Pain, Love And Hope

 

progress

I was sad to read that Binu, editor at Countercurrents, has been recently suffering. I, actually, have genuinely loved Binu and his family for more than ten years while following their personal and professional affairs.

So I was sad to read his words: “I was walking through a desolation row for the last few days. I felt burnt out, losing energy and drive in the face of the mounting crisis we face, and thinking how little bit I could do as an individual. Two articles today by William Hawes and Rachel Olivia O’Connor gave me that little bit of perspective that we tend to lose as we get on with our fight. These articles gave me that extra bit of energy to carry on with the fight. Thank you.”

I, too, have pain from time to time. It is not on account of myself. I am well clothed, am well fed and have a nice home.

instead it is about what I see happening to our world. It alarms and horrifies me — all of the ravage of the natural world, the indifference to homeless people, wars and endless increasing resource ravage, such as when people cut off faces of elephants to get their tusks to create jewelry and artwork from their tusks.

I feel anguish because I understand about where the world is heading in terms of the sixth great extinction event, the possible release of all methane buried in the Earth and under oceans, severe climate change, human overpopulation, around half the world rendered into desertification, wars over increasingly less resources, increasingly less resources of very critical sorts like water in some place, no rare minerals and metals left to refurbish clean energy solar panels and wind turbines, and other extremely dire matters. The list goes on and on in my thoughts.

Many years ago, I heard that all love ends in tragedy. Either one of the loved ones dies or the loved ones simply part company before that happening. Either way it is unpleasant and can cause strong anguish.

The fact is that all of my personal losses (of which there have been many) pale in comparison to the dreadful vision that I have of life on this planet maybe around 150 years from now.

Picture it for yourself. There are far too many people, ruined landscapes, extreme climate change woes and far too many struggles to stay alive across the world, Meanwhile we are mandated, in my opinion, to serve the seventh generation principle.

Seven generation sustainability. … It originated with the Iroquois – Great Law of the Iroquois – which holds appropriate to think seven generations ahead (about 140 years into the future) and decide whether the decisions they make today would benefit their children seven generations into the future.
Seven generation sustainability – Wikipedia

I remember reading about Easter Island when presumably the last tree was cut down. I remember seeing a film about Easter Island and the cave called  “Eat Man.”

So I think about the degree that global losses of a monumental variety can transpire before a whole system unravels, a system like the one that humans put in place to serve economic principles that have very little to do with the ways that the natural world works.

Yeah, this is a real great plan for the future: Live in Easter Island type of underground dugouts with a rock you roll back and forth as the entrance to let members of your group in and out. Go out at night. Try to find rats and some plants to eat outside of the small dug-out enclave and go to the “Eat Man” cave (if you dare). Why this plan seems even worse than the scenario from “The Road.”

So I decided that I was going to do something about my poor attitude and fear for the future. First I called a Buddhist psychotherapist with a background in trauma relief and Jungian psychology. We’re going to talk for an hour in March.

She is enough like me and enough different that it may be useful.  … I am not a Buddhist.

Then I called a friend of mine, a friend with a background in TM. He is someone whom I’ve known for almost twenty years and is a director of an international, successful company involved with chemical engineering activities.

He told me all about TM, which could be useful, and told me to write on a card five changes that I want for myself and that every time that I would violate any thinking on the card, I look at it and redirect myself.

Transcendental Meditation® Technique – Official Website

https://www.tm.org/

Learn about the Transcendental Meditation technique for inner peace and wellness. Evidence-based results. Serving men, women, and families at TM® centers worldwide.

Course Fee · ‎How to learn · ‎What is TM? · ‎Choose country

I don’t know enough yet about TM to judge, but maybe it produces results something like this:

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New … – Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/…/51368.Train_Your_Mind_Change_Your_Brain

Rating: 4 – ‎1,574 votes

Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain has 1574 ratings and 143 reviews. Natalie said: The content — about neuroplasticity and the effects of meditation on…

Love? I know well about what love is. It is looking at irradiated Hiroshima Maidens with missing body part, understanding that they are innocent victims and doing whatever you can to help them. (I was five years old when I interacted with them.)

I know what love is. It is seeing a leper’s colony in the distance and giving away nearly all of your Christmas presents except for clothes into which you were growing to be sent to a colony when you are eleven or twelve years old.

The fact is that I will never be like a Buddhist Vietnamese monk who doused himself in gasoline during the Vietnamese War and light himself on fire out of despair and protest. I will never be like the Quaker father who did the same action during that war in front of the UN building in NYC.

Instead I will talk my problems out with people whose views are somewhat similar, but somewhat different from mine. I will try to learn a better pathway forward.

I will also listen to love songs. Love comes in many languages and forms. I know it when I see it.

I am so glad that others like Binu and ever so many more know love. It is the only way forward as we fight with all of our might against dangerous prevailing trends in our world!

togetherness solidarity

 [In 2017] I also saw the good things, starting with the Women’s Marches held around the world on the day after Trump’s inauguration. Millions of people came together and said, “We are not going to take this lying down. We are going to RESIST.”

And I saw that spirit all year, here in the U.S. and around the world. I saw it when hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to challenge Trump’s attacks on science and action to stop polluting the climate. I saw it when years of public pressure paid off and the largest tuna company in the world committed to far reaching measures to protect ocean life, and when you supercharged our new efforts to stop corporate plastic pollution. I saw it in the activists and supporters across the globe who joined us to oppose offshore oil drilling: millions of people from the Atlantic Coast to the Arctic, from the mouth of the Amazon to Southern Australia and New Zealand and beyond, stood together to say no to drilling in our oceans.

We will hold the line. We will push back. We will uproot corruption, expose the lies, and right the wrongs. We will protect the oceans and see to it that polluters are held accountable. We will protect our nation from the oil industry and its lackeys in Washington. We will be strong. We will not be dissuaded. We will win! – Annie Leonard, Executive Director, Greenpeace USA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4dQEJ-_UyQ

Anne Sila nous enchante avec sa reprise de Je t’aimais, je t’aime et je

Oct 23, 2015 – Uploaded by Simon Blackson

Anne Sila nous enchante avec sa reprise de Je t’aimais, je t’aime et je t’aimerai (Francis Cabrel

Chant traditionnel kanak – Nodeï Perofeta | Gulaan | The Voice France …

▶ 2:55

Jan 30, 2018 – Uploaded by The Voice : la plus belle voix

Pour son audition à l’aveugle, Gulaan a choisi un chant traditionnel kanakNodeï Perofeta“. … Chant

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA, USA.

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