February in Maine and it feels like spring during what is usually the heart of winter. The scent of mud while soothing to my senses give no comfort to my soul. I begin to worry about my forests here in Maine and the animals that are usually hibernating. I worry for the bears who are bearing their cubs in dens not covered with the usual insulating and protective snow. I look at the thermostat and can’t get the thought of oil out of my head. There is no escaping the struggle to stay warm is damaging the environment. The wars for oil killing hundreds of thousands all over the globe. The global financiers playing high stakes for fun and passion. Fun and Passion the two biggest distractions fed to the masses in “reality” TV and internet porn.
It doesn’t take a gifted seer to see where all this leads. I walk outside, smell the air, listen to the wind, look at the open water on the river and it is obvious where it all leads – death, pain and suffering, and endless environmental disaster. So what to do? I don’t have the answers. It is too big for my simple human mind. I only know that I hear the stories from the land, and if I try, I see my own part in it. Can I change my own story? Can I change my entire way of life so that I begin to get beyond the idea of just living sustainably, and move into a way of living that one might call restorative.
I have been wondering at the speed of my life passing by. Thoughts of it ending permeate my thoughts. A mild panic hits and I think I need to “Do something”! But really I need to do less. Just sit, listen and do nothing for a while. Let Nature instruct. Stop damaging and learn to walk in silence again.
Heavy thoughts on a overly warm day in February.
Consider that everything as it is, is perfect. That the Divine has a plan, even if we can’t see it, even if our limited thought allows us to believe that suffering is occurring. Maybe it isn’t?
Still, we are responsible for how our environment affects us because we effect it. Seems like a conundrum but it’s really not.
Thanks for the comments. I respectfully have to disagree. Here are my thoughts/opinions…
“Consider that everything as it is, is perfect.”
This is a huge assumption. It seems like an intellectual construct. What is the point of having any sense of ethics if everything is perfect? I don’t subscribe to this at all. This line of thought can be used to justify complete and utter hedonism and nihilism. At the very least it allows a path of disconnection where we sit back, refusing to act, refusing to engage. Why do anything if it is all perfect? Why stop the Hilters of the world if genocide from a Universal view has an aspect of perfection to it?
“That the Divine has a plan”
I have not experienced any indication this is so. It seems to me that all consciousness is simply experiencing relationship. It has no plan other than this. I have not experienced the nature of the Divine to be of any oneness that could have a universal plan. I am wary of this line of thought as it speaks of fate. From my point of view, it is our responsibility to experience relationship/life and respond to the best of our abilities based on our sense of ethics. Also I am an animist and a polytheist. I have never experience universal oneness. My direct experience of Divinity is that the gods are many, and they have their own line of intention, no universal plan but rather just are navigating the reality of relationship.
“even if our limited thought allows us to believe that suffering is occurring. Maybe it isn’t?”
Suffering is very real. That is why we have languaged it. There are endless instances of suffering. Only if we remove ourselves from actually touching soul to soul can we take a bigger view and not acknowledge this. To engage is to experience. The land is crying out from suffering endless desecration. I encounter people everyday that are suffering, experiencing pain and anxiety. To live is to suffer. That is one aspect of life we can’t avoid. Perhaps it is possible to overcome suffering, but in the non-transcended world, it is the norm. And I for one am not transcended. I have yet to meet someone who is – removed yes, transcended no.
We are human beings and as such we are filled with ignorance. And whenever we awaken from a state of ignorance, there is suffering as we come to understand the pain and damage our passing has caused. There are landfills overflowing with trash that I helped to create, so much that I don’t even have the capacity to recall it all. And when I go near these landfills, the spirits of place scream with suffering. I hear it. Do you not? And when I realize I contributed to it, I scream. And I hear that as well. And you may ask, why do I scream when I was in a place of ignorance when it happened, I didn’t consciously cause this harm? Well that is very easy to answer, I just touch my soul to these other souls and there is suffering and pain quacking in them. And by touching, there is an exchange. I experience it as well. We are wiping out species every single day, never again to sing their song in this world. They don’t go quietly.
We have to listen and when we listen, we will know suffering. To listen is to engage. Engagement is a guarantee we will experience suffering.
“Still, we are responsible for how our environment affects us because we effect it.”
We are not responsible for how our environment affects us. It simply does so, and we simply respond in kind. It is our responsibility to negotiate the currents of relationship to the environment. It is our responsibility to learn to engage in relationship to the environment where it is built on honor, mutual respect, and perfect equality. And where we fail to do this, there is suffering.
Thanks for sharing. I hope this does not come across as arrogant and dismissive. I am speaking from my experience. Yours is a different experience that is of equal validity.