Monthly Archives: November 2016

Earth

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We just had Thanksgiving.

Over the holiday I watched the movie Before the Flood.  Have you seen it?  It profoundly impacted me and my heart is still aching about it.

It is a Leonardo DiCaprio movie on the topic of climate change and global warming.

I could really feel the sincere heart and mind that DiCaprio put into the film.  I watched it with tears flowing down my cheeks.  And all that I kept thinking was, “How can we do this to Life?”

It’s so painful to watch.  Too painful.  Yet everyone must watch and see how we are so heartlessly destroying Life on this planet.  All forms of life – from land to sea to sky, animals, people – how could anyone do this?  To injure life is to injure oneself.  Why can’t everyone feel this?

I really didn’t know what to do after watching it.  My heart was over-flowing but my body was just sitting cozily by the fireplace, on a mountainside next to the Pacific Ocean, doing nothing.  I wanted to talk about it after the film.  I wanted to process.  But nobody wanted to talk.  Perhaps nobody really knows what to say or do.

So, I thought I would at least write about it today, to all of you.  Because, the least we can do is get educated and feel it.  We have to FEEL it.  Then we can say that we are human.  Making choices and actions for it can come later.  At least we must feel it first and face our feeling.

This planet needs human beings to wake up.  We have to wake up.  So, although I am not an environmental activist, I do the work of helping people to wake up their senses and to really FEEL.  That’s what I have dedicated my life to.  In hopes that if we all feel, then with putting together all of our amazing brains collectively, solutions will emerge.  They must.  That is the principle. The answer is within us.

A long time ago I heard that Ilchi Lee said that the Earth is dying for human beings spiritual growth.  I won’t quote that because I didn’t hear it first hand, but it certainly makes sense to me.

So, I would like to ask everyone reading this to go ahead and watch Before the Flood and feel and choose and act.

For starters, I’ve decided to not eat beef anymore.  I watched this movie with Kate and my brothers and their father and everyone decided to not eat beef anymore.  We felt it was at least the place to start.  I am not usually the person who does such a thing but I strongly feel it’s time for me to step up my participation level towards a solution.  If you watch the film, you will understand my choice.

In the spirit of this year’s Thanksgiving I would like to give my thanks, from the bottom of my heart, to this magnificent Earth and all of her bounty.   Her bounty which she shares so unconditionally with us.  Even though we keep hurting her.  She gives us everything.

And if I have a wish, it is for all of humanity to wake up.

No more greed.

No more selfishness.

No more sleeping.

We can do better than this.  With the light of our Souls shining brightly in our hearts, let’s do better.

Thank you to all of you who read this and watch the film. And to those who make one small change and one small action in your one small life to help the whole ~ thank you.

 

 

 

 

Ego Contemplations

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These days, I have been reflecting a lot about the “small me.”

When I feel inside myself, quietly and deeply, I feel this small me as the source of all of my mental, emotional and spiritual suffering.  Simply, I suppose we can just call this my ego.  But what is an ego?  Recently I was reading a message from my Seu-Seung Nim, where he describes the ego as, “Attachment to ‘self”.  The thought of ‘self’.”

Yes, there’s this self inside fighting for survival.  She’s fighting for so many things. When I listen to her, she wants attention, she wants love, she wants control. She wants to be safe, she wants to be good, she wants to be right. She gets jealous, hurt, angry…. oh she is so complicated!  And the more I listen to her, it’s like a tumble down the rabbit hole. It’s never ending, and there are no solutions.

But the thing is….she doesn’t even really exist.  She is not the truth of me.

In a following message, Seu-Seung Nim said, “What is the ego? It is a product of the faulty experiences, the faulty education of the world. Originally, you had no ego. It was created. Although you did choose some of it, the greater part of it was created by your environment. Most people live their whole lives clinging to it…. The ego is caused by separation…There is a process through which the ego, the self, is formed. When a child is first born, it doesn’t know that it is a child. It is not separated from it’s mother.  It is gradually separated, as it sees with its eyes and hears with its ears. With time, it develops self-perception. A protective curtain surrounding it, a protective consciousness forms.”

After reading this I thought, hmmmm……I, being given up for adoption, was separated from my mother at birth…. And, when I go really really deep, I can feel that this protective consciousness literally formed the day that I was born.  Then I realized, Ah ~ that is why I have suffered so much in my life! Because I have such a strong sense of that ‘self’ inside of me!

And suddenly I felt very happy – just to realize that and to look directly at it.  Eckhart Tolle often says that by simply shining the light of your conscious awareness on something, you begin to dissolve it.  I could really feel that phenomenon occurring.

I have been looking for solutions for so long, but now I can really feel how it all just boils down to this ‘self’, who is not even real in the end.

And this self totally blocks me from my True Self.  That small self is blocking and darkening the Light.  Suddenly I felt the desire to repent.  Not in a religious sort of way, but just to speak to my pure heart sincerely, “I am so sorry that I have rejected and denied my own wholeness.”

A habit formed a long time ago. To feel rejected and denied.  But I was the one habitually rejecting and denying myself! Of course, now it all makes so much sense.

My wholeness has been right there, waiting for me all along. Watching me.

Then, from the bottom of the rabbit hole, my wholeness rises up as the sweetest, purest most content and joyful little sparkling Light of Life.  Content just to be.

This self is unbreakable.  It’s undeniable.  I just have to choose that channel, again and and again. Repeat repeat repeat.  This is the journey.

Life brings us many opportunities to choose.  Sometimes it brings people our way who help illuminate this Light.  Other times it brings people who send us running into dark corners.  But, we are simply in those corners so that we can find our way back out to the Light again and be that much stronger for it.  So, life is always trying to help us grow, one way or another.  Life truly loves us.

All is well.  The only thing there is to do is to continue this magnificent Soul’s journey through the cosmos.  I am grateful.