Hastiness and superficiality
are the psychic diseases of the 20th century.
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Why is it – that more people are not addressing the problem(s) of Planetary Destruction (and Self-Genocide) ?
Because we don’t know?
No.
Because we don’t care?
No.
Because the problems themselves are insoluble?
Not really.
It’s because … it’s Uncomfortable.
First of all – it’s Sad … Tragic … depressing.
Secondly, the problems are huge … complex. How do we interface with them?
I know … but the real reasons we don’t address them (and commit to solving the problems)
are not rational. They’re emotional.
Even to Think about trying to solve such problems … makes us feel Overwhelmed and Inadequate. And – there’s the problem of Uncertainty.
There’s nothing resembling a guarantee – that we’ll succeed if we try!
How can we even feel certain we comprehend the problem?
Our reasons for not addressing the problems are –
-
Non-rational
-
Weighty … and
-
Numerous
Yet …
If we do not address these problems
which threaten all of life
it will be the BIGGEST MISTAKE of ALL TIME.
(and we will surely rue it) !
Here is what Solzhenitsyn has to say (about ‘mistakes’):
“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes… we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions – especially selfish ones.”
(Remember?: We Americans spend more on Entertainment than we do on Education and Health Care combined.)
We’re a dysfunctional lot.
Woody Allen says –
“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
But I think it has more to do with the Heart than it does with the Mind.
It has to do with guts.
Mmm ?
Oriah Mountain Dreamer says –
All my journeys have been in search of the desires I have abandoned.
~~~
There are places inside me where the soothing balm of rest has never penetrated. I long for a small respite from the reaching, a moment of sweet stillness, quiet darkness, the great silence that can penetrate and loosen the small, hard knots of endless trying. I want to quit running from my own tiredness. I want to be willing and able to move only as fast as I am capable of moving while still remaining connected to the impulse to move from deep within, stopping when I have lost that slender thread of desire and having the courage and faith to wait, in stillness, until I find it again.
This is what I ache for: intimacy with myself, others, and the world, intimacy that touches the sacred in all that is life. This ache, this longing is the thread that guides me back through the labyrinth of compromises I have made, back to my soul’s desires. And sometimes I am afraid of my desires — afraid of what they will ask of me, what vision of myself or the world they will offer that may demand a sacrifice of my carefully cultivated way of seeing. If we are never consumed by the transforming fire of our desires, we risk falling in love with the sweet ache of longing, the daydream of “what if …” or “some day …”
The willingness to live our desires takes courage. So many times our desires have been used against us, used to sell us what someone else wanted us to buy. Moving toward our desire for deep commitment to Spirit, we have been sold blind obedience; opening to our desire to love, we have been sold an abandonment of self; seeking to embrace our desire for beauty, we have been sold everything from cars to clothes, exotic vacations to plastic surgery. We have been sold a lifestyle, when what our soul desired was life.
To taste our longing, to feel the ache, we risk finding our soul’s desires. We risk falling short of fulfilling those desires. We risk living our desires fully.
~~~
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. …
It doesn’t interest me who you are, or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
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“The creatures of Havona are naturally brave, but they are not courageous in the human sense. They are innately kind and considerate, but hardly altruistic in the human way. They are expectant of a pleasant future,but not hopeful in the exquisite manner of the trusting mortal of the uncertain evolutionary spheres. They have faith in the stability of the universe, but they are utter strangers to that saving faith whereby mortal man climbs from the status of an animal up to the portals of Paradise. They love the truth, but they know nothing of its soul-saving qualities. They are idealists, but they were born that way; they are wholly ignorant of the ecstasy of becoming such by exhilarating choice. They are loyal, but they have never experienced the thrill of wholehearted and intelligent devotion to duty in the face of temptation to default. They are unselfish, but they never gained such levels of experience by the magnificent conquest of a belligerent self. They enjoy pleasure, but they do not comprehend the sweetness of the pleasure escape from the pain potential.” – The Urantia Book p. 52.3
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