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And Then What?

And Then What?

Back in May 2010, at the time of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökul, the Icelandic volcano, I wrote a five-part blog, Lid Blown on What’s Brewing Below, on how collectively *we* have managed to make the planet angrier with our mindless progress and its corollary – a penchant for taking as much as we can of whatever, matched by a limited ability to give much of anything to anyone … unconditionally.

As a result, collectively, regardless of which part of the world we happen to be living in, nature a.k.a. the Cosmos is making us accountable. It is forcing us to reap collective karma that needs to be amended collectively.

Back in May, while the BP spill was still spreading its oily ugliness across Florida’s coastline and into the Mississippi delta, I concluded one of my articles with this thought: The forces of nature along with personal as well as separate/collective karma are going about the business of teaching us, mankind, essential lessons in spiritual survival with a single-mindedness similar to one who, stranded on an island, must break open coconuts with bare hands to get to the sweet milk within.

By that I meant that nature is stirring and shaking our psyche by finally reacting up close and personal with us who live in so-called civilised parts of the world as opposed to those it has challenged for decades – those who live in harsh lands and remote areas of Third World countries. Separately and together, it would be best if we managed to rethink our thinking in regards to *science*, *progress* and *lifestyle* because the viability of personal options are narrowing, as we speak.

According to a snip on Wikipedia,in April 2010, Ólafur Grímsson, the Icelandic President warned about a second much larger volcano: ‘The time for Katla to erupt is coming close…we [Iceland] have prepared…it is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption.’” [1]

Right. And then what? I asked myself.

On the 7th of November 2010, on a lovely sunny Sunday somewhere in Australia, I read that international flights have been suspended to and from Indonesia and that Air Asia has cancelled 11 of its own because the activity of Mount Merapi, a volcano, a few hundred kilometres out of Jakarta, in Indonesia.

Today, a week later, I see that villages and all that makes them – from huts to buildings, to statues, to the common place palm trees and roads in between – are *ghosted* by layers of sticky, thick, grey ash. 206 people have so far died. 400.000 more have fled their homes and the clean-up cost is counted in billions of dollars.

The ancient ones considered volcanic ash the messenger heralding the awakening of the earth-shaking, fire-spitting dragon – the eruption of lava. Indonesia has had an uneasy past and, to this day, corruption is rampant and costly. Again, it might well be that for the local government, as well as for the world around, an eruption of molten lava there should be interpreted as yet another of nature’s gesture to cleanse, not just the immediate area, a mere dot on the world map, but to burn out the spread of the pandemic virus identified as GaD, short for Greed and Deceit.

No one can ever know why it has so far been the Indonesians’ collective [inherited] karma to bear the brunt of these acts of god/nature but, knowing that disasters are not only aimed at the ones, victims and survivors who are directly affected, it certainly would not hurt if all government officials, big billionaires, little millionaires, business folks as well as us, little people, currently suffering from the GaD syndrome managed to wake up long enough to address our priorities and redress our M.O. while we still can.

Sadly, it is also in Indonesia that, in 2006, a giant wave killed more than 130,000 people – only two years after another ocean quake triggered off the coast. That monster wave, referred to as the Boxing Day tsunami, plucked 230,000 people off the coast line of fourteen neighboring countries.

News headlines make it clear that, as rolling waves born out of nowhere suddenly ride hard the horizon line to slam against jetties and destroy livelihood, flood our streets and occasionally take lives, the answer to “And then what?” has already come to us in multiple ways.

Last month, also in Indonesia, on Mentawai island, a legendary destination for surfers, more than 400 people died including many children when the approaching giant wave failed to trigger alert warnings.

Interestingly, back in May 4 2010 – freak waves batter la Promenade des Anglais, in Nice, France – my hometown. The reality of a sea storm on the famed Riviera is even more ‘odd’ when we know that on the littoral, the Mediterranean sea, unlike the Atlantic, is normally quite still.

Only days before the official opening of the tourist season, this natural disaster spelt economic doom for the season. The cost of repair, mostly of the sea front restaurants between Nice and Cannes, was estimated to be between 3 and 8 millions of Euros.

Most of us do nod in agreement that everything happens for a reason, but we usually fail to search for *the reason*. Contextualizing natural events, these so-called Acts of God, helps make meaning out of events that are occurring more frequently and with more intensity than in the past.

Saying that these disasters are due to global warming or to the El Nino effect only addresses the symptoms not the primary cause. It’s no different than saying that cancer is caused by the genetic mutation of cells while the real question is the one that precedes why have cells mutated in any one particular human being?

Also in May 2010:  in Poland, village residents found themselves flooded by the Visla river. Their Prime Minister reassured them that financial aid was on its way and that they would be able to rebuild their lives.

Again, I remembered thinking, And then what?

As an aside, what I found symbolically interesting is that the Vista’s swell reached all the way to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site. About time! Its flood finally cleansed the horrid energy that undoubtedly still lingered, as energy does, so many years after the last prisoner walked out of the gates.

The death camp ‘artefacts’ were moved to higher grounds, which in itself suggests the symbolisms of Elevation and Purification. Why dismiss the notion that this *act of god* – one that did not take any lives – could be the hint that generally speaking, we all need to forgive, forget and move on?

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The thing to keep in mind it that the greater the flood regardless of where it happens, the greater the need for us, individuals, to wash off ourselves in the present moment the deeply engrained scenarios from the past that have long dropped out of real-time, the ubiquitous suspicion of others’ motives, the dark emotions and the murky fears of the future that, too, only exist in our mind. It’s either that or risk being flooded by them, swept away and left to drown in them – literally as well as figuratively.

Since, it has been confirmed that 20 million people have been affected by the devastating monsoonal floods that began drowning Pakistan in July. One side-result of the catastrophe is that 99 cases of cholera have been detected since, and another is that there have been more than 3,000 cases of Dengue fever leading to 29 deaths, and counting.

In June 2010, came the string of nimble-footed, beautiful and massive supercell storms that hit Dakota.

In the face of more frequent natural and man-made disasters pockmarking our landscape, heart-in-mouth won’t do. Heart-on-sleeve won’t do.

Heart and soul would fare much better.

Early in October, this year, still in 2010, too soon on the heels of the BP spill, Hungary found itself besieged by toxic red sludge of comparable amplitude. The waters of the famed *Blue Danube* have since become poisonous.

“According to the current evaluation, company management could not have noticed the signs of the natural catastrophe nor done anything to prevent it even while carefully respecting technological procedures,” said a statement issued by the company, Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company. [2]

The residents of Kolontar, the area nearest the leaking reservoir, are due to return to their homes any day now. Apparently, a protective wall erected for that purpose will keep them safe from further leakage. Within the context of this article written for a readership interested in understanding day-to-day matters from a spiritual perspective, I think it is safe to say that this so-called protective wall symbolizes the hard wall that is around the heart of the industrial hunger we, as a consumerist society, keep feeding.

One month before, in September, a massive earthquake shook the city of Christchurch in *little* New Zealand. The city sustained NZ$ 4 billion worth of damage – a massive amount for any country of its size – but, again, the fortuitous lack of casualties points to the fact that nature knows well that the purse strings around our collective heart are knotted so tightly that the purse has to be slashed open.

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At the moment, Nature is still not that interested in destroying lives, only livelihood, savings,  personal plans – horded billions of taxpayers’ money = the Economy.

In that respect, yes, 2010 has been a BIG year, indeed, to its very last days.

Epic floods that began between Christmas 2010 and the new year are currently still affecting the state of Queensland, in the south-east corner of Australia, a predominantly agricultural, cattle-farming area also responsible for 75% of our coal export. This area is bigger than France and Germany combined.

In its early days, the massive 31 ft [14 m] flooding has so devastated the towns of Rockhampton [population 75.000] and St George that it will take many, many months to rebuild the colonial waterlogged homes and businesses.

Snakes, such as the deadly taipans, brown snakes and red-bellied blacks, floated from the undergrowth, are clinging to trees and fences, just as they search for dry corners in people’s homes.

In this corner of the world, when town streets become overflowing wide river arms carrying fragments of putrefied, drowned cattle, pets and thousands of bush carcasses, crocodiles – symbols of the mechanical nastiness that lurks deep within each of us to strike from ‘below the surface’ -  cannot be far away.

The residents of Gympie, in that same corner of Queensland, have just faced 60 ft [20 m] river swells through their streets since the Mary has broken its banks. And, because *separation is only a figment of our imagination*, other towns and communities downstream are bracing themselves for the worst.

Floods and, the greater the flood, the greater the need for us, as separate entities, to wash from ourselves all negativity of thought, all dark emotions and actions or risk being flooded by them, swept away and left to drown in them – literally as well as figuratively. With that in mind, Senator Barnaby Joyce’s words on Sky News, are anything but *spiritually* encouraging. Still, they are the words that the afflicted residents want to hear. That, and the word Compensation – of course.

“It’s not fair on people’s lives to have water tearing through their homes,” he said. “It’s not good for our economy to be shut down and lose billions of dollars in production. In the future I think we need to look at building dams to mitigate the effects of floods.” [4]

Clearly, the message from Nature, our benevolent Nanny, is still not being heard.

Yesterday, January 10, 2011, still in Queensland, twelve days after the first flood in Rockhampton, pedestrians downtown Toowomba [population 90.000] ran for their lives to escape a tsunami-styled torrent of muddy water, a flash flood, that came out of nowhere, overturning cars and tearing trees in its path while inflicting quick and hulk-like unbelievable damage to homes and businesses.

Then it was in Grantham that many houses were ripped off their stumps and floated away. The list of victim-towns grows daily. The floods have kept rolling down south. Tonight, they have just now reached the first river-side suburbs of inner Brisbane – third largest city in Australia, Brisbane [population 2 million approx] where I live.

The flood, here, is due to peak in two days’ time, but in the meantime, it is already on its mad course towards the state of New South Wales – downstream from us.

Separation is, indeed, a figment of our imagination.

In an outburst of concern and emotion, our Prime Minister, the State Premier and the leaders of all manner of support groups involved are urging us to keep ourselves safe, to look after each other, to go *meet* the neighbors we normally don’t see – or choose to ignore – and check up on them..

We can replace your house, is the current motto, but we can’t replace you. Your personal safety is our priority. Please, make it yours.

Absolutely heart-warming

At the same time, many people are offering their time and efforts as volunteers.

That IS the Spirit. That is the blue-print of how Nature wants us to DO life – from now on.

Lesson learnt, if we can sustain this new M.O.

Although the Queensland flood death toll, is for now at an incredibly low 12, it will undoubtedly rise – maybe double.

Still, Nature seems much more interested in cleansing the planet by reducing our belongings to watery pulp, by leaving behind most of what we could not do without, and by forcing us to rebuild from the ground up – literally as much as figuratively, with a different awareness, with different personal priorities.

However, as the saying goes, there is no more dumb than the one who does not want to learn and we are all familiar with the determination of five-year olds to get what they want.

Collectively, in spite of our self-inflated perception of maturity and in spite of our collective brain potential, we position ourselves again and again on the side of the *dumb* and the childlike. Our material losses break our heart. We hit our head against the wall and we pop our pills and drown our pain. And we cry, “My god! Why me?” And we accuse Nature. We call her violent and we call her angry. And we keep our purse strings wrapped tightly around our heart.

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I never intended for this article, a compilation of blogs, to grow so long but whenever I hear of yet another blatant example of our ‘herd blindness’, my keyboard jumps up and down, demanding  words on paper – and who am I to refuse, huh?

Be that as it may, since I’m sure my point and concerns are by now quite clear,  this one will probably be the concluding blog on the so-called *Angry Planet* or as I prefer to think of it, on *The Good Natured Nanny’s growing annoyance with her misguided charges*.

After a while, events and views and reasons and excuses do become very familiar, very repetitive. As it is, at the moment, *we* are already condoning by proxy a new and massive exploitation that is for now partly illegal. Yes, Nature contains yet another resource that is currently deemed essential to us – in the world as we have made it: minerals found in red clay and going by the name of  … rare earth – you got to love that name!

Though rare earth is not yet a part of our trivializing small talk – the reality is that the strong acids used by miners, gangster-miners, to process the minerals in Southern China are polluting all the wells, ponds and streams in the area. These have become watery poison for the local villagers.

Why are we, in absentia or by proxy, condoning yet another anti-Nature mining activity? Why are we generally willing to see the mining of rare earth legalized by the Chinese government?

For now, China has the monopoly on the rare earth alloys, which allows her government to turn on/off the supply. China, for now, decides the quotas allowed for export to other countries and we turn yet *another* blind eye to the toxicity of this mining practice because rare earth minerals are deemed essential to the manufacturing of everything and anything ranging from our compact fluorescent light bulbs and our iphones to our flat screens and missiles and also to our low-emission cars and our giant wind turbines

Here, in Australia, AustralianRareEarth.com states that, “‘Rare Earth Elements (REEs) can be regarded as the “vitamins” required for the shift from a carbon based economy to the new 21st century electron economy’ -SLS 2008” and produces “some wonderful investment opportunities.” [5]

Even if that doesn’t sound lovely to our ears, how much, collectively, are we willing to be collectively inconvenienced by rejecting this mining practice? How determined are we to collectively miss out or do without while *Science* comes up with more alternatives to old alternatives from its collective linear-thinking brain?

Even though, as already stated, two of the key criteria for a successful global society are personal contentment and personal safety, science and technology have not yet made us more contented, or more safe.

When in the months ahead, as we read about more advancement, more discoveries, more *progress* made in our name and as we hear, feel and see more *coldness* inside our world and as we, doubtlessly, witness the Good Natured Nanny, becoming more and more impatient with us, her misguided charges, three questions will still be begging an answer:

• How and when do we, personally and individually, decide to step aside from what appears to be the greatest herd any culture has ever created to take an individual stand on this, on that and the other?
• How long will we, together and separately, go on frittering our collective potential?
• Can we totally dismiss the fact that our ways of thinking/using/responding are too often as frozen, as barren and as toxic as the world we help create around us?

Nature is squeezing us from where we sin when, collectively, we put monetary preoccupations above all others with a careless exploitation of the planet’s natural resources and with our penchant for hording our money on the one hand while, on the other, using it as a hybrid of bribe and ersatz for love within our family units.

Mega billions of dollars are being squeezed out of our global economy by acts of nature and man-made disasters. One way of making it all less gloomy is to think that wasted as they are to all of us, at least these mega billion of dollars are no longer available to fund more wars.

The use we make of money, as a commodity, has to be re-thought. Money, world-wide, needs to flow freely. A massive cultural re-thinking is long overdue. Money does not want to be horded under beds, inside vaults or buried under the spot marked X, as on pirates’ maps of old. Nor should it be gripped by closed hearts and tight fists. Money should be used to do good, but not instead of physical engagement, not instead of real affection. It has to be given generously, not held in a tight bargain, not used as emotional blackmail, not to tip the balance in power struggles, not instead of true affection – not solely for pleasuring our senses. If the flow of our global money is dammed high and deep, nature knows how to rip it away from us while, these days, it does so, sparing a maximum of lives.

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Disasters are not only aimed at the ones who are personally affected – that would be a terrible overkill and nature does not waste her energy in meaningless acts just to appear sensational and make it big on CNN. Finger-pointing, over-acting and over-reacting are traits that are strictly human. What nature is trying to do for us is to force us away, totally away from the false notion that we are all separate from one another–separate as individuals inside a family, separate inside our workplace, separate within our communities, separate from inside our countries while, in reality, seeing as we are all souls in disguise, we are as inseparable as the water droplets that make up the immensity of the sea. Anything one does affects others – always, even if ADHD little blind mice that we are, we are rarely aware of such synchronicity. Our need is to move on from the dubious gift of hindsight without over-estimating the usefulness of foresight. Our need requires the ability to be present – aware and awake – in the moment.

Just as family tragedies bring bereft people together for a moment, the spontaneous outpouring of neighbor to neighbor/stranger to stranger solidarity that springs from *acts of god* disasters offer brief glimpses into what selfless, shared kindness and selfless active support can look like and feel like. How much different our society would become if slowly, slowly, we could retrain ourselves and our children to value much less what is material and much more what springs from the higher end of our ego – from our soul.

I do find it interesting to note that the cost wreaked by the current international *acts of god* and *acts of man* is for the most part purely financial. Recent wild floods, massive  toxic releases, weird  landslides and top-of-the-scale earthquakes, as potentially deadly as they were, have spared lives as carefully as a deftly-handled whipper snipper spares the tiniest of flowers. The consequences of the global financial meltdown are lingering, particularly in America. It already seems clear that *the world* has not yet learnt enough of the intended lesson. Nature knows that it is from our hip-pocket that we suffer the most because of the purse strings tied around our heart. Thus, this is the way nature has chosen to play it out with us, here and now. Game on!

Reality checks: Why isn’ it yet time to be awake and aware of what Nature is telling our civilization?

Why isn’ it yet time to let the Polish flood and the Icelandic volcano and the fast succession of super storms in Dakota and Italian landslides and Asia Pacific disasters cleanse a path for us to follow – differently?

A leaping, raging, devastating new strain of killer fires – fires of unprecedented ferocity and agility – have become common in California and here in Australia. They are nature’s calls to burn away the past, to leave it behind, to not try to hold on to it and to not try to resurrect it. The past is not. It is no more than the future is. Only the present moment is, which is why it is imperative for us, separately and collectively, to be awake and aware within the moments that present themselves under our feet.

Why isn’t it time for us to admit the obvious: that no amount of electric bulbs and other chargeable devices are likely to bring happiness to our hearths. If electricity had the potential to do so, it would already have started doing so at some time or other during the past 100 years.

Though clearly not many of us have individually contributed anything meaningful to *progress*, our problem-solving energy being mostly focused on securing other people’s understanding of our immediate needs, our culture has made us top-heavy and easily topple-able. That is because of our cultural worship of the linear, problem-solving brain, the one that generally must get us what we want, by hook or by crook. It is that doggedness that has led experts in their field – at the expense of our collective inherent soulful nature – to engineer, slowly, slowly, *progress* as we know it.

Put simply, our ancestors, our contemporaries and our selves by default have shaped our civilization like the very edible girolle mushroom – – a particularly wide-topped mushroom  [Collective worship of the brain power] with a particularly thin stem[Collective worship of the soul power].

It is in this imbalance that lies the source of our chronic, deep-seated, mostly silent, emotional discontentment discontent with our selves – the one of which culturally, we only ever treat the symptoms never the cause, which is a quasi total disconnection from our soul, even if one considers oneself religious.

It is far easier to pop pills than trying to earnestly understand what lurks at the low end of our ego. It is also much easier than to begin sorting out from within the fears and insecurities that lead us by the nose moment by moment, one impulse, one knee-jerk at a time. It is so much easier that, in spite of each pill generating an inordinate list of possible side-effects, we have made ours a drug-dependent society – not to mention the drugs we ingest daily because of other ailments which, dare I state the obvious, from rashes and constipation to heart attacks and arthritis and cancers, all have their root in our inner malady.

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It seems clear that no amount of new technology is going to free us from its pervasive tendrils of its so-called ‘connectedness’ already wrapped around our lives, even if we think *we can’t live without it* and even if it’s all oh so cool that the need to upgrade has become a societal suicidal compulsion?

Even though two of the key criteria for a successful global society are personal contentment and personal safety, science and technology have not yet made us more human, nor more responsible. They certainly have not enabled us to be more content nor more safe. Witness the enduring societal woes that go on plaguing our civilization.

• Domestic violence, incest and paedophilia are far from being obscure behaviors that used to happen in a distant past. The *dirty old man* has become much younger and more brazen.
• Gunmen of all ages, from remote villages in England to urban towns in America, still go on rampages and snuff the life out of multiple victims that appear innocent and unrelated to them in this lifetime.
• Teenagers who, along with the rest of us, have for the most part more home comfort and more liberties than ever before, are more at risk of self-abuse than ever before.
• Older adult males in all walks of life are more at risk of suicide than ever before.
• Single mothers are as isolated as ever and other mothers still do their double shifts.
• The porn industry has flourished like fungus in a sewer.
• The number of internally displaced persons is on the rise and the number of homeless people has been steadily growing since the 70′s and rather than the Nouveaux Riches, our main cities are filling up with the Nouveaux Poor.
• Teenage pregnancy is on the rise and so are drug-related deaths.
• High school education has never been more friendly and more switched on, yet it remains a dry par-for-the course that must be endured, but only under duress.
• The confusion regarding sex and LOVE is ongoing. The emotional turmoil created by *no sex* or *not enough sex* or *I want/deserve better sex* is by far the main cause of relationship/marital break ups.
• Parents still kill and mutilate.

And only a plane ride away, world hunger still is world hunger. We can buy ourselves holidays anywhere in the world, really. We can do this in environmentally friendly – carbon from planes not withstanding – eco-tourism style. We can share our knowledge with others and buy ourselves a righteous working holiday in a remote village in Viet-Nam, Africa or Lebanon but when we return home, all our unfinished business and all our badly finished businessare on the doorstep, like a faithful dog awaiting the return of its neglectful owner.

• The penis is still the most graffitied symbol in the world while the peace and the heart symbols on walls are, these days, are much rarer than dildos under beds.
• Face-to-face bullying and harassment have spawned an even uglier online, hands-off menace. Cyber-bullying … 24/7

So, besides the fact that, on average, we tend to live longer than say, 100 years ago or even 50 years ago, thanks to the advances in science and technology, how much happier are we?

Howmuch happier and how much healthier are we than the yak herders in the wind-blown steppes of Mongolia? Than the villagers on the edge of a remote patch of sea? Than the Dharavi slum dwellers, in Mumbai, who understand the true meaning of the word *community* and the contentment that springs from embracing *communal living*?

The bottom line is that the long list of ills that no amount of progress can scrub out of the fibres of our societies world-wide points to the sad reality that science, progress, good intentions, a growing plethora of welfare and charity programs along with subsidies for this and that have not led us to a culture that is more supportive and less dangerous than any other past or present, though clearly it is the most *comfortable* by far.

So, why go on frittering our collective potential?

Why isn’t our civilization or, more to the point, why aren’t we, within our culture, much more interested in throwing together our  collective will, assisted by our collective intellectual power and our collective multi-billion dollar might at the challenge of harnessing the natural powers of the sun, of the wind and of the sea aptly named clean energy?

Clearly, it would be totally impractical to lobby for a return to a pre-1940 ethos and an agrarian lifestyle but it does seem essential for us all to be AWARE of how the cogs are turning worldwide to support [in]directly our chosen lifestyle – anendless need for more and better in the domains of *fun* and *comfort*.

Why don’t we accept that drilling more cunningly into the earth’s core, mining deeper and further, exploding cavities, vibrating and widening more cracks in the earth’s crust, shaking and stirring deadly gases within coal seams simply invite more mine explosions and cave-ins?  Why is it apparently so difficult to accept that these activities probably trigger more earthquakes, more floods and mud slides – the tools Nature uses to symbolically plug up with her grand Cyclopic strength what we and our machines have been irremediably altering?

Why aren’t we yet ready to let go of our dependence on the dark, dirty and dangerous resources Nature has buried some 2000 feet below our world – no doubt for a reason?

The same question can be applied to the mining of gold and diamonds. Though these ores do not release toxic gases and though both are considered *pure* elements, the killer toxicity they unleash is envy and greed on a global scale.

From the young woman who dreamily window-shops for her engagement ring to the lover who buys a diamond to declare his love [has anyone ever felt LOVED upon receiving a carat or two or ten?]  to the violence inherent to the illegal traffic of gold and diamond, to the violence amongst ubiquitous small-time thieves, to the gold and ‘blood diamonds’ that fuel murderous conflicts in many parts of Africa to the involvement of child labor – all to cater to our collective worship of the gleam contained within these ores. Meanwhile, miles of downward shafts and tunnels have turned more sections of the earth’s core into destabilizing rat runs.

In that same vein, it’s only very recently that I have begun to surmise the inevitable damage – beyond carbon emissions – that is undoubtedly caused by the ever denser air travel grid that criss-crosses our skies.

When do we begin to conceive that the vibrations, the roaring decibels and the displacement of air and other particles that emanate from the tens of thousands jets flying on any given day might affect the atmosphere and outer space?

Knowing that an *average* jet weighs about 351,000 pounds and that an airbus weighs some 1.2 million pounds, how do we begin to envisage the impact of these behemoths thudding down on the earth’s crust to land roughly 18 million times yearly, year in year out, in most areas of the globe?

Though clearly our culture is well past the point of no return, as individuals, we need to stop pointing the finger as readily as the child who, caught red-handed, blurts in a blatant attempt to shift blame, “It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with it.“

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New strains of killer wild fires, here, in Australia and in California; the December 2010 Mount Carmel fire, the deadliest in Israel’s history; supercell storms; unusual volcanic activities; inexplicable *freak*occurrences; inaccessible harvests mildewing in miles of flooded valleys here and elsewhere; unusual and severe weather patterns in America and Europe – all such events can be explained *scientifically* but only after the 1st piece of data has been picked up. Scientists are great at backward-mapping their way to theories.

Scholarly theories and precautionary principles get bandied around. They generate nods and accolades from peers as well as a few variations on, ‘Uh, yeah … OK,’ from us laypersons but they can never, never define the original catalyst that created the very first instance of their very first observable piece of data – the X factor that caused the first domino to wobble before falling – the data from which scientists create theories after observation and calculations of their evidence, their empirical evidence.

Serious question #1: as we look for answers *out there* in areas far removed from ourselves, why not also contemplate the possibility that punishing ice and snow storms, for example, do more than symbolically cleanse what, collectively and globally, we keep soiling in many areas of the planet?

Serious question #2: Why not consider that such storms do point their icy finger at our frozen state of thinking and at the cold-hearted attitude we generally bring to the table the moment our comfort zones are challenged – be that in our homes, in our streets or in our work places?

Serious question #3: Can we totally dismiss the fact that our ways of thinking/responding are too often as frozen, as barren and as hard as the ground beneath the snow?

Reality check: Instead of our heart going out to those who endure the brunt of disasters and personal tragedies, it would be more beneficial to all if we had the heart to consider how our collective, unbridled consumers’ needs, compounded by our fear of inner change and our fear of acceptance, by now, demand a reaction from Nature.

Why stay attached to old habits and old ways of working and old ways of thinking and living that should already be obsolete – relegated to a series of books entitled Life on Earth as it Used To Be?

The various generations alive today might think of themselves as the most informed… and they certainly should be if they accessed, understood and processed the mega gazillion bits of information that stream past daily, but statistics and simple observations tell us this is far from the case.  Though the World-Wide Web offers us the best view possible of the real world, we only look at the panorama through the narrow gap allowed by our ego-persona.

On average, we have little wish to broaden our understanding of anyone or anything unless we have a reason to do so that is personally involving, personally rewarding – thus, along with our generational clones, past and present, we hold on with both hands to ideas and patterns that come to us from a far distant past, that have failed us in our past – we hold on to them instead of unlearning them.

These patterned habits have failed us then and now because they focus exclusively on what is extraneous to ourselves – life as it manifests itself around us.

These habits have failed us because they include neither gratitude, nor mindfulness nor compassion nor genuinely anonymous altruism – the linchpins of the science of contentment.

An undiagnosed cause for our collective failure to be contented beings living in a wholesome emotional landscape lies mostly in our collective admiration for the *thinking* of the over-active, anxious and chattering mind – while it is a quiet mind that is needed for mind expansion.

By the same token we are equally amazed by the linear thinking of the problem-solving brain. In this new millennium, oblivious to the practice of forgiveness and gratitude, we pride ourselves for belonging to the most intelligent of all generations because, physically and knowledge-wise, *we* have gone where no man has ever gone before.

We forget that all early explorers in their respective fields have had to go through unchartered territories and we forget that we, as individuals, apart from a few thousands, have not contributed anything to the furthering of anything. And so, another cause of our failure is that our cohort has stopped seeing humility as a necessary virtue – a long time ago.

Reality check: Today, as thousands of years ago, the individual only works at a *trade* that has been mastered with varying success.

Now as then, we are fluent with the tools of our era and that’s it.

Now as then, we form sentimental attachments we mistake for Love, seemingly unaware that real Love can only be selfless and unconditional.

Now as then, we procreate.

Now maybe more than then, without our plastic cards and without our cell phones, we would be as helpless as waifs if dropped off naked at some corner far away from home. Hello post-traumatic stress!

While on the topic of then and now, if we mull over passages in the Bible, one main difference between now and thousands of years back, is that the holistic interaction of early civilizations with nature and the cosmos brought them right up close to the Fountain of Longevity – the very fountain which millions of us have been spending billions trying to access.

Preceding Bible writings, there existed conversations with Huang Di who became the legendary Yellow Emperor. One day, he questioned a wise man in his entourage, “I’ve heard that in the days of old everyone lived one hundred years without showing the usual signs of aging. In our time, however, people age prematurely, living only fifty years. Is this due to a change in the environment, or is it because people have lost the correct way of life?”

What is interesting is that Huang Di, regarded as the founder of Chinese civilization, reigned from 2697 BC to 2597 BC – roughly from 5000 years ago.

Here is a part of the answer he was given:

“The accomplished ones, of ancient times, advised people how to guard themselves against disease-causing factors. On the mental level, one should remain calm and avoid excessive desires and fantasies, recognizing and maintaining the natural purity and clarity of the mind. When internal energies are able to circulate smoothly and freely, and the energy of the mind is not scattered, but is focused and concentrated, illness and disease can be avoided.

These days, people have changed their way of life. They drink wine as though it were water, indulge excessively in destructive activities, drain their jing – the body’s essence that is stored in the kidneys – and deplete their qi. They do not know the secret of conserving their energy and vitality. Seeking emotional excitement and momentary pleasures, people disregard the natural rhythm of the universe. They fail to regulate their lifestyle and diet, and sleep improperly. So it is not surprising that they look old at fifty and die soon after.”

5000 years later, we, in the *smart* parts of the western world, have only managed to lengthen our lifespan by some 30 years.

One question worth asking is How much of the Happiness factor have our various freedoms, rights and comforts added to this 30 years extension on life? A fair answer might be Not as much as anyone would hope for.

We pride ourselves for belonging to a culture that routinely produces headline-grabbing ‘advancements’ in one area or another. We forget that, like acrobats at the top of human pyramids, what our current luminaries have accomplished rests squarely on the cumulative intellectual/physical and creative powers of those who, over the stretch of centuries, have preceded them in their field.

Like children with broken toys and broken hearts, we tacitly agree to have our resourcefulness and our collective multi-billion dollar might squandered in high profile pursuits that are totally diversionary – thousands of light years removed from the soul-searching job that needs to be done here – now.

Such diversions that plumb the depths of the seas in search of weird species of fish and the depths of the cosmos in search of yet another gas cluster, however brilliant, can never provide us with the glue with which to repair our broken toys and the salve with which to mend our hearts. They will never provide us with the means with which to repair our broken planet.

And then what?

Recently, in July 2010, we were awed by yet another discovery. Scientists announced the discovery of RMC 136a, a *monster* star hundreds of times bigger than the sun some 165,000 light years away. Interestingly, ‘165,000 light years away’ means that this monster star appears through the telescope as it was 165,000light years ago – not as it currently is – and it might no longer exist. It is in this quirk that lies our tragic flaw – how we lead our lives aching and longing, as well as resenting, many past moments, big and small, as if they were still active in our real time moments. This is the crux of our pan-generational emotional discontentment.

In any case, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that this giant had already been discussed by Ancient Chinese, Mayans and Hindus genius astronomers as it would have been much closer to them in real time than to us. And again we can ponder the multi-billions of dollars spent on such prestige ‘discoveries’ that could have gone towards changing the way we interact with the planet and with each other – in our living rooms, in our streets, at work and in the real wide world.

Heaven forbid that astronomers should find a warm watery Earth look-alike out there because then … then what?

What we have lost in Spirit through a disconnection from our soul, we have not gained in any other area.  Money world-wide, symbol of the Love we lockup in leak-proof vaults, needs to flow freely. Yes, but a massive cultural re-thinking is long overdue to redirect its intention as well as its flow.

All in all, when it comes to societal issues, personal contentment and the pro-active administration of natural resources, it is difficult to gauge any worthwhile achievements made by post World War I generations and Nature has sent in her emissaries – burning sun, fire, ice, water, wind and rumbling earth – to warn us that what we call *personal best* is not actually any person’ s best effort at all – and such a lame approximation is simply not good enough.

On that vein, and for the sake of the argument, it might be worth considering that if the 18th century Age of Enlightenment was about a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, successive generations might nickname ours The Age of The Rampant Ego or, more bluntly, The Age of Ignorance.

Last month, I watched a documentary on the very poor country of Laos and its government’s plan to build a hydropower dam on the mighty Mekong River. In all likelihood, as the unique, 3-meter long giant catfish exclusively native to that area will no longer be able to spawn upstream, this plan will lead to its extinction, as well as to the destabilization of fishery industries in each of the countries that line the river banks downstream. The damming of the Mekong will also displace the village populations that have, for centuries, lived autonomously from their daily catches and barter system. The damming will interfere grossly with the ways nature intended things to be all the way downstream through Thailand, Burma and Cambodia.

Ah, but that’s all good because foreign companies faced with quasi nil demand for hydro dams will deploy their workers along with their mega tonnes of concrete. As a result, the Laotian top-dogs won’t be scraping the bottom of their barrel anymore, as they will be peddling surplus electricity to neighboring countries and there will be light in each peasant’s hut.

Right. And then what?

1. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37371442/ns/world_news-europe/

2.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary/8043969

3. telegraph.co.uk

4.  http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/australian-floods-expected-to-peak-at-rockhampton-20110104-19eya.html

5.  http://www.australianrareearths.com/

About the Author

Naked Spirituality – A Soul’s Quest

By day, a teacher, by night, an explorer – I began to search for life’s meaning, initially through writing fiction and more recently through learning, practicing, and writing about spiritual philosophy.

A couple of years after my last set of back-to-back novels, “Far From Maddy” and “Morgan in the Mirror”, my writing took an entirely different tack.

Inspired by the teachings of my Spiritual Guide – and pushed along by my soul’s whispers, I embarked on Late But *IN* Time, a collection of spiritual articles inspired by my inner-most thoughts on all Matters of the Heart and Soul.

http://www.ccsaint-clair.com/destiny

This series began with twelve articles complete with illustrations. It deals with what I consider uncompromising, hardcore spirituality and is an ongoing *live* project.

My next creative endeavour lead me to making my own podcasts. Each of the 18 podcasts is a 10 minute-long reading supported by my personal collection of still pictures.

These clips are conveniently set out on Magnify.net – from last to first, so work your way up from page 3 to page 1

http://spiritualawakening.magnify.net/watch/recent

Then came blogs as series – some 5 to 10 blogs per topic – plenty of space and enough words through which to properly unpack each topic from a spiritual perspective.

http://www.ccsaint-clair.com/Spiritual-Philosophy

Together and separately, these articles, blogs and podcasts amount to a *free* guide to what I have  decided to call Naked Spirituality, the only approach to spirituality that, I believe, if practised with an open heart and diligently, can truly set us on The Path of spiritual evolution.

I am not going to package any of my thoughts on all matters of the heart and soul into marketable books and CDs but what I say to you, dear Reader, is DARE *Do* Life Differently w/o Leaving Your Life Behind!

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