From an Upper Floor

  (in memory of Diane Rybacki)

The Universe is a benign place.   Our planet, in this best of all learning places,  needs our actions,  individual as they may be,  to survive.   And it needs us to learn from these actions.  Then we find that the Universe becomes caring also because it needs our actions to survive.   To Be becomes a critical imperative for all.

We see that our actions,  some of which we are not proud,  are indelibly written in our genetic history.   We wish that we could unsubscribe to them.   We are not always at our best and hamper our progress at times.   We can rewrite our history by cumulative actions giving our best to those situations serving the greatest good.   I ascribe to the divine in man,  yet  he takes too much rest in the cliche saying he is ‘only human.’  What needs be done is to strike a balance.

I was told to ask my questions from that place where angels know the weight of the feet and the heavens watch that we do not place them on the minds of those about us.  I have kept this thought during the long stretch of making a road where I could rest easy but have not found it yet.  In my memory with a putting place is a mushroom cloud rising and spreading its death on even the innocent.   And the innocent were routinely drilled on how to hide beneath  schoolroom desks.

I have learned that those intent on sealing their immortality play with stakes that are bigger than their mini minds and lay to waste a world to sodden ash.   The world as they know it will disappear and in its stead will be the sulky ash that they will trudge in hip boots to protect them from contamination.

Some do not know that today is eternity.

Sometimes it seems we do a thing and wonder afterwards why.   Well,  to me it is still a puzzlement as to why I ordered a bolt, of all things,  a bolt of burlap on the eve of my 83rd birthday.   In a few days there is a birthday and with a body balking,  I am wondering the purpose of my purchase.   Well,  the burlap is here and it was a good price with my 50 percent coupon off attached and I am well pleased.   In fact,  the magic never ends.

I worked on a wall quilt,  in fact finished one and almost done with the other and a great rightness was in the working.   In the process of doing it,  there is a smooth transition from my head to my hands and I am all of a piece.   And a peace.  When it was done,  I marveled at the marriage of the wedding silks and army boots.   It was a wonderful feeling as if the trek through the bulrushes was worth the long journey.

I wanted to share this part of what I do with the constant process of enabling my breathing and keeping on.   It is a journey of wonder and should I be able to leave anything to my progeny or those who have shared my life,  it is that it is not only a wonder but a privilege we are given.   We  must guard it carefully and to work to  the utmost,  to  do our highest and best effort and vision.  And should we choose to chase it,  we will find truly that the magic never ends.

Many times we say some things simply because we have heard them forever and never have thought them through sufficiently to change our thinking.   The dastardly job of thinking is given away like some vile disease.   Yet the remarkable process of thinking,  the gift of thought,  the joy of thinking is what man is all about.   It is a birthright of greatest value and is scorned as an odious work.   It is man’s liberation from a life of drudgery.   Thought will take one from the humdrum of every day and lift one to the heavens where imagination originates and dreams are spun.   It will be the wings upon which man will fly.

At the end of life we will say what we accomplished but when we are asked what did we think,  what will be our answer?  To resolve issues which plague the heart is the work of humankind.  We find alternatives to those issues bringing discomfort.  But thought,  that marvelous process which will allow the mind to form an elasticity,  to allow effort to bring matters to logical conclusions,  when man disparages this very active tool which is his gift,  then we all suffer,  mankind as well as the heavens.  It is our sacred obligation to honor this extraordinary gift.

Let us treat it as such.

painting by Claudia Hallissey

When we yearn for something and are sure it is going to come true and it doesn’t, we are crushed.  How could we be so sure and then not have it happen?  The actuality of it has already happened elsewhere; transpired in another place.  That is hard for humans to absorb.  That actuality is a bleed through that has physical effects.   Most of us are already comfortable with the idea of other worlds.  It is not a tale of fantasy.   We already have scientific evidence for other worlds that support life in these universes.  That life may not be familiar but we need to move our frame of reference outward.   This is what visualization is about.

What is worked on here is already accomplished elsewhere.   When my healer friend put her hands on her ailing husband and felt the God  Power or Force move through her hands,  he was healed in another place.   Our thinking must include other selves than just this human one.  One may say this is a pipe dream.   It is the oldest philosophical argument of what reality is and fits my original premise in building a philosophy in that everything is ultimately good.   Or we would not Be.

What is dreamed here is carried out elsewhere in a world as real as this one.  We are working with manifestations of the mind’s conceptions.   What we have dreamed here, if not coming to fruition, is already carried out in another place.   All  we have to do is watch our  grandchildren’s   disappointments in a wish not coming true when they were so sure!  They are closer to other worlds , see and are part of what they know is happening.   Simple as that.

It is about time,  is it not, that man stands to be counted as responsible,  not only for himself but for the place he inhabits by grace?   There is that connection,  that divine connection,  that cosmic connection that unites us all.   It is time that something be done and this desecration of the Earth stopped.    Man has decorated  it beautifully during specific times,  but for too long the chars of his violence are seen and there is no time between for Earth’s healing.

How many more times will the Earth be hospitable?  How much longer will it allow itself to be manhandled and dishonored?  The rights of the unborn are not to be violated.   The planet Earth is a teaching station and ‘way’ stop along the way.    It is long past the time that the warring must be stopped and our stewardship begin again or our green Earth will be a memory.

photo by John Holmes