Don't Know Whether I'm Coming Or Going...

1: It's almost the end of mid-winter break and the boy has been home; we've had fun with play dates and movies (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and some of the Star Wars series), haircuts, hamburgers and shakes and some new clothes... boy got spectacles and while he won't say they help him see, he wears them everyday - puts them on when he wakes up without being told...

2: Am 99.5% moved out of the old house (now dealing with messiness in two places) and the former housemates have been horrible AGAIN, despite the apology one of them made... in my book, 3 strikes and you're out, so I'm done - not spending any more emotional energy worrying about retrieving anything amicable out of this situation;

3: Am watching the beginnings of revolution around the world and here in the US and am excited, but am sitting back observing, waiting to see if/when serious push back from the authorities will begin and what form that will take;

4: Am wary of what's happening now, because I have the same feeling I did when Obama was elected - better the devil you know than the one you don't and I could tell he wasn't 'real'/didn't have the personal power to walk his talk... 
  

Always felt the 'powers that be' behind the scenes pulling strings, thought it was better to have a black man in charge than a white woman... and having a black man in power has made absolutely no difference at all... in fact, I don't think this country has changed direction - in my view it's going further and faster down the path begun by Reagan in the 80s...

5:  Have lots to write about, but no real alone time to marshal those thoughts into coherent posts - maybe after this last push to finish the move, and the boy going back to school...

6:  Am still confused about what is the next step... stay here or go back to Australia... will continue with the paperwork for the move next week and we'll see how it plays out...

7:  Miss my other children and wondering what it's like for my friends in Christchurch, New Zealand, with this horrible earthquake aftershock happening this week...   Floods in Brisbane, earthquakes in Christchurch - both places I have called home... hard times for many people...

8:  Had a melanoma cut out of my cheek yesterday; now waiting for the biopsy results to see if I need more treatment... melanoma is cancer - shades of the breast cancer journey repeating itself... had female relatives die of breast cancer and a grandfather die of melanoma... would be very weird if my former housemate and I ended up having a race to the cure/death of our very own!

9:  Been busy with education activism on the net; losing interest in challenging and countering the mis-information - a bit burned out, I guess.   More interested now in building something new, but where to start?

10:  Feel like I'm carrying a lot (have had to talk with the boy about us all being alone on our journey), but also am aware of the support I have been getting from some lovely, kind, caring people/energies in this and other dimensions... and so grateful for our warm, cosy little house to stay in... peaceful and calm...

11:  The weather too, doesn't seem to know whether its Arthur or Martha...  It's been trying to snow here for the past two days... lots of flurries but not a lot of it sticking around for long, and then sunny breaks...

All-in-all, a case of mid-winter blah!!!

Prayers From The Ojibway Nation...

 

 We know that in all Creation,

Only the human family

Has Strayed from the Sacred Way.

We know that we are the ones who are divided;

And we are the ones who must come back together

To Walk in the Sacred Way.

Sacred One, 

Teach us love, compassion, and honor; 

That we may heal the earth

And heal each other.

~ Prayer of the Ojibway Nation

 

Oh, Great Spirit,
whose voice I hear in the winds,
and whose breath gives life
to all the world, hear me!

I come to you as one of your many
children; 

I am weak...I am small...

I need your wisdom
and your strength.

Let me walk in beauty,
and make my eyes ever behold
the red and purple sunsets.

Make my hands respect
the things you have made,
and make my ears sharp
so I may hear your voice.

Make me wise
so I may understand
the things you have taught my people.

Let me learn
the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.

I ask for wisdom and strength
not to be greater than my brothers
and sisters, but to fight my greatest
enemy—myself.

Make me always ready
to come before you with clean hands
and a straight eye,

So as life fades away, as a fading sunset,
my spirit may come to you
without shame.

~ George Walters, White Earth Chippewa

The Manhattan Transfer Sings Christmas...

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Now...

And that's the last Christmas post from me this year (except maybe a debrief in the next couple of days)...

Thank you for indulging me in my Christmas obsession these past few days... 

I hope and wish for you that whatever your connection is with the sacred in life, that if this is the time of year when you pay special attention to that divine nature, your holy days are full of peace and joy...

Namaste

(the Divine in me recognises and honours the Divine in you)

Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa...

There's an adage that says that for every finger we point at someone else, there are three pointing back at us...

Try it - point your forefinger accusingly at someone... 

Look at your hand - three fingers pointing back at yourself...

And as my friend December commented today: "We're all mirrors. Should you not like what you see in others, then it's time to re-examine what you're reflecting."

Which, coincidentally was what I've been thinking about since yesterday's horrible row with my housemates...

1:  What's my responsibility in this mess?

2:  What echos of old wounds am I hearing/feeling?

3:  Who does my housemate represent in my old, unresolved dramas?

4: How am I behaving/treating others in ways similar to my housemate?

5: What maladaptive behaviour do I do to hide my insecurities from myself and others...

 

The second and third questions are easily answered -  my housemate carries the astrological energy of my father and some of the behaviours of my mother... 

And like most of us, I still have some processing, releasing and integrating to do of old crap that comes from having experienced their dysfunctional relationship dynamics and parenting...

Question 1 is also not hard to answer, if I'm willing to be truthful with myself...

In addition to some physical issues that mess with my biology and mood and some emotional hangovers from really stressful experiences, I'm stuck in a place of stubborn resistance to the changes that have occurred in my life over the past 8.5 years...

I said "yes" to something to which I could have said "no", and I'm mad at myself for that.   I saw the red flags and I knew it was going to be a very hard journey and I chose to go along with it anyway... (And the gifts of going on this journey include my wonderful younger son, as well as uncovering toxic patterns that have played out in my family over many generations, and the chance to use that knowledge and decide it stops with me... which is great and sucks at the same time!)

I went into survival mode to deal with domestic violence and breast cancer (which were happening at the same time) and I took care of us (my son and I) and daily business, but had to leave dealing with the emotional fall out until our safety needs were met... The domestic violence triggered echos of abuse in my family when I was young, that has never really been dealt with.   Now that we are no longer in day-to-day crisis, I'm finally feeling the emotional storm and it's no fun!

I have an inner critic that says at 52, I ought to have my life in order - look at what I had way back then and look at what my life is now... It's certainly not in order - instead, it's in complete chaos...    

The critic conveniently ignores the fact that I was living my former life on "auto-pilot", with very little consciousness and no authenticity.   Yes, it was full of the normal 'stuff' and activity and I had my other children, but otherwise it was pretty much empty... 

In fact, that emptiness became so all engulfing that I knew that if I didn't change, my spirit would die.

Do you remember those old cathode-tube televisions? Remember how when you turn them off, that white dot gets smaller and smaller until it disappears into the blackness?

Well, I felt like I was that white dot, and if I didn't change my life, fast, I would completely disappear into that bottomless, endless black hole...

And while I tell other people - my clients - we all do the best we can with what we've got, my inner critic won't allow that truism to apply to me.   

And what makes me so special that it shouldn't apply to me too, you ask?   Nothing at all, so I need to ease up on me...

And there's value in learning to be comfortable with chaos (which my housemate is not - there's one of the reflections I am for her)... All of creation comes out of primordial chaos, so expand within yourself until you can love and honour and completely embrace the chaos.

All healing takes its own time, so be patient  and loving with self as Self seeks out wholeness.

But, in this household I and my 7-year old share with another "alpha" female, her 20-year old daughter and her 31-year old son (downstairs in a lovely self-contained, new, 2-bedroom apartment - where, logically,  my son and I ought to be living!), there's no time and space to do this healing organically.   

According to my control-freak housemates (it takes one to know one!), my "chaos" (which is confined to our two bedrooms) completely ruins the feng shui of the house and they just want me to get my shit together, to stop being a "fat, lazy slob"...

And we've never had the conversation about how we each like to take care of a house - what's "normal" and comfortable for each family, what housekeeping routines we have, how to split up chores...

Thank you, "spiritually advanced" beings, for your patience and understanding - remind me to be equally kind the next time you go through a hard patch in your life!

But they do have a point - I've been slow to get my act together...

In my defence, in the past, I've had a partner and family to help move, and when I didn't have them, I paid young college women to help me pack and clean and unpack.   There's been very little of that assistance this time and certainly no offers from my housemates, who have a large extended family to call on to help meet their own needs and life changes/challenges...

And I'm just plain tired - tired of the crap, tired of the process, tired of change, tired of a sick and dysfunctional world, even tired of my material "stuff"...

I'm still attached to it, and get some pleasure out of being surrounded by beauty, and at the same time, I can't be bothered with it, am not interested in it, don't want to use precious energy and time maintaining it...

Often I just want to walk away from it all - reduce all we own to one backpack with a change of clothes each and some soap and toothpaste and go "walkabout" without a backward glance... 

And that's a second dilemma - how far into the fringe of western existence to go and still have my son feeling like he "belongs" in the world and has the skills to master it...

I need to give up on my son's father ever doing the right thing - more than the very basic legally required of him - and begin to bring in a regular income myself so that we can live well (in spite of the economic depression!)... 

I need to figure out how to get past my abhorrence of how this world (in its capitalist death throes) operates  so I can transact with it in a sensible manner, so I'm not cutting off my nose to spite my face... 

I need to learn for myself and to teach my son how to be "in" the world but not "of" the world - to do what we need to do to navigate through it, while at the same time planting seeds and preparing for the changes that I know are coming, very fast...

How do I "hide" from my own insecurities?

• I pretend everything's OK
• I shrug off the impact of events... "Breast cancer?   What a girl's got to do to get a tummy tuck around here - otherwise it'd be elective surgery and I couldn't afford it"...
• I indulge in magical thinking - things really aren't so bad, and it'll get better by itself, with no action from me
• I don't ask for help
• I expect things to happen because I "deserve" them
• I do the "ostrich" thing - refuse to open letters, take care of business; then, when I'm finally forced to face it, I find it either isn't nearly as bad as my fear (False Evidence Appearing Real) made out, or it costs me 10 times what it would have cost to deal with it promptly
• I downplay my failures to take responsibility and to stay in integrity
• I don't do what for me would be "big"... much of what I have done in my life would be "big" by others' definitions, but they were comparatively easy for me.   I have steered clear of major stepping up and "success"...
• I give myself excuses and blame life and others for the past, making them the reason for my present, when really many of the choices I've made in the past couple of years have nothing at all to do with anyone else
• I'm lured by the grim seductiveness in the idea of being completely destitute, of falling into complete degeneracy - it would be nice to give up, to not clean, not wash, not take care of business, not interact with the world...

I'm not going to deny that everything that has happened has had an effect - it's all about, and only about, cause and effect...

I'm going to step out of being paralysed by that, of wishing that someone would wave a magic wand and make it all better (too bad I left my wand in the Bardo when I incarnated this time, isn't it?!), of hiding, wishing this horrible world would just go away... 

I'm going to take responsibility - not blame... If it's true there are no such things as mistakes, that everything's a learning experience, then there has to be good in all the choices I've made...

Which reminds that my "enlightenment" moment of awareness was all about Divine Chaos... and the love and joy the Life Force experiences in that chaos...

It was around 1993.   I was newly started on my spiritual journey, sitting in my first meditation class.   I focused on what the leader was saying, following his words in my mind... 

Suddenly, I became aware that my physical boundaries were expanding out and out and out, until after some moments I encompassed  THE ALL THAT EVER WAS, IS NOW, AND EVER WILL BE...

I was all of creation, I was LIFE... I saw/heard/felt/knew everything - I WAS  all knowledge, all knowing... I was infinite and at the same time, all of that was contained within me, within my physical body, sitting there on my hard wooden chair...   

There was no "good" or "bad", no light, no dark, no duality - it all just WAS, and all the Life Force wanted to do was experience itself in all of its infinite potential, through us and the rest of creation,  its infinite manifestations of itself, just for the sheer joy of BEING... If I do this, what happens?   If I do that, what happens?   A Sacred  Dance of Cause and Effect...

I felt my heart and mind and body filled with the most amazing love and awe and pure excitement..... and then I came back to ordinary consciousness...

So our human experience has no objective value attached to it - it just is.   It doesn't define me or who I am - an indestructible, immortal manifestation of the Life Force, an integral part of its essence that's just exploring the "what ifs" of all potential.

MIRROR CARD No. 24 RESPONSIBILITY - 
from “The Mirror Cards – A Powerful Tool to Enhance Your Relationship“
created by Geoff Charley & Lucy Lidell

Take your life in your own hands and what happens?
A terrible thing – no-one to blame. Erica Jong

Taking responsibility means acknowledging, owning and fully stepping into your God-state and power. 

Taking responsibility is the mature acceptance that the only person who controls your life is you.

You’re probably feeling hurt or angry at the cards that life has dealt you, or perhaps you don’t understand why someone is treating you in a particular way.

There’s a tough truth to be learned here that, once understood and consistently applied in all situations, will permanently change your perspective on the world and lead to far more rewarding relationships.

You alone are responsible for everything that’s happening to you.

It is only as children that we are entitled to disclaim responsibility.  As adults we must assume responsibility, or forever remain children.

Right now, it’s time to stop playing the victim, and grow up.  The measure of your maturity is how much responsibility you are prepared to take for this situation.  Yet it seems you are still wanting others to take care of you and your feelings, or wanting to blame them for your difficulties.

Responsibility is the ‘ability to respond’, and that can only come if you take back the power you’ve invested in someone else by being a victim and saying you’re not responsible.  What if you were responsible?  Wouldn’t that give you greater authority?

Whatever feelings you are having, they are your responsibility.  NO-one can make you feel, do or be anything unless you, at some level, choose to do so. 

So step back from the issue and ask yourself:  ‘What part am I playing in this situation?‘

If you are wanting to reject this guidance and are thinking you must have drawn the wrong card, you can be sure that it’s relevant to you.  For a person who takes responsibility would now be searching inside to see how these words are appropriate!

The only payoff for not taking responsibility in this situation is the ability to blame.  But is that such a prize to hold on to?

Recognize that you do have power and you’re big enough to take back the responsibility!   YOU ARE LIFE-GOD...

Namaste...

(the Divine in me recognises and honours the Divine in you)

 

 

Self-Delusional Arrogance...

Beware - this is a rant... so if you don't want to read a tirade, click out now!

It's been one of those days, when, with insufficient coffee and food in the system and too much stress over too long a period of time, I've run out of elastic in dealing with self-righteous, self-centred, arrogant, delusional, "know-it-all" housemates who hide behind their "spiritually advanced" personas to "win" or "maintain" their power...

 

I find it ironic that people who claim to be so advanced don't recognise when they're using actions, language, tone of voice and body stance to disempower others, to manipulate the conversation and to generate the outcome they desire...

I find it ironic that they can't accept that there's a place of "and/also" where both points of view are valid and that it's possible to find resolution of issues without having to make one person/perspective right and the other wrong...

I find it ironic that these so-called spiritually advanced people preach one thing but practise something else altogether, and don't recognise when they're not living their teachings... and then criticise others for not "walking the talk"...

I find it ironic that these people hide behind their own "stories", including so-called past lives as famous people, to bolster their egos and to claim their space, legitimacy and authority in the world, while at the same time they criticise other people for being so much in the "ego" and so attached to their "stories"...

It's sad really, watching these people do that... It reminds me of my mother, who, when life was really tough and she felt like a failure or that she was being judged, used to remind herself that her family came from minor French nobility and that they lost all their power, prestige and lands in the French Revolution... 

I'm disturbed when I hear them denigrate other people, including their teachers, respected leaders of the Buddhist community here in this town...

I'm disturbed when I hear them, in conversation with third parties, denigrate other people for whom they are providing astrology "readings"...

I'm disturbed when I hear them judge other people for not journeying through life in the way they think is most appropriate; it's frightening that such "spiritually advanced" people don't acknowledge their own limitations and yet don't recognise the Divine, infinite autonomy of others and the  sacredness that is their journey, however they choose to walk it...

I'm disturbed when I see them meddling in their clients' lives to the extent that relationships and careers are irrevocably affected, all on the 'authority' of astrology and their so-called spiritual enlightenment... 

I'm plain pissed-off when another "alpha" female criticises me for using ultra-pasteurised cream for a dessert, saying it has no nutritional value left, when she nukes her food in the microwave...

I'm plain pissed-off when the same female interferes in my parenting of my son, and attempts to correct his behaviour by mocking him.   I have raised three children to relatively successful adulthood already, and I think I know what I'm doing...

I'm plain pissed-off when the same "know-it-all" woman insists that peptic ulcers are caused by a virus and that they are treatable by antibiotics... they're not caused by a virus but by a bacteria...

I'm plain pissed-off that just because I don't spout off my life history and everything I've learned along the way, the same woman assumes I know nothing and feels a need to lecture me on everything from spirituality/metaphysics to history, politics, economics, parenting, pet care and housekeeping...

I'm plain pissed-off that this woman has a need to correct everything I say that's not 100% accurate.   The other day, in the middle of a tense discussion about how warm the house should be kept, she corrected me that the word I should be using was "oil" and not "gas"...

Such a strong need to exercise power and control and to "win", coming out of her own deep-seated insecurity... 

So today we had a blazing row which no one "won" and did not result in any solutions/agreements...ugh!

In my teachings, there are only two states of emotion - love and fear...

Love is expanding, fear is contracting...

All other "negative" emotions - anger, disappointment, frustration, envy etc - are cover-ups for fear...

And there are four basic fears: fear of death, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection and fear of humiliation...

In any situation where we're not feeling love, one or more of these basic fears has been triggered in us...

I wonder which fears my housemate and I are each reacting to?  

We're all  mirrors for each other, bringing to light unresolved wounds from the past, and playing the role of other people in those unresolved dramas, so I'm feeling her fear will be complementary in nature to mine...

I'm saying my version of prayers to my version of god asking for insight into my part of this tangle and for guidance to resolve this with ease, dignity, grace and love...

Whirimako Black: "E Te Kai" & "My Funny Valentine"

Two songs (in Maori) from one of my favourite New Zealand/Aotearoa (Land of the Long White Cloud) singers - Whirimako Black...

This song is about Tanimahuta - the god of the forest - and the honor of this god, the honor of food, collecting food, the source of the food, preparation, and family; also the honor of the land and where you come from.   It is an old Tohue waiata (song).

When Things Get Really, Really Rough & Tough...

I sing this... not as well as fellow Kiwi Hayley Westenra, but well enough to lift my spirits...

and here's another New Zealander, Sir Howard Morrison, singing How Great Thou Art, first in English and then in Maori - his mother tongue - absolutely, powerfully, spine-tinglingly gorgeous ...



and here's my other "time to crawl out of the rut" sacred song - The Lord is My Shepherd:




and yes I'm a feminist and I honour the Goddess and no, I'm not a Christian, though I believe in the values taught by the man Jesus... there's truth and great song in all traditions...

I Am Strong, I Am Invincible - Where Are The Men?

2,000+ years of the patriarchy, and where has that gotten us?

Seriously - look around you...

The Dalai Lama and indigenous elders all say women will step up, lead and make the changes that need to happen...

But we women have been fighting for eons to bring compassion and sanity back to life, to our societies, to the planet.   We bring life into the world, we do amazing things nurturing that life into adulthood, despite the challenges we face daily.   More is expected of us as mothers than is expected of fathers.   If something goes "wrong" it's always our "fault"...   And we are tired... 

In native cultures, men understand that it is woman's role to bring life into the world, and their role to protect women and that new life, and the environment that supports all life...

It seems to me that it's time for men to get it - get the  whole "sanctity of life" thing - and step up.   Turn this people-planet killing machine we call civilisation around...   And if you won't do it, move over and let us...

Pilobolus perform "Symbiosis"

The Divine Feminine and Masculine:  Dancing Life

Hands Off Our Mother!

Unproven scientific ‘fixes’ for global warming are a major threat to the planet...

 

"It used to be that ‘stepping lightly on the planet’ was considered common sense for addressing global warming, but a brash new breed of planet-savers has a more heavy-handed suggestion. Since action on reducing greenhouse gases is proving ineffective, they argue, it might soon be necessary to deliver Mother Earth a huge technological smack in the climate system. For her own good, of course.

 

Welcome to the concept of geoengineering – large-scale schemes that propose manipulating planetary systems to counteract global warming. Humans have inadvertently altered the global environment before, but geoengineering differs in that it brings intentionality to messing with our planet. Geoengineering proposals range from dumping iron in the ocean to grow CO2-gobbling plankton, to polluting the upper atmosphere with sulphur particles to mimic large volcanoes. Such volcanoes have occasionally cooled down the atmosphere before. Unfortunately, they can also cause monsoons to weaken and fail, intensifying hunger in the tropics.

 

 Sounds risky and dangerous? Of course it is. Seductive to policymakers? Yes, that too. But as billionaire airline tycoon Richard Branson baldly told the press last year: ‘If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem… we could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.’"... from: http://www.newint.org/columns/currents/2010/06/01/global-warming-geoengineering-fixes/
 

Why is it always men who think of these "solutions" but can't see the disastrous consequences?

 

Do they have such a deep hate of the sacred feminine that they can seriously consider these measures as 'problem solving'?

 

The Dalai Lama and indigenous elders all say the solutions the world needs will come from women - maybe you have to be able to have a child/give birth to really understand and value life?

 

 

 

Does Evil Exist?

(Repost from 28 June 2010)

I was privileged to lead a breath work session yesterday...

And part of the session included a discussion about the identity and nature of the Life  Force (am staying away from terms such as God/Goddess etc, which are loaded, exclusionary, inaccurate and based in our human need to set in place a hierarchy of power and to anthropomorphise everything we don't understand!)...

Under the holographic principle, the sum of the whole is contained in each of the parts.... so, logically, if one believes that there is an originating Life Force, which is all-knowing, all-loving, infinite and omnipotent, then by extension, as its creations each one of us is also that Life Force - all-knowing, all-loving, infinite and omnipotent... which has huge implications relating to how we see and express ourselves in the world, as powerful beings or as victims?  But that's another day's subject...

Holographic Universe

Evidence from physics and quantum mechanics show that the Observor influences any event or object of consciousness, changing the wave to a particle, the formless to form. Everything is energy. At a subatomic level, all molecules are alive, moving, and conscious. Mind is not just determinative over matter, but mind and matter seem to just be energy vibrating at different frequencies.

Which brings me to the question of whether or not Evil exists...

If one accepts the holographic premise, then Evil cannot exist because all creations of the Life Force ARE the Life Force and one would then have to say the Life Force is evil.  And some might indeed think/feel this, but wouldn't they then also have to consider themselves evil?

A secondary factor to consider is our human need to label events, situations and people, to assign a value to them such as 'good' or 'bad', 'positive' or 'negative', 'ugly' or 'beautiful', 'loving' or 'hateful', 'easy' or 'difficult' etc.

I think we do this to satisfy our need to find order in the chaos, to assign definition so that we can feel secure, so that we can establish a relative place for ourselves in the scheme of things, to give ourselves an (illusory) sense of control and power.

If we were all to be honest with ourselves, this need to label is really quite a pathetic attempt to claim our place at the centre of the universe and to give ourselves an out, an excuse when we don't live up to the sacredness we carry within ourselves!

If we look at the natural world, those value-laden terms mean nothing, have no relevance at all... Things just are...

Some humans might see lightning striking, burning and felling a tree as a negative, sad, disastrous occurrence.    However, for the natural world its just an event, signalling the end of one form of life and the beginning of another, as the felled tree trunk begins to decompose and return to the earth and in the process gives shelter and sustenance to millions of small and microscopic life forms.

So if the Life Force and its creations cannot, by definition, be evil, and if value-laden descriptors are a human construct that have no significance in the rest of creation, how then to understand the "horrifying' things that happen in our own spheres of existence, in the world, in Life?

I've come to understand this from two different perspectives.

The first stems from a meditation experience I had very early on in my spiritually "awake and aware" journey.   As part of this moment, where I experienced actually being ALL THAT EVER WAS, IS NOW AND EVER SHALL BE, I came to know that the Life Force's sole purpose was to experience itself in all of its infinite potential - a gorgeous, awe-inspiring, completely loving cosmic game of "What If..."   If I manifest as this, what happens then?    If I choose this, what follows?    A joyous, wondrous, exciting experiment in CAUSE and EFFECT in which we all are participating as co-creators, as manifestations of that Sacred Life Force.

The second "AHA" moment came in a flash of insight that was sparked by the events of 9/11, took me back to seeing biblical events in a new light and then flash-forwarded to WW2 and Adolf Hitler.

All my "AHA" moments come in the shower - sad, prosaic but true!   And in this one moment when thinking about 9/11, apart from realising that this event was a logical outcome (Effect) after years of American meddling in world affairs (Cause), including responsibility for the deaths of millions under oppressive regimes the US had covertly and overtly helped put in place, I understood that all the people involved in 9/11 had come together in this co-creation to offer us all a gift.

As well as playing out whatever needed to play out for their own and their families' journeys, the 'terrorists', the pilots, the passengers, the people in the towers, the firefighters all had given their lives so that we could make a choice about how we wanted to move on in the world.    They all had the courage to be involved in this event so that we could choose a pathway forward of love, reconciliation and co-operation, not more war and death and misery.

Without the 'terrorists', this event would not have happened.   Imagine a soul - by definition all-loving because it is the Life Force - coming into this lifetime, knowing that it was going to choose and enact a path that would end in death and vilification.    Remember how acting contrary to your true nature feels like a painful, twisting inside.
    

Imagine those other souls, agreeing to co-create this 'painful' event, so that we would each, and as a web of interconnected beings, have the opportunity to step into a new vision of life on this planet...

Sadly, we did not take that step - instead we continued the "power over" game and began more wars.... possibly because, as Marilyn Waring and others before her have pointed out, war-making is a profitable business, is one tool for ensuring "economic growth".

That realisation about 9/11 spiralled my thinking back to the Bible and the place of the Life Force aspect/soul called Lucifer in the scheme of creation.

Human beings need duality to give them a sense of context and place on the continuum of life.    We need contrast to make our choices.    If Lucifer is a creation of the Life Force, IS the Life Force, then Lucifer cannot be evil, unless we accept that the Life Force is evil.    The soul that is Lucifer is serving us in the highest manner possible, giving each of us every day the chance to make choices - life sustaining choices or life destroying choices, choices which expand us further into all we can be or contract and diminish us.

Which then led to the thought that Judas Iscariot also was a hero in the story of the life of the man called Jesus Christ.    Without the 'betrayal' by Judas, the Crucifixion would not have happened, nor the Resurrection, and Christ would not have been able to show us in such a dramatic fashion that we have the choice to live life in a different, more loving manner.

Which then led me to think about all the other 'evil' people in earth's human history, with Adolf Hitler coming most prominently to mind.   Again, Adolf Hitler's choices and actions opened the door for us as a species to decide to change our ways.

I think it was an act of courage and service to us all, for the soul that manifested as Adolf Hitler and all the souls that manifested as the victims and fallen of the Holocaust and WW2 to do what they did.   (And I say these things with respect, from the vantage point of being Dutch and having had my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all experience life under the Nazis during WW2)...

Unfortunately, the meaning and impact of those acts of courage seem to have been lost/wasted on us...

Because now we have the BP oil spill and the G8/G20 meetings and protesters, another opportunity to listen to each other, to learn from example and experience, to step into a new, holistic, loving way of being for all life forms on this planet... and there doesn't seem to be much momentum for change being enacted - lots of talk, yes, but action?   No...

Are we a lost cause, this human species?   Is that where the Evil really exists?

PS: Or are we only “lost” in this universe/reality?    Given the multi-dimensional nature of creation, with parallel realities and universes co-existing in the eternal NOW, are all the choices we didn't make in our 'now' playing out in other infinite Life lines?