Revolution – Evolution

In this time of social isolation, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what is happening that has changed our world so much. I remember reading a blog post from my friend, Steve Tanham, one of the Directors, along with Sue Vincent and Stuart France, of a fantastic study from the U.K., The Silent Eye Mystery School. I am going to save the best for you to learn by visiting the site on WordPress blogs, or on Facebook. I have completed my first year of study, and it has been one of the most interesting years of study I have ever had; I am addicted to studying and learning new things.

Steve Tanham had written a post about how he had gotten his 90-year-old mom from their old family home, and brought her to stay with his family so that she would be safe during this revolutionary time we are facing, not really knowing anywhere on the globe what might come next.

Then I thought about a lot of seniors in the U.S., and how so many of us have been forgotten by families, not because they want to be cruel, but because of the way the world seems to be revolving. People are moving faster and faster trying to keep up with some unknown forces that seem to be pushing us into a shorthand way of life. We speak no longer in long letters, but speak on the cellphones in monosyllables or e-mail in talk that is nothing more than single letters that are supposed to represent some sort of written language. And now we have come into a world that is ruled by something we cannot see, and can only believe what others tell us. More and more of the world is being isolated from others and having many, if not most of our freedoms taken away by powers that we cannot fight.

Over the weekend, stuck in the house by rain and cold on top of the orders not to leave our homes without face masks, I laid in bed and watched the PBS stations. Actually it was a perfect thing to do for I learned so much during that day. I learned of all the incredible feats accomplished by the ancient ones in their structures that they built when they had none of the incredible tools and formal knowledge that is held today by engineers and builders and others in the trades. And I thought about how there is a trend today at least here in the U.S. to put up housing and some other structures as quick as possible, though there are some pretty amazing public works for certain. Watching the ancient ones with their incredible knowledge considering what was known of the world was a new sort of evolution. I began to wonder if we are in the midst of a revolution or evolution.

And then I saw some incredible programs about the world and how the universe in general is bubbling up through volcanoes, and rivers and the oceans are rising and falling, and sometimes it seems as though there is chaos in the universe as well. So I thought about that for a long time, and in the end, I thought how this is perhaps part of the way the universe was created. It is not always at peace. Sometimes during these universal catastrophes, people do die, or they get cast from their homes where they have perhaps lived forever, without rhyme or reason. Perhaps we have expected the world to be always logical and something that supports life, but the reality is that it does not.

I closed my eyes, and slept soundly, knowing that life is never a guarantee for us or for this universe and that the best we can do is to live each moment fully and to remember those things and people we have loved for whatever time we all have.

A Little Learning Goes a Long Way

Evolution of our planet seems to be happening at warp speed, and in a sense, it very likely is.

I was thinking back on my own life and the values people held vs. the values we hold today. People, families especially, seemed to be one of the most important values any of us had. We had just come out of one war, and would soon enter another one, and then still another one through my own lifetime.

I have been mourning the loss of what once seemed it would last forever. Those long summer nights when we children could play safely out in the neighborhood streets and parents never had to worry about where we were, or whether we might perhaps become victims of human trafficking. The thing we played with first and foremost was using our minds to create fantasies such pretend forts or capture of the enemies, or “Red Rover.” Then we had boxes, which played a multitude of roles. Bicycles and skates and going swimming in the summer were big thrilling activities. And at Christmas, we got such simple but yet such beloved gifts – a B B gun for boys, or perhaps a new collectible doll for a girl.

TV was new and it was a thing that was already changing the family sitting down together for dinnertime. Instead, people sat around with TV trays, ate TV dinners, and no one was sharing the events of the day. I remember the family sitting around the TV, entranced by the amazing wonder of the Test Pattern. Families had only black and white, and I think it was later in my life when color TV came into being.- It was the age of “things.”

Young people called Marijuana “Mary Jane,” and in our youth we avoided those people as bad people. Getting high meant taking an aspirin and swallowing it with Coca Cola, and then spinning around until we fell down. We went to school and had really healthy lunches, and no one had to be shamed if they did not have one. They just got in line with everyone else and got a filling lunch. Teachers could make us write something on the board 100 times if we were bad, or have us sit in the corner with a Dunce Hat, or chewing gum on our noses. And they could even hit our hands if we did something wrong (or use paddles on our bums). And if we did something unthinkable like throwing spitballs, we might get sent to the dreaded office. That meant our parents would be notified, and we might even get “grounded.”

But things were changing. Parents didn’t talk about marital problems such as domestic violence or abuse of children. No one went to a psychologist; it was the psychiatrists who dealt with problems based on strange theories that not many understood. Only society’s very well-to-do went to them. Women really did not talk to each other about things that were private to their families. Perhaps some families went to their priests or their pastors, but we never heard or read about those things.

Suddenly, people were going to Space, and just as suddenly, we were frightened of nuclear power. Families everywhere were building bomb shelters, and we endlessly practiced in school how to duck under our desks in the event of a bomb. Suddenly your next door neighbors you had known for years were suspicious of you and not open to having you see the insides of their bomb shelters. There were these people called Communists, and we did not exactly know who they were, but they were people to be feared. More and more people were identified as those horrible Communists, and then they had to face having hearings on TV, that place we had once thought something so simple and so fun. Now it was full of things no one really understood, and they spoke of those people in whispers within a family, but not shared outside. We really did not know WHO to trust anymore.

And today, here we sit, almost with the same amount of fear of things not seen, but believed. Things we cannot understand, so we fear those things. And suddenly we are grasping to hold onto things that make about as much sense as ducking under our desks or building bomb shelters.

Life is moving way too fast with way too many things going on all at once, bombarding our senses as they did before, but now with warp speed unseen in our lifetimes. One day we hear a scary word that none of us understand and the next day it is killing people all over the world. Should we hide under our desks, fear everyone anywhere near us, or perhaps even kill them because they have more of something they believe will save them than we do?

Will we ever see life as it once was again, or was it simply that we we never really learned anything of lasting value in the time we have been here? How far will a little learning take us?

As the World Turns

Driving across the Arizona desert, I became aware of how immense our universe (outside of ourselves) really is. As I looked out across the immense open space, I saw all manner of mountains, and all colors of land rising up out of the earth. It was strange to imagine how one mountain arose from the earth, smooth and slowly rising, while one practically next to it seemed to have blown up right out of the earth, forming strange shapes and sometimes very sharp features. I can imagine the earth, as it was turning, bubbling and erupting and spinning wildly, but in such a way that various forms of life began to also come forth, or perhaps they came from somewhere else, finally finding a planet that was life friendly, and so cells of living creatures fell upon the earth like a form of rain, taking hold wherever they fell. Perhaps we will never really know the big story in this lifetime, but whatever it was, or however it was formed, was nothing short of a miracle.

In the same way, I think about us as human beings. Two cells, or a sperm and an egg, somehow come together and begin to form the most complex living creature. Not only does this creature have a mind that directs all the parts of what is inside of it, but every single part of this human body has a specific job, and despite the unique differences of each and every part, they all manage to function together to manage this “universe” within.

My brother once told me when he was talking about his TBI from Vietnam, that the brain is another universe all of its own. He told me that when any part of the body is injured, the brain gives the command for the troops (so to speak) to get to the part and help it. But when the brain itself gets injured (and again, it is what my brother’s doctor told him, so I cannot verify that it is true), the brain cannot help itself.

So I have been thinking about the human brain and how it functions regarding how it manages to take care of the whole universe within, but at the same time, can turn against this thing and that thing outside itself. It accepts the uniqueness and the importance and sacred aspect of the universe inside, but it raises up in defiance against that which is not like it in some manner, be it skin color, culture, religious or political beliefs. And yet, at the same time it can suddenly decide to relate to and even love, something that is decidedly different from itself in one or more of the ways previously mentioned.

I used to think I knew the answers. I used to think that life was relatively simple. Just do whatever you are intended to do and everything will be fine. And perhaps, as the world turns, it will be. Perhaps that universe outside and inside changes every instant in mysterious ways as the world turns.

Earth’s Emotions

Global Read: Glenn Albrecht – Earth Emotions; February 18 at 2pm Pacific

As climate change and development pressures overwhelm the environment, our emotional relationships with Earth are also in crisis. Pessimism and distress are overwhelming people the world over. In this maelstrom of emotion, solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home, has become, writes Glenn A. Albrecht, one of the defining emotions of the twenty-first century.

Earth Emotions examines our positive and negative Earth emotions. It explains the author’s concept of solastalgia and other well-known eco-emotions such as biophilia and topophilia. Albrecht introduces us to the many new words needed to describe the full range of our emotional responses to the emergent state of the world. We need this creation of a hopeful vocabulary of positive emotions, argues Albrecht, so that we can extract ourselves out of environmental desolation and reignite our millennia-old biophilia—love of life—for our home planet. To do so, he proposes a dramatic change from the current human-dominated Anthropocene era to one that will be founded, materially, ethically, politically, and spiritually on the revolution in thinking being delivered by contemporary symbiotic science. Register for the Global Read.Compassionate Children: How to Cultivate Compassion for a Flawed Parent by Loving Yourself February 24, 2020

We all come from diverse cultures, backgrounds and ethnicities. We were also raised in various families of origin. Some grew up with two parents, some one, others lived with grandparents or other relatives. There are many who had stepparents (bonus parents), adoptive parents and even foster parents. With all the differences in our upbringings, those who are interested in this course have one thing in common. Your parental figures were not the ones you would have chosen for yourselves. You may have survived abuse, rejection, abandonment or neglect. You may still blame them or carry your own guilt and shame to this day. But that can change now. This course offers a way to cultivate compassion for you as well as your flawed parent. Understand how to love yourself regardless of the relationship you have or had with them. Learn how to reclaim your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. Whether or not your parents ever change who they are, you can live your life in peace knowing you did your part. Learn more and register for this course.

As this article suggests, we have to start being more conscious of our environment and of what is happening to children too, for they are the future of this world. Although I don’t have an assignment currently, I am a CASA (Court-appointed Special Advocate) for foster children. And I am an informal advocate for the remainder of my life for children with Special Needs, children with AIDS, and any other cases I come across where children need help. There is more than enough for each of us to handle in one of these realms. No one is telling us we have to do it, but if we want to live in peace and harmony with our world and all the people in it, it has to begin with us.

Thank each and every one of you, and regardless of where you are in your life right now, know that you are one of life’s treasures and hopes for the future. Love and blessings always, Anne

Cycle of Life II

*Milkweed plants one week after being devoured by Monarch Caterpillars*

I could not believe my eyes when a week after the Monarch Caterpillars totally ate every single leave of the two plants that have also propagated themselves in several other places in the yard, and within one week, they have all come back, bigger and fatter leaves than before.

Sometimes we just need to believe that this old world will continue as it has been doing for thousands of years. Yes, I am not so naive as to believe that we do not have things like climate and environmental changes that are affecting the world. I am sure that some of the things have been happening since the beginning. I believe most sincerely that many changes in cultures have taken place because of the inability of human beings to adjust to the changes successfully. Some of the changes I am not certain humans could have adapted to very successfully such as the ice ages that took place, or perhaps the plagues. But at the same time, mankind DID in fact exist before AND after those things, so perhaps it was an accident that they survived, and perhaps they adapted more than we think they did.

Today a lot of psychology is used to convince us of this potential thing or the other thing, much as the whole world was set to collapse with the coming of the year 2000, is about to happen to us and there are more books and talks, etc. by all kinds of people telling us what we need to do to survive. And of course it IS fully possible that this thing or that thing could cause total destruction of our world at any given time, but the truth is if that happens, I don’t think we need to worry about it anymore.

If, like the cycle of life that I witnessed in my Milkweed plants, this old world goes on, why not just continue to do what makes sense and stop worrying about destruction or the rest of the “what if’s”. When and if they happen, we will deal with them as we need to then, and we will hopefully learn from our mistakes. There is really no guarantee either way.

Enjoy the moment. Appreciate the air we breathe. Look for the beauty all around us. Find miracles in the everyday events. Remember not to always worry about tomorrow because the reality is that when tomorrow comes, it will also be today. Tomorrow is just a way to avoid being fully alive today. Trust, because trust really is something that can benefit us all. I am glad I trusted those caterpillars eating the Milkweed plants and gave the world a chance to do what it does best. Someday I know those Monarch butterflies will show up, and when they do I will be glad that I gave the world and myself this gift.

Change the Way You See Things

In this world, we tend to see things according to what we are taught, or by things we think we know because we have seen them with our eyes. But our senses are not always giving us the whole picture, or the correct picture. A lot of times we are afraid as adults of many things that don’t make any sense at all. We are afraid of others we do not know, especially if they are not the same color as we are, or they don’t speak the same language. We fail to see that they are human beings just as we are, and with the same fears and dreams and hopes, the basically same ways of relating to the earth that we do, or perhaps different, but they are still human beings as we are.

We all arrived on this earth by some factor beyond any of us. Whether it was God or Gods or some ancient power we may not understand in this lifetime, we all arrived here. That means that we are all meant to be here, and each of the cultures has its own area where it has chosen to live. We fight over property perhaps because it is rich in resources that we think we need. We don’t try to invent new technologies or new products that don’t require those resources. Instead, different cultures in the world attempt to show how powerful they are and how they can destroy any other cultures in the world. But is it altogether possible that without these other cultures, the aggressor culture will not survive for long? Is it possible that each culture helps to create a balance in nature by caring for a different part of the earth? Is it possible that even the very air we breathe is affected by the different cultures and helps to create another balance that is critical to all those who live on this earth?

We fight over the earth’s properties and resources instead of working together to get to other planets to discover what resources might be available there. Are we even intended to go to other planets, or is it our responsibility to learn how to live together on this one first? Is it possible that there are cultures living on the others also trying to learn how to live together? It is so strange because there is so much uninhabited land here on earth that could well be considered and perhaps utilized for living. And there are ample resources available to feed all the people on this plane if we all worked together.

Perhaps indeed, we are not so afraid of the darkness as we are of the light.

Life’s Symbols

Celtic figure and Symbols by Anne Copeland

Symbols are everywhere in life. We don’t have to go out to hunt for them. And the intrigue of what they might mean and who created them has been with us for many centuries and from all over the world. Sometimes the symbols are easier for us to deal with than words and actions. They are mankind’s attempt to recall the things that are most precious to them – symbols of the sacred energy that holds the key to all life as we know it on this planet and in the other planets in our universe. It is wonderful that we have these gifts to help us remember what the ancient ones always knew.