A Happy New Year

Nobody here but me and a blank screen, and the birdies, Jupiter and Chickie.

So many people will be back to work today.  Will they have considered the year ahead and opportunity to review how they live?  Who can say, but I have, aided rather inadvertently by the reading of a couple of books over the holiday break, an older one entitled Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth by Matthew Fox and a 450 page 2007 publication entitled The Mystery of 2012 – Predictions, Prophecies & Possibilities.

Matthew Fox is a Dominican priest and a highly controversial spiritual leader with teachings that often counter what is taught in Catholicism and he is critical of many aspects of Catholicism, as he is of many religions. His views are exceptionally broad but the one particular view that keeps coming back to me over and over is the idea that western society has taken the awe out of life, the wonder, the feeling of mystic being.  In western society we have worked with science of which Fox is not critical, but in the doing we have tended to reduce matters to the physical facts and denied the wonder in those facts.  A blade of grass, a flower, an eagle soaring, mountains rearing from the plains have become facts for dissection and have been stripped of the wonder that could make our  hearts open with joy.  Fox contends that in order for the world to be brought back into balance, we need to bring back the awe that was originally present in religious ceremony, whether pagan or Christian or otherwise.

That awe, that wonder, that acknowledgement that we, with the planet on which we live and everything on her, are connected by our common constitution from the elements of the cosmos, can bring us into the union of compassion, for one another, for all creatures, and for the earth herself, as well as the galaxy of which we are a part and ultimately, for creation.  Science has divorced us from this ancient knowledge.  Awe can wed us again  through compassion – nothing is divorced from anything else.

My question is, how do we encourage the young who have been immersed in the science of technology from birth, to feel awe, to look for it?

The second book, which I have yet to complete, was a gift from a totally unexpected quarter for Christmas.  It is constituted of  26 fairly extensive essays from various experts in the fields of  science, archaeology, anthropology, psychology etc – such names as Jean Houston, Jose Arguelles, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Greg Braden, Daniel Pinchbeck etc.  As far as I’ve gone, the essays have surrounded the Mayan 2012 so-called prophecies. Three very good  long essays on Mayan cosmology and the Mayan calendar from three completely different angles, and then another essay to cold water everything as a balance.  Fascinating reading.

The thing that so far has pushed my buttons is the so-called cosmology of the Mayans.  The predicted toppling of Seven Macaw and the rise to his proper position of  One Hunahpu is said to refer not to actual gods or the return from the stars of Mayan originators, but the fall of the ego so that the greater consciousness can prevail in its proper position.  There is no suggestion that the ego will be destroyed, but will instead take its proper place as our servant.

These times ask much of us – millions starving, many in civil strife, water shortages, planetary pollution, the sanctioned deforestation of huge continents, the bloated greed for oil, the deepening worldwide economic crisis, the loss of  respect for life, the acceleration of fear, and the loss of the ability of many to experience joy, and perhaps worst of all, particularly in western society, the loss of hope.

A massive shift in consciousness will be all the easier to manage if we begin now to open our eyes. If we can reduce the use of plastic, the requirement to eat meat every day, a few less miles every week, a shorter shower – little things that both open our consciousness and contribute to the earth’s capacity to heal herself of the damage we’ve done, we will go a long way to easing the transition.  

Lies and fear will not withstand the new consciousness – it is built on joy.  This has been said by all the ancient religions.  It makes sense – fear contracts, joy expands.  Experience joy every day – feel it.

Here’s the question – do you know what joy feels like and are you able to feel it at any time you choose?