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Carol
Adrienne's work and teachings have been a great inspiration to
me! In August of 1998, about four months after my father
passed away, I read about one of Carol's workshops in a
Learning Annex catalog and synchronistically found her book on
a bookshelf at the bookstore. The themes of her
teachings were familiar and comforting, as they confirmed the
thoughts and ideas my father had shared with me shortly before
his passing. Her books and workshops ignited my
spiritual curiosity, setting me on my soulful life path, which
led to the very creation of SoulfulLiving.com! Carol's
participation has been an integral part of SoulfulLiving.com,
at its soul level! Thank you, Carol, with all my heart!
~Valerie, Founder and Soul, SoulfulLiving.com |
"Taking Stock"
By the time you read these
words, we’ll be in the New Millennium! Technically, we
know it starts next year, but do we care? The popular
thought is Change is here.
May I ask what this time
brings up in your mind? What Big Question would you most like
to have answered? If a journalist asked for your opinion of
what trends are going to grow or take us to a certain kind of
life in the future (20, 50, 100, 1,000 years hence) what
intuitive feelings arise for you about areas such as family
structure, work categories, governing models, educational
systems, important spiritual philosophies? Do you have a sense
that your own field of endeavor is changing or has changed
significantly in the last decade? Besides your daily routine
and responsibilities, are there areas of inquiry that
fascinate you? If so, have you wondered why? Do you think it
just your own personal interest, or could it be a collective
question or movement working through you?
For me, this period of time
raises more questions about "life" than usual, both
universally and personally. For example, thinking personally I
wonder why I chose to be born so that I would be in mid-career
mode at this big shift in the calendar cycle. What tiny part
do I play in the inexorable evolution of human consciousness?
What tiny influence might I make to contribute to a positive
outcome for the future?
The Power of an Idea and
Personal Action
Thinking universally, I
wonder what will turn out to be the important ideas and trends
of this period in one thousand years? I’m currently reading
a book called Paul: The Mind of the Apostle by A.N. Wilson. It
was Paul, years after the crucifixion of Jesus, who began to
win converts to a new way of thinking amidst a panoply of
religious and secular philosophies. One has to marvel at how
one person can initiate a flow of energy in a certain
direction, an energy which will have such a prolonged effect
and unforeseen ramifications. How were these ideas transmitted
throughout the then-known civilized world? Without any media
support. Obviously, the tremendous psychological and emotional
energy needed to birth a concept as large as a new world
religion must originate from a higher, deeper source than the
psyche of one individual. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung theorized
such a force as the collective unconscious. And yet one
wonders how the seed of Jesus’ simple teachings and miracles
survived within the husk of the outer shell of a religion
that, once codified, contributed such a heavy burden of
controversy, mayhem, and conflict —something it seems Jesus,
nor even Paul, was not aiming to create. I wonder what was the
fertile field within individuals at that time (i.e., what
personal needs existed strongly enough) that the seed concepts
of a spiritual story could take root and live for at least two
thousand years? And what now? Is this moment truly a
crossroads for the human race? Certainly it is ecologically.
And spiritually? Are not the life of the planet and the life
of spirit not ineluctably intertwined? What is it that humans
are striving for at this stage of our evolution, now that we’ve
been dancing to the tune of science and technology so
predominately in the last few hundred years?
Ancient Values and New Life
Last month my friend Thom
Hartmann came for a visit to the Bay Area. Thom is best known
for his work on attention-deficit disorder (ADD) and has seven
books to his credit on that subject. Thom has just published a
new book with Harmony House, (a division of Random House)
entitled The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking up to
Personal and Global Transformation. In one of our
conversations I asked Thom to comment on some of the concepts
from his book:
"There’s a lot of
talk now about the evolution of humans and consciousness and
moving to something new and unique in the history of humanity.
No doubt with the presence of modern technology and the number
of people alive on the earth, whatever happens will be new and
unique. (Although some people like Edgar Cayce would say that
there have been large populations and sophisticated
technologies in the distant past.)," he added.
"It’s common to view
the millennium as a point along the line of history. In fact
it’s a place on a circle. Everything in life and nature goes
in cycles--from the death and birth of stars, to the changing
seasons, to the phases of the moon, to the cycles within our
body and our personal history. As we look back into past
cycles—and this may require us going back behind the veil of
what Daniel Quinn (author of Ishmael) calls the Great
Forgetting, which is when the Romans and then the Catholic
Church killed off and stamped out the wisdom of the European
tribal people and moved them into city states—we may gain
insights and recover human values and strengths that will
allow us to create new and viable opportunities for a quality
human existence for this next millennium.
"Humans have, in the
past, figured out ways to live together in peace. Were this
not the case we would not be alive today. We can see this in
many extant tribal people today, who are living the way our
ancestors lived thousands of years ago.
"The key for the next
millennium is not going to be in trying to recover the life
style or techniques or technologies of these older cultures,
but in finding their values and applying those to our modern
day world. For example, the notion that when people do things
"wrong" they are sinful, criminal, or bad is part of
our culture. We don’t find this kind of thinking in older
tribal cultures. They didn’t have police and prisons.
Instead, they had the idea of balance and imbalance. For
example, they valued living in harmony and balancing
disharmony. I once experienced this when I made a social
blunder in a group of Native American men. Instead of
chastising me or criticizing me or punishing me, there was a
momentary pause. Then one by one they began to tell stories
from their lives of times when they had created disharmony by
a similar social blunder and how they had restored that
harmony and balance to both the group, the individual, and
their lives. Instead of punishing me, they were teaching me.
Dysfunctional Ideas and Values
"We find in our younger
technological culture many values that are dysfunctional. For
example, some of the concepts that would be considered bizarre
by members of older cultures are the ideas of Original Sin, or
that God is angry with us, or that all the world’s problems
are caused by a woman making a mistake (Eve), or the idea that
we can only be helped by someone or something outside of
ourselves. They would find it bizarre that the purpose of a
culture would be to support and insulate the rich—all of
these would not be considered useful to a harmonious
life."
How could we begin to
recover the meritorious parts of our history that allowed us
to live together and thrive together?
Three-Part Process
"I see this as a
three-step process, which is why I wrote Last Hours in three
parts." Thom explained. "The first part is to
recognize that our culture in many ways does not work. Our
modern culture is an aberration in the context of 200,000
years of human history, an aberration that has the potential
now to destroy the planet. We must wake up to the reality of
the problems we face. We can’t treat a disease without first
diagnosing it.
"The second part is to
understand the nature of the sick and dysfunctional stories
and values which have so twisted our culture that we would
allow and perpetrate such aberrations as destroying the
resources that allow us to live on the planet. In this part we
find the dysfunctional stories serve only one purpose. That
purpose is to create a society and culture in which there are
kings and serfs, slaveholders and slaves, or what we would
today call the wealthy and the poor.
"The third part is to
find ways to apply to our world the ancient values which have
sustained the human race for 200,000 years. In finding new
ways to incorporate the values and stories of the older
cultures into our contemporary world, we find the opportunity
and hope to create a bright, resonant, warm, and functional
world for our children and our children’s children."
Synchronistically, as I
finished this article, I was talking about these ideas to my
friend, Elizabeth Jenkins (author of Initiation: A Woman's
Spiritual Journey to the Heart of the Andes).
She had just finished reading Martin Prechtel's book, Long
Life, Honey in the Heart. She gave me this quote which seems
to fit perfectly with the theme of valuing tribal practices.
How could we reshape this idea to fit our own culture? Here's
the quote: "Every woman who was lactating wanted to bless
the new mother, my wife, and came to let the newborn suckle so
he would never feel like a stranger in any compound of the
village. In the mind of the Tzutujil having suckled from the
breast of every woman through every clan in the village my son
would now be related to the whole village in the deepest
possible way.... Adults sometimes had to stop quarrels among
their peers by reminding them how they had suckled from the
others' mother or grandmother. This milk-giving was a peace
making thing."
If this sort of conversation
intrigues you, I suggest you get a copy of Thom Hartmann’s
book, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, or visit his
website, www.thomhartman.com.
.Happy New Year!
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