The Sacred Path

Journeys through the mist

Category: Life on Earth (Page 15 of 23)

Fears and the “dark side”

Nov 8, 2007 /

They’re not here, they’re not coming
Not in a million years
’til we put away our hatred
’til we lay aside our fears
You may see the heavens flashing
You may hear the cosmos humming
But I promis you, my sister
They’re not here, they’re not coming

To this garden we were given
And always took for granted
It’s like my daddy told me, ‘you just bloom where you are planted.’
Now you long to be delivered
From this world of pain and strife
That’s a sorry substitution for a spiritual life

From They’re not here, they’re not coming by Don Henley/Stan Lynch

My friend Frank DeMarco in his post titled Fear includes an article by Mark Kimmel which talks about fears, and also about why if aliens (extraterrestrial) are real – and I know they are – they have not officially contacted us. Anytime I hear this discussion I start hearing Don Henley’s They’re not here, they’re not coming in my head, and in particular the part I quoted above, and it underscores probably the main reason they have not made themselves publicly and conspicuously known. As Mark Kimmel says, “fear is at the core of the human condition on this planet,” and fear is fed to us daily in the media, by our religions, our parents, our politicians, our employers, and the list goes on. There is always another bogeyman lurking just around the next corner. Until we can correct our path and become a species based on love instead of fear the door to communion with the rest of the universe will remain closed. When you strip away all the various divisions and subdivision, categories and subcategories, you come down to two emotions or two conditions: Love and fear.

Tina Su in How to Fight Your Fears shares her journey to overcome her personal fear of not being a good photographer, and also gives some great suggestion on how we can start dealing with our own fears.

In And then, there’s Lucifer, terraflora talks about her dealings with her dark side. We all have one. It’s there no matter if we choose to deny it or not, and denial is never going to bring light to what is in those shadows, only taking a deep breath and stepping through that door into our own shadowy world is going to allow us to understand what is over there and bring in the light. Most organized religions tell us to shun the dark side, because that is where the evil is as if it is some outside entity waiting to consume us. That dark side, and all the demons in it are us, not some evil outside thing, it’s us. No one is going to deal with those dark things and bring them to the light for us, we have to do it ourselves. Don’t be afraid of your dark side, your shadows, whatever you wish to call it. Like it or not it’s part of us and it’s time we all began to take a peek at the things we keep over there. If we don’t, who will?

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Guest Author

Nov 5, 2007 /

Well, here it is the middle of the week and I’m in California drumming and rattling and journeying through the spirit worlds at another workshop. I hope everyone is having a good time doing whatever it is they are doing. And if you aren’t, START NOW! 🙂

Since I was running a little short on time, I thought I would bring in a guest author, Mahatma Gandhi. I would have liked to spend some time with this wonderful, peace loving man. Perhaps when I get back from my workshop I’ll invite him to my Sacred Garden for tea.

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within. – Mahatma Gandhi

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words, You words become your actions, Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. – Mahatma Gandhi

If you do not find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. – Mahatma Gandhi

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems. – Mahatma Gandhi

Choices

Nov 1, 2007 /

My friend Frank DeMarco recently posted TGU on choice, where in response to a friend’s question on choices, he asked his guides, “The Guys Upstairs,” to comment. Not being the least bit shy, they of course did, and it’s worth reading.

Life is not a passive but an active endeavor and can more or less be boiled down to making choices and then living with the consequences, good, bad or neutral. Daily I would think we make thousands of choices and obviously not all of them consciously. The subconscious choices we make are typically lower priority decisions that will not alter or change our paths, while the high priority choices that flow up into consciousness are the ones that could or will directly affect our life (personal, family, work, etc.).

When faced with making an active choice, we can be presented with any number of possibilities. In some instances, for whatever reason, we may decide not to make an active choice. It could be that we cannot see a clear choice, or perhaps we may fear making the wrong decision, or a myriad of other reasons, but not making a choice is still a choice.

…and not a drop to drink

Oct 28, 2007 /

I hadn’t planned on doing another environmental post so soon after Blog Action Day, but a few environmental links hit my email inbox, and those led me to others and before I knew it, I was sitting in front of my computer hearing the tickety-tick of the keys.

In Global warming, deforestation and bark beetles, I talked about how decreased precipitation and warmer temperatures over the past couple decades were wreaking havoc on the forests in the Rocky Mountains, allowing bark beetle to gain the upper hand and kill pine trees at an alarming rate. Fewer living trees means the earth’s natural ability to cleanse the air is compromised, and as the trees die, they shift from consuming CO2 to producing it as they decay.

Reduced precipitation has another effect; there is less water available for personal, commercial, industrial and agricultural use, and it’s not just in the Rocky Mountain region. Many areas of this country – and the world – are facing this problem, some due to reduced precipitation and warmer temperatures, some due to population growth, and some a combination of the two.

  • Snow pack in the Sierra Nevada range this last summer had fallen to the lowest level in 20 years. In the second half of this century even optimistic computer models show 30-70% of the Sierra snowpack will disappear.
  • The flow of the Colorado river which relies mainly on snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains was dramatically lower this past summer. At Lee’s Ferry in northern Arizona, one of the main points where the flow of the Colorado river is measured, flow was at the lowest point since measurements began 85 years ago.
  • Lake Mead, which is fed by the Colorado River and supplies nearly all of the water needs for Las Vegas, is half-empty and statistical models say it will never be full again.
  • Lake Powell, which borders Arizona and Utah and feeds Lake Mead, is also half-empty and it would take 20 years of average flow to fill it.
  • In 1995 it was reported that less than 10% of US electrical power came from hydroelectric plants, but reduced river flows will decrease power output at hydroelectric plants and increase our reliance on coal and natural gas-fired power plants, which in turn will release more CO2 into the atmosphere. And until there is some real solution for nuclear waste, I won’t even entertain nuclear plants as a possible solution. Burying the waste in drums below ground for future generations to deal with is the height of stupidity.
  • On October 23, 2007, it was estimated that Georgia’s Lake Lanier, which provides water for five million people, will not last more than 79 days at the current rate of consumption, and to bring it back to a normal level would require four months worth of rain.
  • The US used more than 148 trillion gallons of water in 2000 (the latest year such figures are available from the USGS), and that number includes all water use. That is almost 500,000 gallons per person. That’s enough to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools (Olympic-sized pool: 164 ft x 82 ft x 6.5 ft deep).
  • Over the past 100 years, much of Florida’s natural freshwater storage areas (swamplands, etc.) have succumbed to urban sprawl so they are now facing water shortages as well. In addition, each year Florida dumps hundreds of billions of gallons of treated wastewater into the Atlantic – water that could otherwise be used for irrigation.
  • In Australia, they are experiencing their worst drought in 1000 years, and there is a good chance that they are going to have to stop irrigation of crops in some areas of the country.
  • This country’s big rush to ethanol, vaunted as a knight in shining armor, is anything but in more ways than one. As an example strictly from a water requirement standpoint, in Oklahoma it takes 2900 gallons of irrigated water to produce just one bushel of corn, and it takes four times that amount to turn it into ethanol. Where is all this water to grow the corn and produce the ethanol going to come from? The “breadbasket” of the US is running on water vapor as it is.

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Tears from Heaven

Oct 25, 2007 /

My good friend Frank DeMarco forwarded an email to me the other day with a story in it called Tears from Heaven and it’s one of those stories that touches the heart. As he says, I know nothing about the story other than what is there. Is it a true story or is it just something someone wrote to illustrate a point? I don’t know, but I choose to believe it true. I want to believe it true simply because it points to the fact that there are good people out there, and sadly their stories are seldom heard, particularly in mainstream media. It’s not sensational enough, not controversial enough, won’t boost ratings, but it gives me hope that there is a chance we just might make it out of the quagmire we see all around us.

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