Every Time of Plenty Comes to an End
[thoughts from a ~burning woman~ Sha’Tara]
The purpose of life, I think, is not to get out of here as quickly as possible, taking as many other prisoners of the physical plane with us as we can in the process. It is to bring ourselves and others to liberation, but that liberation is one from our blindness, from the inertia of matter, from our inability to exist with self-consciousness. [Eldon Tucker]
Yes, there are still those who think that life is better ‘on the other side’ and believe it is their duty to convince as many as possible of this. It is easier to suck people into a belief system than to demonstrate how they can change, here and now. The more popular your belief system, the less you have to do to maintain it. I know this for a fact. Once I belonged within the framework of the Christian religion and what shocked me was the ease of it. When I began to question my reasons for staying I realized I was in a boring old critter, much akin to politics. There was no challenge. There were no surprises. No uniformed types ever came to my door at midnight to haul me away because I believed in God. Quite the opposite in fact. For belonging to a certain church I got discounts in certain businesses, praise the Lord and all that!
Compared to the stories I’d been given to read about the early Christians: the martyrs, the scapegoats, the slaves, the powerless who somehow managed to empower themselves with their faith, my place in modern Christianity – or better put – Christianism – was predictable and utterly without meaning. All I heard was that no matter how good life was now, it would be better ‘in heaven’ and it was all achieved by ‘believing’ and trusting in free grace. It was a win-win situation that could only get better. Just like shares in any other successful corporation, like McDonalds, or Coca Cola, or Shell Oil…
Then came the trickster disguised as Uncomfortable Truth. I learned that life was not, in fact, good. For the majority of the world’s people, life was a daily struggle to survive and doing so meant being exploited to the max, to be used and discarded, to be oppressed. Daily, for some 40,000 it meant dying of preventable causes simply because the ‘rich’ could profit from those deaths. I was amazed at how many of those ‘rich’ belonged to churches also owned and operated by the super-rich.
In a world that deliberately maintains so much terror and death, to be a rich or comfortable Christian became a contradiction I could not live with. I couldn’t worship a Jesus whose sole concern was my personal welfare; who would let 40,000 innocents, mostly babies and their mothers, die each day, but would move heaven and earth to guarantee me a parking place at Wal-Mart on Boxing Day. That was it, I couldn’t live with a 365-day Christmas. I gave away my shares in the corporation and became a mind wanderer of worlds, looking for something real. Something that resembled this Earth; something that did not have a ‘heaven’ at the end of the run. It wasn’t hard to find; all I had to do was open my mind to the Cosmos; to listen to the underground broadcasts of Radio Free Universe.
It is believed we live in a time of plenty. That is of course a true lie. It is believed this time of plenty is coming to an end. That is of course another true lie. Some parts of this world always live in a time of plenty while other parts exist in squalor, misery, starvation and early death. Every time of plenty is always coming to an end. And every end is always the beginning of something else. Like ocean currents, some social movements are predictable. But when some great anomaly manifests, these predictabilities fall apart. The one thing we can boast of is, ‘our’ time is different than any previous time. Our death will be of a first magnitude. For those of the “First World” at least, we will go to the slaughter fat, bloated and educated. That’s something to brag about, isn’t it?
The industrial revolution and the ‘discovery’ of crude oil created a single great movement without precedent and with no sustainable future. Spawn of the great empires that hungrily swept across the globe, enslaving all of life upon it to themselves, this great movement has been highlighted primarily by war. “Hot” wars and “Cold” wars; territorial and resource wars, but mainly wars fought, or threatened to be fought, purely for financial returns. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind. Earth man is about to enter a whole new age. One of fire and blood; of disease and disaster; of famine and folly and massive die-back.
And why? Because a society of intelligent sentient beings refused to take responsibility for itself. Refused to become stewards of the very world, the only world, they inherited after they wrested it from the hands of their makers. Helpless and disgusted, the ‘gods’ left long ago. If they returned it was but briefly, or accidentally. The ones who made the mistake of landing to get a feel for things died cruelly. If nothing else it can be said of Earthians that they are masters at inflicting pain and causing death. They enjoy it. Ask the fish. Ask the wildlife. Ask social outcasts and racial minorities. Ask the poor and oppressed world-wide.
So the great movement bolstered by science and technology collapses into disarray and Earthianity falls into the darkest of any previous age. Does that mean we should seek to get out of here ASAP? Does it mean we should all become hedonists and party until the lights go out? Does it mean we should collect into small groups of fanatical survivors and create impregnable strongholds in the mountains? Does it mean we should turn to depression and despair, add another half-dozen pills to our daily intake or seek painless suicide? Does it mean we should return to the Church or stand on a hilltop with our hands raised to heaven waiting for some second coming?
Tonight I was reminded again of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl living in Holland who wrote her story of what it was like to hide from the Gestapo during the early years of WWII. Her story abruptly ended when her family’s hideout was discovered and they all went to extermination camps but she wrote her story while living in the midst of the worst nightmare imaginable. She didn’t survive it, but she lived it.
None of us survive Earth. We must all die. Dying is inevitable, but living is optional. The question is, how will we live? How can we know now what choices to make when the lights go out? Especially when they don’t go out all at once, but a bulb here, a bulb there (the ‘darkening’ already well under way). Will we join ‘Homeland Security’ to shoot the “terrorists” who are blowing up our light bulbs? Will we volunteer like good citizens to donate our spare bulbs to the State and risk our lives to replace the burned out or blown out ones so Exxon and General Motors billboards can continue to promise the good life?
Or will we decide the System is not our concern and live as self-empowered individuals, expressing love through compassion and empathy, sharing what we have, learning to grow things but mostly allowing for the bad behavior that will be expressed as ‘end time’ madness grows apace? And thus, if and when ‘they’ do come for us, it won’t matter anymore. We too will have written a meaningful page for that story, our own never-ending story.
I’ve thought a great deal about it. Heaven frightens me more than any gulag, prison or death camp. For heaven is that ending from which there can be no new beginning. Sure, I get my parking space at Wal-Mart on the busiest business day of the year but I can’t leave the store… ever.
within the power of good that lives within us, Those little prompts we feel to help someone, those feelings of sadness when we feel when someone is hurting,We must live within our longing to make this world of ours a better place. Excellent message,
Take care,
Pierre
Greed in this world
I help whoever I can with whatever I have
and if I can't help then I will find someone that can.
I truly love your honesty on this piece
Very interesting thoughts leaving me again to ponder
I know there is a heaven.
Outstanding Article
Peace Love and hugesssss....Morning star
I think that people invent sayings to make the inevitable easier. As a child I recall that everything that tended to be a threat for anyone--such as walking beneath a ladder--was called bad luck. Walking with one shoe on, one shoe off, was bad luck. There were hundreds of others. These "bad luck" sayings were easy ways to deter kids from doing something that could hurt them.
By the say token, glorifying something such as "heaven" tends to soften ones fear and stress of the hereafter, which to many people is a frightening aspect.
I think your article is terrific. I especially liked the line: "The more popular your belief system, the less you have to do to maintain it."
Hugs,
ra
John
This is a very profound and thought provoking piece. It is scary how life will be in the very end and difficult to know how we should live now. Extremely well written article.
Much love,
mary
Personally, I prefer to be positive, to live the best I can and try to help others however I can. I do believe in God and his love for us.
Your friend, ann
Janet xoxoxo