 Kitchen
Food for Thought – Stirring the Pot
Water is Precious… Water is Sacred… Water is Life…
  Let’s those of us who still have the resilience and resources talk about this, and band together in our Journeys of the Heart at this time to consider those that have already had theirs taken away. We are All, quite apparently now, considered to be part of that “Third World” so to speak, in the loyalties and interests of those few that have decided to control and exploit the Natural World that is the Common Ground for All Life. This greedy and selfish (I mean that scientifically of course) perception and determination of reality is at least providing the benefit of turning us into One World in our own minds, and thereby bringing us to a formation of the Courage and Commitment that this feeling of Unity can instill and foster in our hearts and minds. It becomes the Unified Field Theory activated into a Consciously Creative mode.
 What would have been unthinkable to the awake minds and open hearts of a people standing tall and working together in the protection of All Life is now taking place “even here,” and has already happened in much of the world while we weren’t looking outward and around. Water, Food, Shelter, and the People themselves, are being “owned” and used as commodities for the all-consuming monetary profit of a few.  This can only continue to happen if enough of us are not able to think about it openly in our hearts and feel our way through it with our minds because we are so caught up in the isolation of our own daily issues of survival. We have been conditioned to believe that our challenges and concerns are in competition with those of our fellow participants in Life because of the persistent enforcement of a belief system that deals in scarcity and threat. We are not safe with our God, or with our Nature, or with each other, not even with ourselves…oh my Goodness…
  How have we come to this stage on a planet where the Garden of Eden is still the archetype for what the Earth offers to All Life, but is so distorted and obscured in this time? When did the Tree of Life stop representing Shelter and Sustenance for All Life in the consciousness of the people that we might now be losing our Great Forests? What beliefs and attitudes about the Nature of Reality have brought us to this Common Ground of awareness we now find ourselves waking up in, like from a bad dream? When did our interpretation of the orderly dynamic of following the seasons get twisted into a dynamic of opposing dualism where the “other” represents an “instead” in which we have come to creating the world we fear might happen instead of the world we Love to see? The way I see it, the solutions to our problems are found in first listening to our hearts to find the answers to these questions.
Have we been sleepwalkers, overwhelmed by circumstance and numbed to the reality of the Wholeness in us – the Holy-ness in us - by the ideas and images of disaster and despair we are constantly being fed through media? Does this fear-mongering extend and perpetuate the trauma and violence as it reflects it? Is there intention in this at some level?
Do we put everything we’ve got into just trying to get through the day, the season, the year, the moment - to fill our basic needs for Water, and Food, and Shelter, and Caring for our Loved Ones? What has the idea of Caring for our Loved Ones by taking care of Life come to in this reality, this culture of insecurity and threat we’re participating in and perpetuating?
  Are we doing what we Love, what we’re good at, what we’re called to, and what we Thrive on, so that even in the hardship of it all we’re doing our best to do our part? Are we appreciating that others are doing theirs? We can be nourished by the strong sense of purpose and benefit that’s built into just imagining this in and of itself?
“What you are is what you have been, what you will be is what you do now” - The Buddha.
When was money inserted into the middle of every equation in this society as the only solution for all our needs and desires, our talents and our goals? When did money come to represent our god, our healer, our trade, the decider of all abundance and security and wellbeing, and why aren’t we content in always needing more and more of it to show that we are good people, and that we really do Care? How did we get stuck in the belief of being “no good” and at the same time battling that condition in others? The way I see it, that just proves that we really are each other, mirroring along the Way…
How have our needs and desires in the purpose of protecting and providing for Life become so tangled up in the process of making money and spending money, and finding constant challenges and shortfalls in access and distribution? Where is the Joy? How is it that we have allowed ourselves to accept the designated title of consumer, and then doing our darndest to play that role correctly to show that we really are worthy and do Care?
It seems to me this has become the state religion of our culture, the structure of our basic beliefs and goals, our worthiness and rewards, and that it prevents us from thinking truly about the “whos,” the “whats,” and the “therefores.” I feel it is wholesome for culture to hold the space for religious practice rather than for religion to determine the space that culture operates in. Culture is a name for the Common Ground of Unity-in-Diversity that sustains a healthy organism for Thriving in the Business of Life. “Somehow” the money game became the only thing we ALL have in Common in our attempts to survive and to measure up in the very core of our existence as a people. Even the Ceremonies and Celebrations of the Seasons, the Holy-days going back forever in time, are turned into profit making opportunities rather than a way to honor Life and show Gratitude. What if “they” told us to give them all our money and they would save it for us for when we needed it, you know, like “insurance against harm” and what if they didn’t…? What if “they” sent it all away somewhere else, out of our reach, to “have it all” for themselves?
Without the basic cultural stability that comes with the assumption of our rights and responsibility to Celebrate and to protect the Sacredness of All Life as the Common Ground of our system of attitudes and beliefs, we have been conditioned over time to persistently compete for the seemingly never-enough-no-matter-what materials we think we need to be a functioning part of the Community. This challenge and burden perpetuates itself as the ever-growing and more complicating notion of what it is that we need to attain and achieve in order to be OK, and to Love each other “correctly,” and to pay our “due respects” to the god of this religion of money that most of us have been brought up in. It is never satisfying or fulfilling for long, and is never enough, because it is all an illusion in the first place. This religion is not about worshipping God. It is about playing God…
Over time we have been transformed in our beliefs and endeavors from being citizens of the world to being consumers of an ever-growing array of products and diversion. We are participating in an illusion that the money game of survival of the fittest, as measured by how much is “earned” and “owned” and what we can control “in our own best interests” is the basic value system for success in being the “fittest.” Meanwhile, our human rights, and the rights for All Life on Earth, to Water, Food, Shelter, and Freedom to Be, have been “bought up” in the game and turned into the expensive private commodities of the never-enough-no-matter-what profit of a few.
 Our Common Ground in the Natural Order of the Earth beneath us, and the Sky surrounding us, has been pulled out from under us or blown out from around us, and obscured from our view by a darkening cloud of ongoing confusion and uncertainty and grief. It is being demonstrated for us in an obviously inclusive way now, that we might all be the losers in this never-enough numbers game that talks in trillions……unless and until we wake up to the Purpose in the Oneness of All Life, and the Joy and Gratitude in that Knowing, and then keep that Light on so we can see the Way on these Journeys of the Heart we’re taking Together. “Joy lets the Light in.”
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts” – Rachel Carson.
The Peace in the Knowing is the Freedom that leads to the Abundance that leads to the Freedom that leads to Peace. |
