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Planet Waves | for May 3,
2005
I have a collection of hero's -- every decade I find a new one, it seems. In the '60s [yeah, I'm old] it was Ram Dass. When the hippys discovered "better transcendence through chemicals," it was God they were looking for ... only later did that become sex, [yet more] drugs and rock 'n roll. I sucked up the Dass books [Be Here Now, Grist For The Mill, The Only Dance There Is, etc.] and went to his lectures -- born and raised in Berkeley, I had a feast of progressive influence at my fingertips. I understood every word that he said but I didn't Grok any of it In Fullness. That's because intellectualizing inner truth is a good toe in, but hardly an immersion. It takes living life to do that. “Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.” ~ Ram Dass So, I set out to do my life working on my consciousness and attempting to be love -- and discovered how easy it was to forget that was my goal, when so many things outside myself were seemingly impossible to control. For what seems like a very long time, I thought that the circumstances of my life were affecting my choices ... and then one startling and pain-filled day I realized that my choices had affected every circumstance of my life, just like Ram Dass had said. So, I set out to choose again. In those early years of the spiritual revolution, there weren't a lot of materials available -- mostly just Eastern thought or Edgar Cayce. I chose both. I held a Cayce study group in my living room, discovered reincarnation which led to a passion for astrology. I created study groups around The I AM Dialogues and Masters of the Far East and realized how far I was from actualizing anything I was reading about. Then in the late '70s a new book, and spiritual movement, came along called A Course in Miracles. It turned out CIM was all about me, and about the choices I make [I am, of course, endlessly fascinating to myself -- although now that I know a lot about me, I find myself fascinated by others as well.] The first page of CIM told me that it's aim was "...removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance." Sounded pretty Dass'ian to me ... and so it was. Now, after almost thirty years of being both CIM student and teacher, I am fully aware that my choices create me and my world, just as yours create you and your experience. We all, collectively, choose what our reality will look like, including presidents and cultural expressions -- we all collectively add our little bit to produce the worlds circumstance ... and many days it feels like our little bit doesn't matter a whit in the big overwhelming world picture, but that's just us thinking small. What you and I do and think matters because we ARE the collective. And we have a choice, down to the tiniest detail in our response to life -- every single choice of the hundreds of choices we make daily produces a result. Sometimes its a good thing to prove that to ourselves. We can start small. Today for instance, you can choose to smile at somebody. [Don't groan, I told you I'm an old hippy -- you think the Summer of Love happened because everybody was FROWNING??] I guarantee you that whoever witnesses that smile of yours will be instantly changed, biochemically. Want to impact your world? Smile into the glum face of co-worker, family member or friend. I've turned all-out enemies into friends with a consistant barrage of smiles. So what's the political tag line, today, that revolves around "choice?" Why, Wal-Mart, of course. [Didn't see that coming, did ya! Can't get much more mundane.] Wal-Mart has a choice in how it treats its employee's, its choice sends a message to the world about how valuable a person should be, and it's choice has set the goal of profit above the well-being of it's associates and its customers. If it treated its workers with respect and appreciation ... indeed, gave them a living wage ... it would still be as rich as Midas, and it might even earn itself some unexpected loyalties. WalMart, and its operation, is the petrie dish into which the entire world is peering to see what America's psyche looks like. Translates into lots of stuff but not much humanity -- Mother Teresa said that America was a rich country living in spiritual poverty. WalMart is proving her right. We need to change that. Life is choice -- what we think and support matters. We can individually, and collectively, do better than this. As Goes Wal-Mart http://www.tompaine.com/20050503/articles/as_goes_walmart.php Peace ~ Jude Eric Francis is on holiday. Jude, the editor of Political Waves, is standing in for his daily blog this week. You can subscribe to Political Waves (our all-politics news distribution list) for free at the link below. You’ll receive between five and 10 news articles each day. You may write to Jude with your responses to her commentaries at moderator@planetwaves.net. Political Waves list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/political_waves/ | ||||||
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