Hi All,
I would not be at all surprised if at then end of the last essay you felt I had led you down the Garden.
We have no ally's against the Chaos, but ourselves. You, I, Innana. We are all dust devils in the mind of madness. We can only chose for ourselves, to not add to the chaos, by not pursuing our own selfish ends. We can only chose to do what is good, because it is good, because by a tiny fraction it does reduce the suffering in the world, not for hope of being rewarded.
This certainly seems kind of sad, and I would venture to say unexpected. Unfortunately religion as we inherit it, or theology as we study it, is overwhelmingly meant to offer us a reason not to behave badly. It serves the City, the Empire, the State, as did Confucianism, and to a less extent Daoism, or Hinduism, or Catholicism. A vision that says your on your own folks, is simply not welcome by the powers that be in this world. Nor is it welcome by the priestly caste who have a vested interest in demonstrating the existance of a Just and Loving God. I expect the collection basket is pretty empty at the church of Mabelrode.
Be that as it may, I offer no apologies for saying something I believe to be true. We (humanity) have largely tried to put moral responsibility in the hands of an Other Worldly power for at least 6000 years, and our history speaks for itself. It is past time we grew up, took responsibility for ourselves, and set a different course. Still, I do recognize what I propose is rather out of sync with what has been offered up before.
Responsibility without power is a sorry thing, at best futile, at worst tragic. Yet I don't think this needs to be our lot. For we little dust devils of Chi are at the end of the day made up of the same stuff as the Atman itself. Oh we are so very much smaller, and individually the effect of a single mind is simply lost in the noise floor. Yet even the secular world is beginning to wonder about the power of consciousness and mass consciousness. The most famous example of this is the Global Consciousness Project at Princeton where the Psychic response to major public events seem to produce measurable results with-in a scientifically acceptable framework. Fans of Coast will be aware of Art Bells own experiments where his millions of listeners by focusing their combined intention apparently managed to manifest rain in counties that where suffering from drought.
Of course none of this is should be a particular surprise to anyone in our group. After all, all Magick is ultimately the act of focusing ones intention on a given focus, in order to manifest a desired result. As Witches, Pagans and Craft persons, this is our bread and butter. As a reader I see it in the cards, as a Healer you might see it in your work, but at the end of the day if you apply yourself to an aspect of the craft, with discipline and patience, you will find this is true. Properly focused intention certainly produces "Real World" results.
But why, Oh there are many theories I think, but allow me to propose my own:
A Buddhist might tell you that when you die, your Dharma continues, and its manifestation in another life is your Karma. What's your Dharma? I think a Dharma can be described reasonably well in English as Pattern. A Pattern of Living, a Pattern of Energy. So I will propose this is exactly what we do when we focus our intention, we produce a Pattern of Energy, we often call it a Thought Form, A Buddhist Friend might call it a Dharma, but we are talking about the same things.
Now if I stand in the water and move in a rhythmic way, I can establish a pattern in the water. If you join me and we move in harmony our pattern will be strengthened. If the Audience of Coast to Coast Joins us, we can produce a mighty (at our scale) pattern of energy. Yet I think we all understand that if conduct this exercise on a mild June day we are going to get one result. While if we try to conduct this exercise on the Gulf Coast in the face of a Hurricane Katrina, all our efforts will be overwhelmed, and we might all be washed out to sea.
It is wise however to remember that we all know Katrina by name, because such an Event might occur once in a life time. Afterwards, you pick yourself up, (assuming you survive) and apply your self, Esoterically and Exoterically, to rebuilding a life. This is nothing new for us, The Willow is the Symbol of the Wiccan faith for this reason, When challenged by a storm, she bends, she recovers, she endures.
I think however we have gotten too far from the Esoteric piece in the last few hundred years, and its time to restore the balance. It is time to focus our intention on Humanity, and the Welfare of Humanity.
You might be thinking, is BB going to tell us we need to "Pray for World Peace" or something hopeless like that? ... Yes I am. We do need to pray for world peace, but more to the point, focus our intention on loosening the bonds of Dis-ease in our world. And it is important that we focus our intention in our lives. Its not quite on to punch out the guy that cut you off on your way to the Peace Rally; and likely you wouldn'; but would you throw a ton of Anger into the ether because the Bozo in the F250 just muscled his way into your lane. (Of course I have never done this myself :) A more peaceful path is a challenge, and given our human history a great challenge, but its one we really have never tried to pick up. I have great faith in the power to Human Kind to accomplish what it truly sets out to do, we have put Men on the Moon, and Built the Pyramids, we can accomplish much when we are truly committed to a goal.
Like children who do what they are told largely to avoid a paddling, we have appointed God our cosmic parent, handed him our paddle, and said please make me behave because I'm not going to on my own. Its time we took that paddle back.
The world is a Chaotic place, and we can be right as rain, and it will still deliver us some staggering blows. That's just how it is ... Yet we can free up a lot of energy wasted on guilt, by not searching for the morality of an amoral world, and taking responsibility for ourselves, in our conduct towards one an other. Lepers are not lepers because they are unclean, nor aids patients, nor addicts. The world deals us harsh challenges sometimes, its just how the world IS.
We can however act on our own moral compass, even if we live in a world that does not have one itself. It would be different if we where ignorant, or animals, but we are not, the Buddha, Christ, Dr King, among others have shown us the way. We know what a moral compass looks like and we can set our course accordingly. Of course we will be blown off course from time to time, its to be expected, don't waste energy on self flagellation, remember the North star is always true, re-point yourself at your North star, and move on.
We will never eliminate all suffering from the world, but we can remove a lot of the heat from the boiling pot, by not holding a flame to it ourselves.
Ama tu ANKI, BB.