2021 has arrived! Holidays and celebrations are over. It’s time to resume working! The important work, however, has changed with the year. This time, our work is not simply to do a job to earn money. It is the work of healing our planet, restoring respectful and nurturing connections among our human species and between humans and the denizens with whom we share our planet and developing a social order supportive of these goals. It is becoming a renewed kind of people, each of us the kind of people with whom we would like to live. It is the work in which each of us has a part, and which without each part, the chances of manifesting lessen. This is the most important work we have ever had. It is time to get started. Time is running out.
There is so much to accomplish – work which takes physical activity, mental effort, emotional processing, spiritual energy. It is easy to hide one’s head in the sand, and pretend that all is well, and our government will do what is best for us and achieve the goal. Opting out in such a way is abandoning the task and increasing the chances that we will all face either destruction, or an outcome we do not wish, possibly even one which negates our humanity. Why? First, the work to be done cannot be accomplished from a top-down stance. Big anything will not be able to get it done. Big politics, big government, big technology, big business, big media, and the like will never, ever create a healed Earth or a healed web of life. The “bigs” create what supports the “bigs”; Big Brother may take care of us, but will also tell us how to be, what to do, how to live, what to think. That is the first reason.
In addition – perhaps this should be first, as it underlies the former – we are each responsible for who we are, how we grow, what we do and how we live. For this, we do not answer to Big Brother or any “big”. We answer to life itself, and to the results we produce for ourselves. If one is religious, we answer to God. Because we are responsible, we also have the power, individually and especially collectively, to affect our goals. In microcosm, if we are adult, we can no longer blame our parents for our ills, because we possess within ourselves the power to right them, if we wish to exercise that power. On a larger scale, we cannot blame the government, the opposite political party, religious organizations, people we think are maliciously trying to control us, people who we perceive as enemies, careless other people, being too young or too old, or anything else for what we dislike. Each time we do that, we are giving away a bit of our power to create harmoniously, to make things right.
We need to heal our Earth, reforest, and renew her. To that end, we also need to, among other things, adjust our economies, our lifestyles and consumption of resources. We need to balance our consumption with our production and our capacity to renew that from which we take. We need to create a social order that assigns equal humanity to each human being on the planet. Note, that does not mean “same”. Each of us is unique. It means that we extend equal value, consideration, and use of resources to each human being, whether they are like us or not. We need to think about giving “rights” to others, not about how to get them. We need to wean ourselves from killing, especially knee-jerk killing, and replace that with respect and love. We need to learn to listen to each other. We need to learn to govern ourselves effectively, without relying on any of the “bigs” to tell us what to do. We need to learn to grow food and medicines respectfully, in ways which replenish the Earth which nurtures us. We need to eliminate war. We need to learn to grow ourselves so that our actions, visions, and responses are rooted in the loving essence from which we all come. We need to learn to express that essence and recognize the oneness between not only us humans but also each expression of life.
That is only the beginning, and already the task is huge. It will take all of us to accomplish, but it is absolutely possible, despite the pull from entropy. We can use our inner vision to project – what would the world look like if we achieve our goal? What would it be like, if it survives at all, if we do not? Here are two easily-read resources to check out: Brave New World combined with Brave New World Revisited, both by Aldous Huxley, and the entire Celestine Prophecy series, by James Redfield. There are others, but those are good starts.
Each of us has his or her own unique talent, his or her own thing that he or she loves or does well. Large or small does not matter. Current standards of pay do not matter. Leading, supporting, or working independently does not matter. Excuses to not act do not actually excuse; they only indicate an unwillingness to participate. Even the bedridden can participate; the power of prayer and vision holding is great. The power of extending love is infinite.
Are you one who cares for the land, who grows food and medicines? Are you one who can use tools and build? Do you do best at designing structures? Can you understand and translate the processes of nature into harmonious human activity? Are you a cook, a teacher, a nurturer? Are you a visual artist, a musician, a storyteller? Are you a philosopher, a priest, one who can perceive the surrounding world most of us find invisible? Are you a healer? Are you an activist? Find your talent and commit to the task. In such a way, 2021 can be the year in which we respond to the challenge to grow, heal, and become.
Remember that top down does not work; top down most often gets in the way. Big anything does not have the power to do anything for us. Each of us is responsible for the outcome; each of us has the power to affect it.
We can choose to give up our power, and declare ourselves helpless, or victims that need rescuing. That sinks us deeper into the quicksand. Each of us needs to listen to the other, and each of us needs to work. Let us be the people who rise to the challenge. Let us choose life. Happy New Year!
Peace, Diane
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