A Southerly Aspect
fresh perspectiveArchive for spirituality
facing the future
Regardless of your personal views of the monarchy, you MUST watch this years David Dimbleby Lecture on the BBC iPlayer. Delivered by HRH Prince of Wales, it should, in all seriousness, be required watching for the world. This man’s destiny was set the day he was born, yet rather than patiently wait to take his seat on the throne, he’s spent the last thirty or so years of his life asking the kind of questions of the world which we all need to be asking. He’s an inspiration. What more might we ask of a future leader?
the glorious sun
If anyone’s struggling to know what to pick up for my Christmas this year then look no further than a subscription to The Sun Magazine. It’s a phenomenal monthly, ad-free publication and I always eagerly await the online publication (see links). The Sun Interview is always a highlight and this month is no exception. Bethany Saltman talks to Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges about religion, the new atheists, war and morality – fantastic stuff! Here’s a wee snippet to tempt you in….
“You trust that the work is worth doing and that it’s helping somewhere, though perhaps evidence of that won’t be apparent in your lifetime. You find self-worth in the ability to stand up and fight back without worrying too much about what you can accomplish. That is part of being human. We’re not God. We have a limited capacity to fight evil. We use the gifts and tools we’ve been given and trust that life is meaningful, even if everything we try to do seems to fail”
Enjoy…
turn
You’ve asked me to tell you of The Great Turning, of how we saved the world from disaster.
The answer is both simple and complex.
We turned.
For hundreds of years we had turned away as life on earth grew more precarious.
We turned away from the homeless men on the streets, the stench from the river, the children orphaned in Iraq, the mothers dying of AIDS in Africa.
We turned away because that is what we had been taught.
To turn away, from our pain, from the hurt in another’s eyes, from the drunken father or the friend betrayed.
Always we were told, in actions louder than words, to turn away, turn away. And so we became a lonely people caught up in a world moving too quickly, too mindlessly towards its own demise.
Until it seemed as if there was no safe place to turn. No place, inside or out, that did not remind us of fear or terror, despair and loss, anger and grief.
Yet on one of those days someone did turn.
Turned to face the pain. Turned to face the stranger. Tuned to look at the smoldering world and the hatred seething in too many eyes. Turned to face himself, herself.
And then another turned. And another. And another. And as they wept, they took each other’s hands.
Until whole groups of peole were turning. Young and old, gay and straight. People of all colors, all nations, all religions. Turning not only to the pain and hurt hut to beauty, gratitude and love, Turning to one another with forgiveness and a longing for peace in their hearts…
Christine Fry
venturing into the unknown
I’ve been really struggling recently with people who aren’t prepared to take risks, to leave their so-called comfort zones and try something new, regardless of whether or not their idea will succeed. It’s the same with local authority and government, where creativity and zest for life is lost in the paperwork and feasibility studies.
Why are we so scared of failure? For me, it’s where the richest experiences of life are found.
I’m a firm believer in ‘informal learning’ and learning through doing, but it just amazes me how limited we are in our current culture to actually do this. We still insist on a ‘petrol pump’ education system and measure the results of it by making people sit exams? When will we ever realise just how much that stifles creativity and imagination, how much it actually holds us back rather than empowers us? We’re now living in a world which loves convention – and as soon as you try to do something a wee bit out of the ordinary, you’re jumped from behind and treated as a leper.
All my waffling has brought me in mind of a simple yet powerful little story:
‘Once upon a time, an explorer found a beautiful undiscovered land. After some time, he returned to his home and he told his friends about this country. He described the valleys; and he described the hills, the rivers, the trees, the animals and plants. He told them:
‘You must go there for yourselves, my words cannot do justice to that land.’
His friends were excited and keen to hear more about the land for themselves. They asked the explorer to draw them a map to guide their journey, and to show them exactly where this wonderful land was. The explorer refused, and said to them:
‘No, you must set out and find the way for yourselves. There are many different routes and I know only one.’
However, they insisted, and after a time the explorer relented and drew a map for them. His friends were excited by the map and spent days planning for the journey. They discussed which route they would take. They talked about what the land would look like.
But they delayed, deciding that they had better prepare thoroughly for their trip. Perhaps too, they needed to know more about maps – and how to read them. They thought they needed to know how to understand what picture the map showed.
Years passed. The map was studied. Then it was copied – and passed on to others. Schools were set up in map reading.
The explorer was sad and went away.
No – one visited the land’
Pretty sad, eh?
So are you planning on defying convention, or is it back to the Monday/ Friday grind tomorow? Choice is a marvellous thing. Will it be the status quo, or will you visit the land?
tell me…
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake” a coal tit asked a wild dove.
‘Nothing more than nothing’ was the answer.
“In that case, I must tell you a marvellous story” the coal tit said.
“I sat on the branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk, when it began to snow – not heavily, not in a raging blizzard. No, just like in a dream, without a sound, and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles on my branch.
Their number was exactly 3,741, 952.
When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off. Having said that, the coal tit flew away.
The dove, Since Noah’s time, something of an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while, and finally said to herself:
‘Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.’
the ten step human protocol
1. You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
2. You will learn lessons.
You are enrolled in a full-time school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The ‘failed’ experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately ‘works’.
4. A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end.
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. ‘There’ is no better than ‘here’.
When your ‘there’ has become a ‘here’, you will simply obtain another ‘there’ that will, again, look better than ‘here’.
7. Others are merely mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you.
The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
let us pray
I asked for knowledge – power to control things; I was granted understanding, to learn to love persons.
I asked for strength, to be a great man; I was made weak, to become a better man.
I asked for wealth, to make friends; I became poor, to keep friends.
I asked for all things, to enjoy life; I was granted all life, to enjoy things.
I cried for pity; I was offered sympathy.
I craved for healing of my own disorders; I received insight into another’s suffering.
I prayed to God for safety- to tread the trodden path; I was granted danger, to lose track and find the Way.
I got nothing that I prayed for; I am, among all men, richly blessed.
the shambhala prophecy
Coming to us across twelve centuries, the prophecy about the coming of the Shambhala warriors illustrates the challenges we face in the ‘Great Turning’ and the strengths we can bring to it. Joanna learned it in 1980 from Tibetan friends in India, who were coming to believe that this ancient prophecy referred to this very planet-time. She often recounts it in workshops, for the signs it foretold are recognizable now, signs of great danger.
There are varying interpretations of this prophecy. Some portray the coming of the kingdom of Shambhala as an internal event, a metaphor for one’s inner spiritual journey independent of the world around us. Others present it as an entirely external event that will unfold independent of what we may choose to do or what our participation may be in the healing of our world. A third version of the prophecy was given to Joanna by her friend and teacher Choegyal Rinpoche of the Tashi Jong community in northern India.
There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Great barbarian powers have arisen. Although these powers spend their wealth in preparations to annihilate one another, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable destructive power, and technologies that lay waste our world. In this era, when the future of sentient life hangs by the frailest of threads, the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.
You cannot go there, for it is not a place; it is not a geopolitical entity. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors—that is the term Choegyal used, “warriors.” Nor can you recognize a Shambhala warrior when you see her or him, for they wear no uniforms or insignia, and they carry no banners. They have no barricades on which to climb to threaten the enemy, or behind which they can hide to rest or regroup. They do not even have any home turf. Always they must move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.
Now the time comes when great courage—moral and physical courage—is required of the Shambhala warriors, for they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power, into the pits and pockets and citadels where the weapons are kept, to dismantle them. To dismantle weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go into the corridors of power where decisions are made.
The Shambhala warriors have the courage to do this because they know that these weapons are manomaya. They are “mind-made.” Made by the human mind, they can be unmade by the human mind. The Shambhala warriors know that the dangers threatening life on Earth are not visited upon us by any extraterrestrial power, satanic deities, or preordained evil fate. They arise from our own decisions, our own lifestyles, and our own relationships.
So in this time, the Shambhala warriors go into training. When Choegyal said this, Joanna asked, “How do they train?” They train, he said, in the use of two weapons. “What weapons?” And he held up his hands in the way the Iamas hold the ritual objects of dorje and bell in the lama dance.
The weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary, he said. You have to have compassion because it gives you the juice, the power, the passion to move. It means not to be afraid of the pain of the world. Then you can open to it, step forward, act. But that weapon by itself is not enough. It can burn you out, so you need the other—you need insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena. With that wisdom you know that it is not a battle between “good guys” and “bad guys,” because the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. With insight into our profound inter-relatedness—our deep ecology—you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern. By itself, that insight may appear too cool, too conceptual, to sustain you and keep you moving, so you need the heat of compassion. Together these two can sustain us as agents of wholesome change. They are gifts for us to claim now in the healing of our world.
These two weapons of the Shambhala warrior represent two essential aspects of the Work that Reconnects. One is the recognition and experience of our pain for the world. The other is the recognition and experience of our radical, empowering interconnectedness with all life.
(scriptural source: the Kalachakra Tantra, 8th century AD)
