In the turmoil of change new currents bring glimpses of a different vision and new experiments in social order and exchange are being trialled at “grass roots” level. One example is the Occupy Wall Street movement’s proposal to buy debts in order to abolish them. Organiser David Rees explains: “OWS is going to start buying distressed debt (medical bills, student loans etc) in order to forgive it. As a test run, we spent $500, which bought $14,000 of distressed debt. We then Erased That Debt. If you’re a debt broker, once you own someone’s debt you can do whatever you want with it – traditionally, you hound debtors to their grave trying to collect. We’re playing a different game… This is a simple, powerful way to help folks in need – to free them from heavy debt loads so they can focus on being productive, happy and healthy.”
Along with the explosion of humanitarian care for human needs there has arisen a multitude of projects to find a way for sustainable living in harmony with the planet as a whole. We are finding our way to cooperate with, contribute to, have our being in and celebrate the One in Whom we live. Humanity is developing an understanding and wise conduct of its service within the whole. Across the globe we are finding common cause and our lives are becoming purposeful in a new expanded sense – building on the newly recognised and understood fundamentals of living in harmony with our world: basic, universal human rights and peaceful, mutually enhancing exchange; care, protecting of and a loving relationship with animals; environmentally sustaining and nurturing practises that celebrate the uplifting power of our planet’s beauty.
If we expand our vision beyond what is breaking down in the world we might see a burgeoning new civilisation rising, phoenix-like, out of the disintegrating fabric of the old. Only in that broader view can be seen the interdependence of every living part within the whole of the Life we share. And much that we may have held dear and essential from the old way of living may be let go within the power of a new vision if these attachments no longer serve. At a recent Thrive event in Sydney, Foster Gamble said, “Nothing exists but by purpose” and it is our sense of an all-embracing purpose that provides the framework within which we might meaningfully live, contribute, be sustained and enabled to grow in our sense of being.
There is no action that does not affect our planet, no reactive feeling that does not disturb the global field of motivation, no thought that does not move the mind of the world and bring reciprocal movement, disturbance, and action echoing back. We live as sensitive elements in a great field of sensitivity. The Tibetan reminds us that:
“…we live in a veritable sea of moving forces, qualified in countless ways, conditioned by countless minds, misdirected oft, directed wisely sometimes, yet all of them perforce finding place in the mind content of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, and outside Whose range of influence naught can be…”
When the foreground of daily living fades to the background for this all-embracing mind-filed of sensitivity we will begin to live more truly the shared causality in which we participate. And we may better understand the laws that sustain all the dimensions of our being, understanding that:
“Laws are only the unalterable conditions brought about by the activity, the orientation and the emanated decisive thoughts of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being, just as the activities, the orientating and the thinking of a human being carry the cells and the atoms of his body along the line of his wishes. Energies are but the rhythm of His breathing and the results of the systolic and the diastolic action of His heart”
The implication of the Angel’s exhortation to us to “Fear not” leads us consciously into that all embracing Life. Seeing through the surface of our living to the essence which inspires it all, we find that which is exquisite beyond understanding and yet still reflects out through everything if we have the eyes to see. All is in balance within the whole. From there we may serve, in harmonious concert, to manifest the reality of the fiery life we share.
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward
Zeitgeist Moving forward by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which presents a case for a needed transition out of the current socio-economic monetary paradigm. Running time 2 hours 41 minutes.
This film runs in three parts… suggest you watch each part then go for a walk or have a cup of tea and think about it. Certainly worth watching.