Tuesday, January 16, 2007

What on Earth are you doing down there?

Down in the ditch
or behind the bump in the meadow
or in an out-of-use workman's shed
hidden under the rail-bridge,
out-of-sight,
playing, day-dreaming,
in another world.

Miles away from the cares of being "good."

And then one day,
that voice that cut into the field of fantasy,
"What on EARTH are you doing down there?"

In a brief moment,
all secrecy shattered,
all play exposed to an interrogative spotlight,
the pictures of innocence, called into question.

And then that walking home,
tail-between-the -legs,
stomach sinking, shoulders hunched forward,
wondering -
"how could something with so much fun
be so wrong?"

Many of us still have that program running -
the one that censures,
seemingly from outside, or from above.
Some of us choose to stay in religions that
honour a "war-god" who blames and threatens
if we do not behave and obey.
Some of us have denied religion access,
but secretly, the censure-program is still running
like a hidden virus, ready to strike
when we feel weak or despairing.

Actually the question is valid and very opportune -
What on Earth ARE we doing?
- but not from outside us,
but from deep within.

Some say that what is now happening to the Earth's climate
would be happening anyway
(perhaps more slowly, but the same processes,)
- they are part of the natural planetary cycle of things.
Others say that it is entirely our greed
and lack of understanding that have
brought the Earth and us to where we now stand.
If the truth is rather the latter than the former,
we might have been able to avert the disaster
that looks like happening in the ever nearer future,
if we'd acted 50... 40... 30... years ago.

Perhaps those voices of prophetic knowledge and seeing
seemed far too like adults
breaking up the child's world of enjoyment.
And now - perhaps it's too late to act,
those moments for action, perhaps been and gone.

(And just maybe, it would be happening, anyway.)

Either way, when we really look out and forward
it is difficult not to become scared, for
the nature, the size and the extent
of the hidden forces now being unleashed
are of a proportion we have not been trained to fathom.

This is absolutely not a time for blame.
It is a time for creativity.
It is a time for empowerment.
Being aware of what is "around the corner" may just
help some of us remember the empowerment we felt as children,
the "divine" connection, the invincibility -
before we were "discovered" in whatever our "transgression" was.

Sounds like the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

But let's turn it round ........

Among the Q'ero of Peru,
there is a deep knowledge that
we have never, ever left Paradise.
This knowledge is common among the indigenous peoples;
it is found on Hawaii, in northern Scandinavia, in New Zealand,
a kind of in-built pre-knowledge that speaks of the path of
growing up to spiritual and earth empowerment.
In other words -
it was our
job as spiritual "teenagers"
to go against our "God-parent"
in order to find our real selves.

Suddenly,
doing "our own thing" and being "disobedient"
is actually our divine purpose, and not our "sin."
And the state-of-the-Earth and we-upon-her
exactly the right combination of what-is-needed
for us to wake up to who-we-really-are.

Yes, it is to do with the Source of all existence.
Yes, it is to do with Earth-life,
and God and the universal scheme of things.
But, most of all, it is a wake-up call to our own
God-given innate inner strength and power.
It is a wake-up call to go inwards
- to be the change we wish to see in the world

as Ghandi showed us,
- to envision and know and therefore create and manifest
another type of world,
where we co-exist respectfully with all of Earth-life
as empowered divinely-centered human beings
in something much vaster than
the "media-reality world"
of conformity and limitation.

To do this, we must reopen our channels
upwards and downwards, as well as inwards,
just as we did as children,
to be our God-selves
and take upon us our power of knowing that
"All is well. All will be well."*

The invisible may well become visible
and the visible, invisible.
The weak will certainly become strong
and the strong, weak.
And all of this in a transformation of cosmic proportions.

Our choice?

- to be drowned in the huge waves of the paradigm shift

or

- in empowerment,
to surf them in Joy as, possibly,
multi-dimensional beings.

This new-world performance is actually already upon us,
like the first light before dawn.

But it is still not too late to start practising -
an opportunity we will
really be blest
by taking.

Perhaps the Earth
will not have to throw us off
after all!

In Light and Joy

John O

*divine words heard by the mystic Julian of Norwich (from her work Showings.)

PS For more on our
divine empowerment, see http://scripturereflections.blogspot.com