 This is an untitled little 5" x 7" design doodle that I have been enjoying. Maybe it has something to do with 'the Trinity', which I write about herein... © 2013 Rev. David Seacord
Everyman's WEEKLY Journal, #16
© 2013 Rev. David Seacord
March 17th, 2013
Like Rumi….
An insight: The common price of worldly power is dehumanization….both of others, and ourselves.
I watched an older Jodie Foster movie recently…. Anna and the King. One scene in particular has been reoccurring in my mind. I've learned when this happens to pay attention, especially when I am being awake enough to sense a lesson is being offered. The scene involved the beheading of one of the King's many wives and the Buddhist monk she had loved before she was given as an unwilling gift to the King (by her royal-favor- desiring father, whom she was legally regarded to be a possession of). This is Siam (presently Thailand) in 1862, and Anna is one of the first western women ever to visit there (as a schoolteacher for the King's children and wives). Anna's attempts to influence the judicial system (trying to save the king's wife) inadvertently cements the cultural necessity of the executions, because now, if the King interferes in any way with the courts decision or forgives (pardons) her disloyalty, he will look weak. So, amidst a background of powerful emotions, the executions happen. In a powerful performance, the condemned die in public humiliation, but with great dignity and open love of each other. The King prays before a Buddha shrine in solitude, Anna reads her Bible, weeping and shaken.
My meditations on these scenes re-ignite many insights: Affirmatively, it ispossible to develop a quality of beingness that can face an unjust death (or life) with dignity and self-love. So many of humanities great souls have demonstrated this. Eventually, I suspect our spiritual growth shall require that all of us will do likewise…for isn't that soul's real purpose…that we become the greatness of our Godness? Another insight: It is impossible to be elevated or accept elevation to a position of compelling/controlling egoic power over anyone (excepting ourselves) without being in some way dehumanized. This is because all power over another's free will is necessarily accumulated in only one way….by the exactly equal disempowering of those others now so controlled. In this 3D world, such non-equality is allowed, for the journey of each soul to know itself as the Godness requires no steps be skipped, and for each of us, one of those steps is becoming fully responsible for the entirety of our life's experiences. Another way to say this is: to give up all blame, resistance, or victimization, because...no matter what...nothing has ever 'happened to us'. The truth is the opposite: We have created it all. The only question is: consciously or unconsciously. And, an associated necessary understanding is: that there is no true spiritual growth at another's expense.
Summarizing… In the movie, the King is dehumanized because he cannot allow himself to follow his heart and release the unwilling wife/gift back to the man she actually loves. He cannot, because if he does, he weakens the structural power fabric of his society and he fears chaos could erupt. He errors in believing that he must maintain his power at all costs…'for the good of the people's stability'. In this, he personifies our egoic fear of change. But change will come, and is always arriving. This is Shiva, the third aspect of the Hindu trinity: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Sustainer, Shiva, the Destroyer. The great mantra Om Namah Shiva means essentially "I surrender to the eternal emptiness that swallows all phenomenal things back into itself." This includes each of us--- we temporary individualized phenomenas of consciousness. If you are familiar with the Don Juan teachings, this surrender is what he was teaching in instructing Castaneda to live as if death was sitting on his left shoulder. Because doing so brings life into a more self-honest perspective….
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Another related insight: Not leaving is the essence of love.
I was intrigued by a Facebook post about movie star Keanu Reeves this week, which shared the information that he has been very generous with his wealth. As he had first contributed to my life via his wonderful performances in The Matrix series, I followed my interest and used Wikipedia to read about him, and in that, read the list of his other films, which included "Speed". I have a collection of cheaply-acquired-at-garage-sales old VHS movies that I have often bought without any clue if they were good, or not. And I have almost always been able to learn some spiritual lesson from viewing such titles. In my collection unwatched so far was "Speed", which I decided to watch now because I'd read it was Reeve's (and Sandra Bullock's) first big surprise hit that initially made them both 'A-level' stars. My spiritual lesson arrived at the very end, in the closing scene. Reeves and Bullock play a savior cop and circumstantial victim (respectively) in a climax involving her being left handcuffed (by a just killed psychopathic bad guy) to an out of control subway car speeding toward a crash into the unfinished ending of the tracks. Keanu's character can't free her, so instead, he stays with her, wrapping himself around her as a protective shield. At the end, they both survive, and Bullock's character magnificently utters the most honest of our core human guttural emotions: "I can't believe you didn't leave me! I can't believe you didn't leave me!" And with that openly exposed, strongly bonded (romantic) love is undeniably present.
Even though romantic love is 'lesser, transitory, and illusional' in the spectrum scale of LOVE qualities, this principle of not leaving rings true for me. When I originally entered my now completed partnership with Sarah B. in 2003, our promise to each other was 1. we would support each other to become free of all our addictions, and 2. that nobody would leave. Sarah and I then did an amazing seven year growth curriculum as partners that then reformatted to our current deep friendship. The reason it is a deep friendship is that nobody left. Nobody walked out, nobody abandoned the other. We are still actively 'there for each other'. So even though the script altered in response to the growth changes within us, the loyalty to each other didn't. You might say Shiva mixed things up and the idealized projections were released in favor of self-honesty…but the Godness in each of us continues to recognize and be there for each other. Such is the essence of love… which when real, will continue regardless of changing relationship forms. By nobody leaving.
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Today I was doing some errands requiring driving because of the distances involved. I felt the impulse to turn on the radio, set to a local college NPR station. Car Talk (a national call-in show) was on. The discussion was about tires…postulating that the newer tire designs (meant to remove rainwater from between the road and the tire so as to increase the car's traction safety) actually caused another problem… a huge increase of 'rainwater spray', so that cars following too closely were often blinded by the spraying water. I recognized this is our classic predicament….that our solutions to one problem become the creating sources of others. This we usually do not see, except in hindsight. But the principle visibly plays out everywhere… look and see. Plastic was invented as a solution, now it's a problem. The use of cars themselves the same, as most global warming is directly related to our use of them. Our world is full of such examples.
I walked around a large department store looking at all the stuff being marketed to our culture. It was all first created/invented as an answer to somebody's problem, then mass produced and marketed for it's profit motive. I saw I actually needed so little of it, and I was grateful that I was no longer living as an addicted consumer, thinking that somehow having more convenience… more stuff… would ever make me happy. I live so simply now…knowing my real happiness is based on nothing material… that it arises naturally from within…that it is a 'being made full'…by the unforced giving up of my egoic life in surrender to the inner callings of 'the Good'.
But another understanding then also arose… I saw the need for each of us to be the reversal of the world, for the world. ?. Meaning, the reversal of the consumerism/materialism. I am clearly seeing that for our planet to stay habitable, many of our ways must change. We all must become so much simpler, much more choose to live from our spiritual values. This happens naturally as we walk toward God. You know this, yes? Less IS more. My seeing is that this recognition only increases, as we continue forward. So this necessarily becomes one of our multiple missions: to awaken humanity from the sleep of runaway profit-driven materialism. My seeing is humanities very future existence depends upon it.
I've written enough for now...although I'm sure there is much more that could be said. Please think about it. I hope these thoughts make sense to you. If they don't, you do know where to go for deeper answers. Like Rumi 'out in the field beyond right and wrong', I will meet you there.
Namaste,
David
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Rev. David Seacord
Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag
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