true and no longer simply a theory. In the NYTimes article, Overbye quotes Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale, who said “Einstein must be delighted. His theory has just been stress-tested under conditions of extreme gravity, and looks to have held up.”  And astrophysicist Kip Thorne wrote in an email, “It is wonderful to see the nearly circular shadow of the black hole. There can be no doubt this really is a black hole at the center of M87, with no signs of deviations from general relativity.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/science/black-hole-picture.html

It’s fascinating to read how the team of roughly 200 astronomers put together the data, collected from eight radio observatories on six mountains and four continents. The data was taken during a period of ten days in April of 2017, and took the next two years to compile it into the stunning images revealed to the world this week. Here is a link to that article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/science/event-horizon-black-hole-images.html

It is not easy to describe in words the elation that many of us feel at reading this week’s news, and seeing the black hole images for the first time in history. But a feeling of vindication is part of the larger and more complex web of feelings surrounding the evidence. In a world fraught with opinions passing as truth, outright lies and human egotism run amok, it is such a breath of fresh air to see, with human eyes, an image of a cosmic reality so vast that it is impossible to comprehend. The black hole that lies in the heart of galaxy Messier 87 is nearly seven billion times the mass of our own sun. This is a moment when even scientists will turn to poetry and prophetic words from long ago, as we attempt to grasp the incomprehensible as it is presented to us. In so many ways, for human beings, seeing is believing. This week, we are finally able to see a black hole, a cosmic force incomprehensibly huge.

I looked up quotes by Dr. Carl Sagan, who was a master of writing about science and humanity with eloquence and clarity. Here are some of his thoughts on the relationship between humans and the cosmos, taken from his seminal book, Cosmos, first published in 1980. With gratitude to Dr. Sagan, I offer them to you, dear readers.

“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”

“The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.”

“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore, we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return, and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos, via https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/3237312-cosmos