Tag Archives: Universe

Equinox Abundant

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving

September 22, 2022- Equinox always seems to coincide with heavy physical energy-especially in September. So, we see intense storms affecting an area from the Windward Islands to Newfoundland, the southern Caribbean (and onward, next week, to Florida and beyond), western Alaska to northern California, and Pakistan. Earthquakes hit Mexico (twice), Chile and Indonesia this past week, with minor quakes in several other spots , including California.

Anything that affects Earth also affects its inhabitants, so there appears to be an upswing in aggressive behaviour, as well as its opposite, passivity, with Learned Helplessness accompanying the latter. I saw plenty of both today, in my work assignment. Fortunately, the school where I worked has effective systems in place to address both extremes.

Mostly, though, I see Equinox as a celebrant of both fertility (in the southern hemisphere) and productivity (in the northern hemisphere). Whenever there is an uptick in constructive energy, it is met by converse forces that tear down that which no longer meets the needs of humanity. There is resistance to both, and when that resistance can no longer be justified by logic and the scientific method, conspiracy theories arise. Yet, because the Universe is about the generating of life, and follows several levels of order, those theories and the resistance that generated them, tend to fall by the wayside.

I believe, very strongly, that this is what will happen with the current resistance-all the authoritarianism, denial (of climate change on the Right and of fetal humanity, on the Left) and closed mindedness across the political spectrum. Chaos is not going to be the order of the day.

The Equinox is about abundance.

Flex Time

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Posted by on in distraction issues, Education, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

January 8, 2022- This was one of the weekends in January, when I was planning to be away from Home Base. The schedules of those I had planned to visit changed, and made any visiting inopportune, so this time is being used to tend to matters closer to home. I am also using a couple of meditation Zoom calls to consider the course of future journeys planned for this year and next. Things became clearer to me, during the meditations. Making initial practical information checks, on a couple of aspects of these journeys, made things clearer still.

There is always a way to make good use of time, when plans have to change. Even being mostly in retirement mode, I find there are not enough hours in a day for everything that might be accomplished. Flexibility also seems to be the order of the Universe, at least in terms of how elements of Creation interact with one another. The fact that the Universe is unlimited, infinite, helps with that flexibility. Besides, that infinitude means there are far too many variables for one to go about life in a rigid manner.

In the end, I actually was glad to be finishing the day by completing a reading of “White Fragility”-coming to the conclusion that I am not fragile, in my ethnic and racial identity, and can learn from others about microaggressions and other elements of my own thoughts and actions that might drive a wedge between me and those around me.

No time need be wasted.

A Gallery of Slivers

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Posted by on in Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

January 10, 2020- 

It is more common than some like to admit, to regard oneself as “well-rounded”, worldly, “Renaissance person”, or some other descriptor that accents a wide variety of experiences.
I’ve had many of those types of moments. Yet, in thinking about any given experience, how deep was any of it?  How broad?  Let me consider one example.

About five years ago, I visited Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  The size of that fine institution necessitated choosing one or two galleries.  I selected a Frida Kahlo exhibit, learning a fair amount about that astonishing artist and taking in a few of the adjoining works by Mexican and Central American painters, as well.  The other exhibit I chose featured Japanese and Korean silk calligraphy.  This was a refresher on what I had learned of the medium, whilst visiting Seoul, twenty years earlier.

Neither of these visits was in any way encyclopedic or exhaustive.  Indeed, in a two-hour stay, one is getting only a sliver of knowledge, about any given subject. That’s not a bad thing, in the least.  I would rather have a preliminary experience with a particular subject, or place, than none at all.

The fact, though, that there is vastly more to any particular person, place or thing, than we can fully appreciate, leaves me in awe.  That’s not even getting close to the topic of The Universe, which will always escape our attempts to contain it, in the realm of human consciousness.  Just considering one painting, by any given artist, can take several hours of focused contemplation.  The writer William Least Heat Moon, in “Prairy Erth” (Houghton Mifflin,Boston, 1991), took the sparsely-populated Chase County, Kansas, and delved into every aspect of the modest section of Flint Hills, until it “looms as large as the Universe”.

This is one of the true wonders of this life: No matter how many times one experiences even the most ordinary of things, it is, as another astute observer recently remarked, proof that you can’t have the same experience twice.  Life is a gallery of slivers.

Growing My Vision, Part II

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Posted by on in Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal goals, Personal Values, Service Activities, Spiritual, Striving

October 24, 2019-

I’ve had a fair amount of time to reflect on how life has been, and where it’s going.  An online purveyor of life coaching is claiming I will “stagnate”, if I don’t pay for his coaching method, as opposed to The Law of Attraction and its 11 corollary laws, which he says “fail”.

Well, so far, since I studied and implemented these twelve laws, my life has, for the most part, worked out in a satisfying way.  He sees me as stagnating, because my nest egg is modest, I don’t have one special significant other, and my travel plans don’t involve expensive resorts.  Sound familiar?

I live in a small apartment-true, but it’s comfortable.  I live in a town where I am, for the most part, loved and respected.  I would only move, if it seemed like my family needed me to be closer.  So far, I have seen no indication of that.  I do plan on a more fluid schedule,  even more of being on the move, after next year-but that’s also contingent on whether I am needed by anyone.  Family will always trump journeys of discovery.

There is also the slim possibility of serving at the Baha’i World Centre, in Israel, for 12-18 months, in a couple of years.  It would be strictly dependent on that institution’s needs.

My vision, regardless, will continue to grow.  There are always new things to learn about the nature of the soul, about quantum physics and the vastness of the Universe, both macro and micro.  There are always new friends to make and new things to learn about those in my life at present.

The old dog is up for learning new tricks.  Just don’t ask me to jump out of a plane, unless the thing is going down.

The Motion Ocean

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Posted by on in Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Spiritual

April 26, 2019-

Someone spoke, this afternoon, of a physics principle:  “All that exists is motion”. This has been attributed to Gautama Siddhartha, as well as to ‘Abdu’l-Baha.  So, here is a bit of verse, along those lines.

The ocean is ever in motion.

Can we imagine how it would be,

were the sea to be dammed?

Suppose the planets entered

a period of being stationary.

Would all that lives on each world,

fall off?

Would the void of space,

become full,

of  floating beings

and other objects,

and thus,

no longer a void?

Would the waters

again cover the Earth,

as in its primal days,

or in the days of the Great Flood?

What of the beings, themselves?

Would the constant motion of molecules,

and quarks,

even in rocks,

come to a halt?

I shudder at that thought.

The Universe,

is an Ocean

of Motion.

 

Nineteen

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Posted by on in Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

March 2, 2019- 

I began my penultimate physical Fast today.  Once I reach the age of seventy, in November of next year,  abstinence from food and drink no longer is binding, and the Fast will bring additional spiritual duties.

For this year, though, I am following the course prescribed by Baha’u’llah:  When not traveling or engaged in arduous physical labour, I abstain from food and drink, from sunrise to sunset, from today through March 20.  Travel to and from Korea, in a few short days, will truncate the physical aspect of the Fast, with the spiritual duties remaining in place.

I have nineteen thoughts I wish to share:

  1. As stated yesterday, all life is sacred.
  2.  Those who, for whatever reason, don’t view their lives, or those of others, as sacred are to be embraced in their suffering-and not condemned, though they must be held to account for acts of violence.
  3. If someone takes me to task, even harshly, and I know that one is right, I need to be the change.
  4. No one has the individual right to strike another person, unless one is responsible for that other person’s well being, as a parent or guardian-and even then, the reason for the spanking is understood by the other and it is only used as a last resort.
  5. Even insects and arachnids should be captured and released outside, into a safe place, whenever possible.  They have their place in the scheme of things.
  6. There is no human trash. Some just need to be monitored more closely and held in firmer check.
  7. Education is a universal right.
  8. Food and beverages should be as free of contamination as is humanly possible.
  9. Fun is essential to the soul, though never had at another’s expense.
  10. Everyone’s legitimate work deserves respect.
  11. All prayers are heard by, and affect, the Universe.
  12. Time in nature is also essential to the soul.
  13. Love is the primary building block of the Universe.
  14. May I never walk away from a cry for help.
  15. A call for peace is the best sound that may escape one’s lips, first thing in the morning.
  16. The morning sun, the evening stars and moon are here to reassure us that there is always a force, greater than ourselves.
  17. When I am in a half-sleep, I communicate both with departed souls and with those who are in  my life, but who are not immediately present.
  18. Plants show an intelligence, in the way they propagate and in the way they seek what they need.
  19. God, the Divine, the Universe, the Infinite, the Eternal, reveals to us what we need and what we can comprehend, in the way of truth.  It has always been thus.

None of these are original thoughts, but they occur to me nonetheless and so I share.

 

Dimensions, Part 3

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Posted by on in collaborating, Education, Inspiration, Personal Values, Spiritual, Striving

January 31, 2019-

As there are so many languages and ethnic groups, among the entity that is the human race, and as there are so many species of plants and animals, living on Planet Earth, alone, we may reasonably surmise that there is an infinity of living creatures, composed of any of the several elements, found in the Periodic Table, or perhaps a combination thereof.  There could be as many, or more, silicon-based living creatures as/than carbon-based beings, across the Universe.

This leads to the fifth through tenth theoretical dimensions of the physical Universe.  They each deal with comparisons between this world and at least one other possible world.  The Fifth Dimension would be a world slightly different from ours, which we might compare and contrast with this one.  The Sixth Dimension would be a plane of all possible worlds which have the same start conditions as one another.  The Seventh Dimension  would be a plane of all possible worlds with start conditions that are different from one another.  This is the basis for the theory that there are several Universes (if “universe” actually means “one song”, that theory simply means there are several cosmic songs, in one Cosmos.  The Eighth Dimension would be a plane of all possible worlds, each with different start conditions and each branching out infinitely.  If Earth were to branch out, infinitely, then it is reasonable to expect that we humans would interact with those of other worlds, who are branching out infinitely, as well. The Ninth Dimension would be a plane of all possible worlds,  with all possible start conditions AND all possible Laws of Physics.  Remember, the Laws of Physics are atmosphere-based and gravity-based.  What “flies” on Earth, does not “fly” on Saturn, or, necessarily, on the fourth planet from Sirius.  The Tenth Dimension would be the plane of infinite possibilities.  There, it could be that we could escape from politics, or death and taxes. https://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/12/16/heres-visual-guide-10-dimensions-reality/

That is the view of Bosonic String theorists.  Some of them even posit a Cosmos of at least 26 dimensions, far beyond my level of understanding.  You are free to examine that matter. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/292919/why-are-there-specifically-10-11-or-26-dimensions-in-string-theory

However, let me take just a few minutes to ponder what the above means, in terms of  the dimensions of human wellness.  Man does seem to have an infinite capacity to rationalize.  Suppose this ability is actually rooted in a state of alternate realities, each of which could fit the needs of a given world that the Seventh or Eighth Dimensions.

Suppose, also, that the upper dimensions are peopled by those of any number, or combination, of structural elements.  How would we communicate with such beings?  This may prove a critical issue,  perhaps as soon as 200-300 years hence.

It could, finally, be that the Tenth Dimension represents the closest we can imagine to the Reality of God- a State of Being that is far, far beyond it, but which dimension can command the  human imagination at its zenith.

I like to think that the fifth-tenth dimensions are the source of all human progress, compelling us to seek, and find, knowledge that our forebears could imagine only dimly, at best.  Let us keep trying, and growing.

Unconditional

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Posted by on in distraction issues, Personal Values, Spiritual, Striving

November 11, 2018, Prescott-

Happy Veterans Day to all who served, in “times of peace” and in open conflict.  I regret one thing about 11:11:11/18- I was resolving a conflict over material possessions (someone else’s) at the time, so I missed the reflection which that time merits.

Basically, I have been storing items for a benighted and angry individual.  I had temporarily forgotten where they were stored, and was thus subjected to yet another tirade about how stupid and worthless I was.  Fortunately, this was all electronic, a “hit and run”, so to speak. Even more fortunately, I found the items, they will be transported to a third party, tomorrow and I will be free to ban the above-mentioned person from ever contacting me again.

I have had it with detractors and naysayers-as opposed to sincere, earnest critics, who point out errors, out of love.  The latter will always have my attention.

It has taken a  long, long time for me to value myself and to know that those who lambaste me  are not worth my time.  That time has arrived and I know, both in heart and mind, that I deserve the best that life has to offer.  Actually, we all deserve the best. The fact that some have been raised to regard themselves as worthless, is precisely why there is so much conflict-whether over THINGS,  or over ideas, or over social norms.

If each of us recognized our worth, material possessions would not be the cause of strife, money would not be the source of grief, attention to detail would not be the cause of condemnation.  We would know that all would be alright, if not immediately, then over time.

If each of us really understood the Universe, the nature of Creation, the eternity of being, then there would be no conflict of egos.  There would have been no Lucifer’s rebellion; no smug disregard, by our distant ancestors, of spiritual instruction; no ongoing conflict, often perpetrated by those who cast themselves as “enlightened”, but whose egos only project utter darkness.

I can’t claim to understand it all, but I do understand these:  There is only a place for Light in this world, in this Universe.  There is only a future for those whose hearts are open, whose goals are based on unconditional love.  All else will fail, and will fall away, in confusion and disappointment. More’s the pity.

Adventures in Hobbling

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Posted by on in Assistance, impediments, Personal goals, Striving

October 18, 2018, Prescott-

It was bound to happen, sooner or later.  My left knee popped, as I was walking back to our classroom from the school’s tennis court.  I wasn’t playing tennis, just helping a student put racket to ball and hit a fence.  The pop happened when I walked down a concrete stair that I had used several times.  I didn’t fall, and made it first to a bench, then to the classroom and a chair.

From there, the school nurse iced the knee, had crutches brought to me and I made an appointment with Urgent Care.  X-rays showed no bone loss, but slight arthritis (which I think is being kept at bay by various essential oils).  DRINK MORE WATER!  I am wearing a knee brace and using the crutches, to pamper this vital friend of mine, for as long as needed.

The Universe chooses unusual ways to tell me when a change is needed.  When the brakes on the KIA Optima had been partially severed, it took the botched attempt to stop at a rural intersection, at which I had stopped countless times, and a roll into a relatively benign ditch, to get a different car.  That Nissan Altima, itself, had a shelf life of little over a year, coming to a final halt in Newtown, CT-at a service station close to Danbury, from where my Hyundai Elantra was procured.

I needed a new computer, but had no funds to buy it: Piece of celestial cake- thieves picked it out, from underneath two full backpacks, whilst I was walking in the vicinity of McGill University, in Montreal.

Now, that I have been cautioned, several times, to slow down and cut back, comes the treatment and healing of the left knee.  Righty will have to work harder for a few days, and I am applying to myself, what Penny knew and did for the three years she was on crutches or used a cane.  I will get physical therapy, next week and for as long as it takes to bring both knees back in synchronicity with each other.

I am breaking down every physical activity to its smallest steps, giving each very focused attention.  That was something that had been brought up, several times, during the veritable Boot Camp in which I found myself, for much of last week.  Getting out of bed, I will reach for the crutches, tomorrow and maybe for days afterward.  Showering will have to be done with the brace on. Dressing will be done sitting down. I will scoot myself around the apartment, ever so carefully, sitting in my office chair.  I will park behind other people’s cars, when attending Baha’i meetings, the next few days, instead of being over-solicitous and taking a spot further away.  My co-workers may very well not see me, tomorrow.  It’ll depend on how useful I think I might be.

There will be a tomorrow, though, and I will be back on my feet- but in a prudent way, following the doctor’s instructions to the letter. Penny showed the way to dealing with any injury and others have shown the way to full recovery from theirs.   So will go this hobbler.

 

One, Two, Three, Four- The Plans

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Posted by on in collaborating, Inspiration, Personal Values, Service Activities, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

January 22, 2018, Prescott-

Every so often, I come out with details of my plans for this or that.  One year (day, month) at a time, I have been advised.  That makes sense for anyone my age, on up.  So my plans for this year, 2018, ought to be a foundation for what comes next.

This year, I will work, diligently, both at my day job- which will see an uptick in the number of students we have, come August, and at my financial effort, which is, admittedly, still in its fledgling state ( I can hear the Boo Birds, now- “There he goes again!”), but is being pursued, carefully, with a lot of expert support.  This will bring me to San Diego, the fourth weekend in March, for a mentoring conference.  Prior to that, I will have had nearly 60 hours of training and mentoring calls.  I have detailed other travel plans, in a previous post, and those still stand for next month, and for May-June.  An uptick in income would also allow me to join other mentoring events.

That covers the number one.  “Two” takes in 2019.  Next year marks the Bicentenary of the Birth of al-Bab, the immediate predecessor of Baha’u’llah, and His Herald.  This event, marked in late October, will be the overarching event of the year, for me and for millions of others.  My summer travels will bring me back to the Pacific Northwest, and southeast Alaska.  My work and financial ventures will continue apace. Then, too, who knows what the Universe will add on to all that?

“Three” brings us to 2020.  As I turn 70, in November of that year, its March will see my final physical Fast, under Baha’i law.  The Fast will have spiritual import for me, the rest of my life, but abstaining from food and beverages will not apply, once I reach the age of seventy.   I hope to be at, or past, my financial goals by New Year’s Day of that year.  Travel wise, I am looking at a Trans-Canada (BC to Newfoundland) road trip, in June and July.

“Four” means 2021.  This year will mark the Centenary of the Passing of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’u’llah’s eldest son and His Successor, as Head of the Baha’i Faith.  My longtime readers may remember that, in 2012, we commemorated the centennial of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s visit to North America.  2021 will, thus,also be a special year for us Baha’is.

For me, personally, it will bring the end of my full-time employment as an educator.  I have ambitious, but still tentative, plans for international travel.  Besides those, I will be more active on the volunteer front, in whatever community (ies) I may find myself, once “retired”.

So there are the substances of numbers one through four, as they pertain to my humble life.  Many of these could very well come to pass, though the Universe does throw a curve at each of us, every so often!