If I am to be enthusiastic (literally 'en theos' or 'in God') about God, that ineffable Infinity, and the direct relation to myself, I would hope that there would be Joy in it. Or more succinctly, as my wife put it this evening, I would hope that Peace would be involved. That being said, I'll take you back to a few days ago. I've been worked to the raw bone for weeks now with no end in sight at my new 'steady, this will save you from debt' job; bills continue to stack up, largely due to the increased cost of the new house we're renting; the baby still wakes every few hours at night; I could go on, but you see the colors in the painting. So I drove the 45 minutes to work, all the while feeling this queer sensation that wasn't quite new, yet wasn't totally lucid. I sat at my desk and turned on the computer. The phone was not ringing, everyone was at their desks, diligently toiling away. My neck was kinda warm, and my abdominal muscles were tightened to taut. I couldn't resist anymore, and announced loudly to everyone present that "it's all fake! The whole thing is bullshit. It's all fake nothingness built on an invisible foundation that's invisible because it's not there!"
Stammering is a funny word, isn't it?
Only Joe, the head honcho got involved, and began a discussion based on the teachings of his primary teacher, and whole heartedly agreed, adding that our role was to transcend the falsehood and limitations of this earthly realm. I concurred, adding that we still had to involve ourselves in this realm, and....wait...this part of the conversation is a tangent...we'll hit that another time.
What's false? Haven't you been sensing the veils being lifted, these diaphonous scales that have obscured the Light for so long? Look around you....sense around you. It's a plastic (read: man-made, artificial, inconsequential simulacrum) world out there. What do most people talk about? How are we living? For me it all starts with the big lesson from Ishmael, that the split at the Fertile Crescent was the first big slip on the banana peel to today. The move to an agrarian society fractures the picture into so many different complications to start. Now you have people settling and working land, multiplying and depleting the surrounding area of all kinds of resources, denuding the forest and driving away the game. Population booms, furthering the whole process. Jump ahead, and you have the (just maybe insane) Industrial Revolution which now not only takes the fathers/husbands from the family life, but also creates metropolises. Now we have enormous, totally engorged urban concentrations such that no matter how much we funnel into them, they always need more. Now people in these cities are so far departed from the earth (true mother) that there's an entirely new cultural paradigm in play. Look at a television. My God! Where do these people come from? How did they get like this? Guess what?...these television people might just be the present norm! Even the most benign of programs, specifically "How did that get on my plate?" (a show presumably walking the viewer through farms and processing plants) is rife with such propaganda and misinformation that it sickens. Literally. Then the children are subtly endoctrinated. Radio. Newpapers. Magazines, internet, everybody is playing the game.
Now, my primary teacher, my go-to guy JC, he was the ultimate rebel. He turned everything upside down. Not just the money-changers in the temple, my friend, no no no...as was pointed out to me so exquisitely, Jesus turned all the contemporary dogma of the day on its head. A rebel, baby, in the truest sense. Now JC tells me, if I am to understand him clearly, that God, the All, the Great Mother/Father of the whole shebang, is all about Love. The prodigal son, each of us, running to those open arms. So what does that mean for me? Tells me that I'm loved beyond my most far-reaching dreams, and tells me that if I am like that son, then I'm like a child. As my dearest Chris pointed out so long ago, if my baby is learning to walk and falls down and begins to cry, what do I do? I get over there in a hurry, buddy, and I pick that baby up! I don't ask questions, I don't say, "why can't you walk? When are you gonna get it? Can't you learn any faster?" How disturbingly absurd a notion, right? So if JC tells me that I'm like that child (and we all are, brothers and sisters!), is Mom/Dad in the Grand sense gonna let me fall? Am I going to be judged? More to the point for this discussion, what do I want for my baby? Personally, I want nothing but the best this world has to offer, and I will and do do anything I can to make sure she knows it (and I don't refer to the world of the material here...stay with me...). What does God want for me, his/her baby? Well, JC is telling us pretty specifically. So what's all the best for me? For me personally, it is having my family. My wife and I long for nothing more than to be together, to have our children around us, to immerse ourselves in the sharing and experience of each other. The modern world really doesn't get down with that. Kinda prohibits that, except for short, unpleasant spurts. Well fuck that. Jesus got pretty rattled by what he saw, and I'm becoming rattled by what I see.
We're slowing down. We're preparing our spirits to be open to learn what it is we need to learn while we're here, and we can barely manage a modicum of that if we swim with the rest of society in that stream. We went without television for years and the kids never missed it; now it has become a magnetic beast that draws the attention of anyone near. It is getting unplugged and covered tomorrow. We have not read to the children in months, and we all miss it. We will begin a new book this weekend. We have not been on the river in the canoe or in the mountains all year. These are now priorities. I will no longer see my primary purpose as making money to support a lifestyle. I will no longer see the merit in working 70 hours a week to serve no greater a good than any other ersatz endeavor. I understand that my family, my wife and our children, lose far more that they gain by having me not at home as often as I had been.
All challenging prospects in the shadow of this culture, but we're committed anew. I can hardly wait to watch it unfold and to sense our coming together. It's our togetherness that is real to me now, and I guess that's what that oddly familiar feeling was. There's more crap and veils and distractions out there than stars in the universe, and they're all cunning and alluring in their own way, I suppose. But I'll be working on humming out a different vibration, as will my family. Join in if it appeals to you.
In the meantime, here's an impromptu, 2 a.m. blessing for you and for all of us:
Father/Mother God, we struggle and we churn in the frothing waters that are the world we live in. Your Love and our faith in that ever-present Love are all that keep us going sometimes, our island and our beacon. Dearest God, Greatest Love, please help to guide us in the way that is best for us and best for everyone, please keep us close to you as we struggle to change in the face of ever-growing fear and complacency. Let our deeds in this world reflect our gratitude for this life and your Love for us, and our need and Love for each other.
Amen.
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