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Posts tagged ‘Youth of Today’

The “Mystery of Consciousness”. . . The Addiction to Narrative

“Don’t be afraid to face the facts, and never lose your ability to ask the questions: Why? and How?”   Immanuel Velikovsky 

CONSCIOUSNESS IS NO MYSTERY.  Like a seedbed wherein ideas are planted, nurtured by unwavering belief, and given birth in their seasons, consciousness is the matrix for creation.  It is very fertile soil, so fertile that one has to be very careful about the nature of the seeds one plants. 

This fertile soil can be cultivated and seeded from below as well as from above and within.  Our physical bodies and the natural world are the fruits of seeds planted by Life from above.  The world that man has constructed and imposed upon the surface of this planet, with its skyscrapers, concrete roadways and parking lots, industrial and commercial complexes, along with its burgeoning landfills, are all the product of seeds planted by human beings from below . . . none of it compatible with the fine living, breathing fabric of our beautiful Home among the stars. 

Not all is a burden to the Earth, as many of our ideas and dreams, visions and asperations are creative and harmonious with the natural climate of Gaia.  There is a saying among the spiritually awake when an idea presents itself for manifestation, “Put it in the heaven.”  A more common expression is “Put it on the back burner.” If it is resonant with Life, it may be useful to the creation of a living world.  What we now have is a dying world created by dying human beings. 

Weeds find their way into this sacred soil as well, deposited there by birds-of-sorts in their fertilizing poop. There’s a biblical passage that cautions “Beware the snare of the fowler,” the web-like net of the human mind that snares fleeting ideas. The soil of consciousness can become cluttered with weed-yielding seeds, so we have a responsibility to “Tend and keep the Garden.”

The content of human consciousness is generally a clutter of “false ambition’s restless schemes” . . . busy thoughts and self-serving ideas and concepts—many of them like concrete: thoroughly mixed up and permanently set . . . and ardently defended when challenged.  Just consider the “narrative” put forth by the official guardians of the nation’s health with regard to the current global health crisis.  Try and put forward an alternative narrative on social media, even amongst friends and family, and you’ll find yourself quickly censored and cancelled.  Mark Twain had something to say about this: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.”

THE “OFFICIAL NARRATIVE”

Human consciousness, in its state of uncertainty and insecurity, greatly values official and popular narratives, and will ardently defends them against any and all challenges to the contrary.  It’s an addiction affording a sense of comfort, though false, in knowing what’s going on in the world, especially in a life-threatening crisis.  Most are fear mongering motivators. 

There are a number of crises constantly going on in our world of many problems.  One such crisis is in the Christian world of religious beliefs and doctrines.  I ran into this one several months ago during a fairly pleasant conversation with a nephew who is heavily invested in the Pentecostal narrative that “All men are sinners”—until I suggested he consider the passage in Genesis that says he is made in the image and likeness of God and is therefore Divine.  He vehemently objected to even the suggestion of a different narrative about the nature of man. “Oh No! I am a sinner! The Bibles says all men are sinners.”  I recall a biblical passage that declares “All men are liars.” (Psalm 116:11).  It was Paul who declared all men to be sinners, but Paul didn’t know the Master, nor did he ever hear Him speak of His Gospel of the Kingdom of Love.

Then, there’s this “pandemic” which has polarized the population of the world in two different camps believing in two opposing narratives.  Friends and families have been torn apart by this controversy.  The attitude is taken, on both sides, “Don’t mess with my belief if you don’t want to start a heated argument.  I need to believe in this for my own sanity and security.”  Apparently, this is not a good time nor topic for inquiry and critical thinking.

People have been censored and imprisoned, even scrubbed out, for putting forth a narrative that radically differs from the “official” narrative . . . and not only in modern times.  We have the historical precedent of the crucifixion of Jesus.  He was denied not once but three times by a disciple, abandoned by all but two or three, and crucified by those to whom he had come to offer salvation and a Way into the Kingdom of Heaven without having to die—all for proclaiming his divinity and the divinity of all men, male and female, made in God’s image and likeness.  He brought forward a narrative that was radically different from the long-standing Hebrew doctrines, and it was rejected by staunch believers in an ancient narrative that a Messiah would come and set things to right here on earth.  “My kingdom is not of this world” he told Pilate . . . yet another narrative that no one in his day could quite comprehend much less adopt.  The narrative of a temporal kingdom with a Messiah as king was deeply invested in by the religious authorities of the day, as well as the Zealots among the people, who cried out for his crucifixion. 

OUR YOUTH IN THE “CLIMATE CRISIS”

Then there’s the “climate crisis” everyone’s polarized in . . . well, almost everyone, most actively our youth since it’s their future that’s at stake.  Here’s a report by Somini Sengupta, Global Correspondent on climate issues for the New York Times from a recent survey of 10,000 young people on the issue of climate change. 

HOW THE YOUNG GENERATIONS VIEW THE WORLD

Four Takeaways on the youth climate movement: They’ve grown up in a pandemic.  They’ve come of age in an era of strongman leaders.  The climate crisis looms over their very lives. Generation Z, the cohort born after 1996, has inherited a set of compounding uncertainties. It explains, in some measure, the vibe of the youth climate movement. Powered by rage and distrust, it is decentralized and it is increasingly focused on the inequitable effects of global warming.

The global youth movement known as Friday for the Future has called on its members to organize protests around the world this Friday, March 25 (yesterday).  Its rallying cry is “climate reparations and justice.”

Here’s what I find most revealing about this generation of climate activists: They distrust government.

In a survey of 10,000 people between ages 16 and 25 in 10 countries, three-fourths said they think “the future is frightening.”  The survey was funded by an advocacy group, Avaaz, led by researchers at the University of Bath in England and published in The Lancet in December.  It asked respondents to answer “yes” or “no” or “prefer not to say” to a series of questions.

More than 64 percent said their governments were not “doing enough to prevent a climate catastrophe”; more than 61 percent said they did not have trust in their government; and more than 58 percent said their governments were “betraying” them.  In the U.S., they are mostly female and white.

This state of protest in the consciousness of our youth, seeded and nurtured by fear of extinction of our species, and anger toward the government for not doing more to avert an existential crisis, ignores the fact that the government has little real control over the climate of the planet.  The climate of the earth and all the planets is largely controlled and determined by what’s happening with the Sun at the center of our solar system.  Earth is part of a unit and moves with what is moving within it—which for the past several years has been a gradual heating-up, bringing about climate changes on all the planets, severe storms and turbulences just like those here on Earth. 

Our planet is not in jeopardy of extinction.  We are.  Not by climate change alone but by our own hand.  We’re poisoning our water, our air and our earth with our waste and industrial pollution. The fourth Creative Force, fire, cannot be polluted, and is at work cleansing and purifying the earth and its inhabitants. 

THE OFFIIAL CHRISTIAN NARRATIVE

Returning to the ill-conceived cancellation of Jesus by the radical fundamentalists of his day—a cancellation that was echoed and repeated at the ecumenical Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, a council of Christian bishops convened by Roman Emperor Constantine, in which Jesus’s message of the Kingdom of love was literally redacted and the official narrative of Christianity for the entire world established and published in the Nicaean Creed, a narrative recited at Sunday Services in the Christian world year ’round. The narrative Jesus brought and offered to the world hasn’t been successfully cancelled but continues to be offered by the Lord of lords and King of kings.  His Kingdom is the Kingdom of Heaven from which his Father, who is Love, seeds the sacred soil of Consciousness from which Mother God brings forth the fruits of the Tree of Life in the Garden of the Natural World and so-called “wild kingdoms,” even with a few faithful stewards on hand to tend and keep it. 

The youth of today protest to the government for its lack of doing more about the “climate crisis.”  The truth is, WE are the government.  As youth choirs sing out these days, “We are the world.  We are the people.” It’s our job to set things to right here on Earth.  We are the designated keepers of Eden. 

IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD SEEDED BY LIFE

When was the last time you looked around and marveled at the beauty of Mother Nature’s wonderful world?  The wondrous works of the Creator, seeded from above by Father Sun, as the Native American Indians saw the world and honored the Earth and the Great Spirit whose world it is?  As I stated earlier, we must take great care for what seeds we sow in the garden of human consciousness.  Seeds of fear for what the climate prophets predict lies ahead for mankind and the planet invite that which we most fear to come upon us. The narratives we uphold and hold sacred in consciousness have the potential of doing more than simply defining what is thought to be going down in our world.  They have the seminal potential of determining what will transpire down the road, if not sooner.  

“IT’S WHAT IT IS”

When I think deeper about it, why do we need a narrative at all?  About anything? Why, indeed?  A narrative is not needed to define what’s going on in the world. It’s plain to see. As the current popular quip puts it, “It’s what it is.”  The world is what it is . . . and how we’ve made it.  There’s a saying in the Bible “Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” The New World—the biblical “New Jerusalem”—comes down from God out of Heaven . . . “adorned as a bride for her husband” . . . all ready to be received and established on Earth.  That’s why we’re here.  The only reason why we were put here: to know the ordinances of Heaven and to set their dominion in the Earth.  Let us lift up our hearts unto Heaven and welcome the New Earth . . . even as we totter on an existential precipice “between the devil and the deep blue sea,” as the ancient saying goes.  

I leave you with these timeless words in the form of a poem composed by a remarkable spiritual teacher, Lord Martin Exeter.  May they quicken the angelic spirit of love for the truth of life in you, my cherished reader and follower.

                            THUS IT IS

From age to age

      Love’s word rings forth,

          “The truth is true and all is well,

                 Unconquerable life prevails.”

Oh, man, whose strident dreams

       Lead gravewards,

               Return to calm and noble

                       Character of life.

Blaze forth pure virtue;

        Depart false ambition’s restless schemes.

Busy thought and troubled feeling

        Trespass not in virtue’s wise serenity

              Where firm control and awful power

                      Eternally abide.

Here earth’s pains are healed

       And cruel chaos of mind’s spawning

              Is called again to order and to beauty.

 Thus it is. Until my next post,

Be love.  Be loved. 

Anthony 

tapal70@gmail.com

 

Honoring Our Elders . . . . . . and our Progeny

Christmastime is family time, a time when the kids call home, or travel to be with family and loved ones; a time to share in the joy of  being together in an atmosphere of love and generosity, sharing in the Christed spirit that rises in our hearts every year at this time and bubbles over into tree-trimming and decorating, caroling, gift giving and merry making.  The world is transformed in the outpouring of love and joy.  Christmas is obviously good for the economy, too. It’s the giving spirit that fosters abundance. 

My thoughts today are of the Elderly watching our offspring from afar as they create an altogether different world than the one in which we grew up and raised families of our own.  Closer to home, I think of our dearly departed Mother who spent the last days of her ninety-years on earth in a care center.  None of us eight siblings were in a position to provide care for her in her home, where she wanted to spend her last days.  Closer yet, I think of my own Eldership and that of my spouse and fellow septuagenarians whose homemade nests have long been empty.  Ours are both “broken homes” whose family members live miles apart from one another making it stressful for our children to visit both parents and both grandparents during the holidays, assuming they can afford to travel at all.  Thankfully, we have electronic media like Skype and Google Duo and Hangout, or ZOOM, to bring us closer together, at least virtually.     

It’s a bit disheartening to see how our elders are set aside into care centers where they can be properly cared for while we get on with our busy lives. Gone are the days when we provided living quarters in our homes, or on our properties, for our ageing parents and grandparents — but not that far gone. Our parents actually built a cottage in our backyard for our grandparents. Our ancestry is Sicilian, and Italians historically honored their fathers and their mothers and took great care of them.  “The Godfather” portrays this tradition in extreme.  What has changed?

It seems the youth of today want to distance themselves from their roots and their elders as soon as possible, especially when  our wisdom of yesteryear doesn’t seem to help them handle the complex world of today into which they have been thrust — nor facilitate the realization of their own dreams and aspirations.  They have their own thoughts, as we are reminded by Kahlil Gibran.  Sometimes we find ourselves turning to them for help navigating this new terrain of electronics and economic uncertainty. 

Now, I do appreciate the obvious need to let go of the past and “the way we’ve always done things” for centuries and millennia.  Tradition has always attempted to stand in the way of “progress.” I say “attempted” because progress inevitably wins out over “TRADITION!” — as Tevye finds out in “Fiddler On The Roof.”  And I suppose I should not have implied by my use of quotation marks that progress isn’t really progressive. All too often, it seems, so-called “improvements” only make things worse and more difficult, especially when my computer software updates itself, and when Facebook makes changes in the way we navigate social media.  Changes seem so much more a bother as we age and resist shifts in our routines. 

“HOMO UNIVERSALIS”

Sometimes progress is an improvement, even inevitable as our species progresses through a radical transformation, both in consciousness and in physical form — becoming an entirely new species, according to such forward thinkers as Barbara Marks Hubbard and others.  I like the way she sees herself and all of us as being “on the other side of our lives” and “becoming newer” rather than older.  We are being upgraded genetically by Cosmic forces that are altering our very DNA, turning on genetic switches that have lay dormant for thousands of years.  No, we are definitely not the same species we were a hundred years ago, even fifty. 

This is so evident today with the arrival of the electronic age in which our grandchildren are needed to show us older folks how to use and troubleshoot our cell phones and computers, both new and complicated additions to our “old-school” ways of communicating by phone and “snail” mail. Who writes letters anymore? Our ageing Mother, rest her soul, after hearing a daughter talk about her hassle with her computer, asked in her beautiful ignorance, “What in the world is a mouse doing on your desktop?!”  We all enjoyed a good laugh, realizing at the same time the obvious gap her query brought to light  between the old and the new.  I continue to be amused while listening to one of our sons who works in the tech field talk about his work using what sounds like a foreign language to us.  They speak in acronyms these days rather than with fully-worded sentences.  The youth of today were born with brains hardwired for this new electronic age. Where is it all heading?  Apparently toward a totally new species, which one author recently dubbed “Homo Universalis,” one level up from Homo Sapiens.

Honoring Our Bridges

All I can say to this upcoming generation is, while your lifestyle and technology are rightly leaving us old folks behind, please do not forget us. We are the bridges you all crossed over in order to get where you are today, and you do not need to burn all your bridges, just the ones you don’t need any longer and are holding you back.  We do still want to at least feel needed. The bridges we are will fall away soon enough leaving you the simple legacy and memory of our loving and caring presence in your early years of growing up and assuming your rightful places in the world, a world that you will transform beyond recognition in your day.  We are always glad when you call home occasionally to see how we’re doing — and to share your lives and your worlds with us — but especially to say those heart-warming and family-binding words, “I love you.” Really, all we want is to hear from you as often as possible and to reaffirm the love we have for one another and our ongoing presence, and interest, in your lives and in your worlds. Our children do that and it does lighten our lives and bring joy to our hearts. 

I would like to  leave you with these words of “The Prophet” Kahlil Gibran that have been, and continue to be, a source of light upon our shared parental path. 

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, speak to us of children. And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward or tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children like living arrows are sent forth. The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with his might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness; for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I read somewhere that we are loved more than we will ever know.  I know this to be so, and I feel it more as I age and leave behind my illusions of limitation and low self-esteem. That’s a big one for so many of us to overcome.  I know for a fact that I am worthy of love — that I am love. You are loved more than you will ever know. You are love.

Until my next post in the New Year, 

Be love. Be loved.

Anthony Palombo

 

 

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