In light of Paris and now the
Colorado Planned Parenthood facility as well as the San Bernardino Health
Department where people, armed with guns designed exclusively to kill people,
are doing just that – killing people – I try to focus on stilling my mind and
allowing the Holy Spirit to open my spiritual eyes to a vision of True Reality
– acknowledging that every thought and act is either an act of Love or a call
for Love.
I am still a novice at
accomplishing that. I have to have help to still my mind. I routinely find the
outdoors of great use in doing my “stilling.” It is the only way I have found
to propel me into the Now, where I have to be to hope for the arrival of
stillness and the whispers of the Holy Spirit.
I am currently reading a book by
Jon Turk entitled “The Raven’s Gift” [St. Martin’s Press, 2009]. Quoting from
the back jacket: “The northern lights
have indeed seen strange sights, but none quite compare to Jon Turk’s
adventures on the frozen tundra of Kamchatka. There he encounters a
great-great-grandmother spiritual healer who mends his body of damage sustained
in a long-ago skiing accident. The tension between his own logical scientific
background and the mysterious shamanistic wisdom of his healer is at the heart
of this wonderfully told story of Koryak life and his own personal
transformation.”
In the book Turk describes [pages
3-5] his first experience of a transformative, intuitive “knowing” that emerged
inside him while, on a beautiful spring day, he watched his dog simply leap,
bound, run, dig and play in the meadow where they were. “My dog suddenly raced off at a sprint for about fifty yards, leapt into
the air like a fox, with his front paws spinning, and landed, digging
furiously, clods of sod flying into the air….I sauntered over, but by the time
I arrived, my dog had abandoned that hole, sprinted another fifty yards and
repeated this same odd behavior. [The dog did that 3 or 4 more times.] “Each
time, after breaking through the protective sod, he shoved his nose into the
earth and sniffed, then dug, and sniffed again. What did he smell down there? I
squatted on my hands and knees and tentatively stuck my nose into one of his
holes. Even my human senses could detect the sweet aroma of decay as mites and
bacteria woke from their winter somnolence and began to munch and crunch, as
only mites and bacteria know how, to convert bits of roots and old leaves into
soil…. By the time I reached the fifth hole, my nose and cheeks were smudged
with dirt and bits of moist soil lodged onto the hairs of my nostrils, so the
earth was inside me, as if we had just made a pact of togetherness….
“Since that time, my entire adult life has been a balancing act between
science on one hand and the smell of the earth that became so seminal that
spring day in the Rockies on the other. I have made the bulk of my living
writing college-level textbooks on geology, environmental science, chemistry,
physics and astronomy. At the same time I moved to a ski town and became
involved in high-intensity rock climbing, skiing, kayaking, and later mountain
biking. Climbing a vertical granite wall in a remote region of the Canadian
Arctic … involves a different level of intensity than smelling the spring
earth. But the relationship between the two is stronger than most people would
suspect. During expeditions, the often razor-thin margin between life and death
depends on a tactile, sensory awareness of the environment that incorporates
but also transcends logic. My first introduction to that awareness occurred on
a spring day when I was walking in a meadow with my dog.”
I have described several
instances where, smelling and observing the myriad life in the muck of my
wet-weather creek, I found myself making sense of me in light of the commonness
of this thing called “Life.” I simply had this feeling of knowing what the
indigenous peoples have known and trusted: Life is universal and non-discriminatory.
Native Americans, as well as Australian Aborigines, understood that all things
have life or spirit: animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, trees, springs, rocks,
winds, storms, and – of course – humankind. But they also understood there was
no hierarchy. No one form of life was superior to another.
When I truly sense that reality,
I become immediately calm. My little spark – called biological life – is no
different (nor better than) any other form of biological life. I’ll watch an
ant. I don’t think he’s saying to himself: “I’m tired of this. Why couldn’t I
have been born a soldier ant instead of a worker ant? Why couldn’t I have been
born a butterfly – or a hummingbird?” Then I’ll talk to him, asking, “Are you even vaguely aware of how upset I am?”
“No? Don’t you care?” “No? Okay, maybe I shouldn’t either.” “Thanks for
listening.”
Maybe I’m just a little off my
rocker. But I feel calm. I feel peace. I feel at ease. And I have grown to love
those small, little moments. If only people could be as non-judgmental as ants.
Oops! That means I am seeing them as judgmental, which means I am looking at
them through my own judging eyes. Mr. Ant! Where are you?
In A Course in Miracles (ACIM),
Chapter 25, The Justice of God, Section IV, The Light You Bring, Paragraph 5
alludes to this sense of Oneness that extends beyond the human form to all of
nature: “In you is all of Heaven. Every
leaf that falls is given life in you. Each bird that ever sang will sing again
in you. And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its
loveliness for you. What aim can supersede the Will of God and of His Son, that
Heaven be restored to him for whom it was created as his only home? Nothing
before and nothing after it. No other place; no other state nor time. Nothing beyond
nor nearer. Nothing else. In any form. This can you bring to all the world, and
all the thoughts that entered it and were mistaken for a little while. How
better could your own mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to
bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk beyond the world of darkness
into light?”
Although these messages are
mostly for me, thanks for listening. As always – feel free to forward this
message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#1 Dec 2015
Copyright 2015
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