Tomorrow we say goodbye to the shortening of the days for this year. Apollo will ride his chariot higher and higher into the sky from tomorrow until the summer of 2015.
The beautiful little blue drop of mist we call our planetary home will continue commuting around its golden star, in this backwater suburb of the Milky Way galactic city, as it has always done...
I usually experience this time of year from my home state of Maine. I have been through so many other places in such a short time recently--and have enjoyed their beauty and good people (some of whom are now like family to me). But do I miss my Pine Tree State.
Today, for some reason I miss her more than usual.
As I lay awake in bed last night, I thought about her rocky coastline. If stretched out straight, the wrinkled, coves and bays from Kittery to Eastport would reach from Maine to California. The waves pound against her granite shores; the two of them (the rocks and the waves) in an ancient and joyful contest for supremacy. Each makes the other more beautiful with every rise and fall of the tide. In the end though, the water always wins.
Her coastal plain and my hometown of Yarmouth came into to my mind's eye view.
I remembered riding down to Merrill Memorial Library, when I was just a tiny guy, with my little sister, in the back of my mom's rickshaw--homemade by my dad, in the early 1970's.
We passed by the Town Landing Road on Bayview Street, before heading over the highway bridge. Then down the road to the center of town and the big brick building filled with books.
It was summer, late afternoon. We went to the children's section and my mom pulled out "Blueberries for Sal" and "Make Way for Ducklings" (Robert McCloskey's classics). They were innocent stories for a more innocent time in my life. Just seeing their illustrations today at Google Images brought back a feeling that was almost to powerful for me to handle.
I recalled getting older and partying out in the fields of North Yarmouth, Cumberland and Pownal with an awful lot of you folks! You know who you are. And MAN did we have fun. Fires in sandpits; driving up and down Main Street, by 7/11, avoiding Yarmouth's finest. Drinking beer, bought with fake ID's, on Cousin's Island Beach.
I remember having my teenage heart broken upon learning that my girlfriend and best friend had betrayed me. I walked all night down Route 88. I laid down in a ditch hoping the rain would simply wash me away. When it didn't, I swept and mopped up the pieces of myself that were still salvageable and went home. The first of many, many times that were to come.
The rough, huge mountains of western Maine, so tall they can be seen from the coast, were there - last night - in my sentimental-travels.
Picking apples, going to fairs... Every fall I still get that "back to school" feeling and think about my Yarmouth home.
Winter's starkness, the pinks and orange sunsets over vast fields of sparkling new fallen snow. Riding the snowmobiles to the Muddy Rudder for lunch... This all made me smile in the dark.
I remembered the profound silence of winter nights, after light fluffy snow had blanketed the earth below. The air was so cold and dry that the color of each star in the sky could be perceived, like candy sprinkles on a chocolate Christmas cookie. The sky was so clear that sometimes I used to feel like I was drifting in space.
There were Christmas parties, candlelight services, big flamboyant dinners with friends and schoolmates. All my adolescent mind could ever think about at the time was how pretty the girls all looked, dressed up in their finest clothes, with their rosy cheeks, and how nice it would be to just sit and hold one of them in front of a fire, while the blizzard blew outside.
And, I was fortunate to actually do that a few times; enough to REALLY miss those days now--days when everything was still brand new.
Some say "it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." But in the middle of life, looking back to those days and then at myself in the mirror now, I'm not so sure. It might have been better not to be able to remember. My personal jury is still out on that one.
How the rust does grow on the seasons of life as the years pass away. How the special things of the holidays become slightly less special as they are seen so many times or defiled by money concerns. How the songs of joy - though just as strongly resounding - are so often muted by their own repetition. Such is my experience. I hope others can constantly feel reinvigorated each year--I sincerely do hope that.
Considering all of this, I felt a lump in my throat, here in this motel bed, last night.
I asked the ceiling: "What AM I doing?"
Tomorrow morning in Portland, Maine the sun will rise at 7:11 am. Eight hours and 55 minutes later it will set at 4:06 pm.
Here in Conway, Arkansas the sun will rise only one minute later, at 7:12 am. But it will stay up for 55 minutes longer than it does in Maine, setting at 5:01 pm.
The world is round.
The difference in the latitudes of places is not very apparent most of the time here in the lower 48 states. But it IS still perceivable.
When we travel with the intention of returning to the place we left from, we don't have to go all the way around the whole world to do it of course. Even a zig-zagging pathway from coast to coast and a plane flight back to the original place, IS circular in its own way. It is how we get aROUND.
In a similar way, the world aROUND us is but a metaphor for a Reality where ALL is actually just one Thing. We leave our original place and then we return to it.
We creatures are a metaphor for the spirit cells in a "body" who are ALL actually just parts of one Creator.
The fingers on your keyboard or the ones holding your tablet or phone are not you. They are simply the highest current evolutionary perception you can handle about the parts that make up your SELF.
Janis Joplin once said that she and her band-mates were talking on the tour bus about what a "day" is. They concluded that all "days" are "...just same damn day, man!"
At the top of the world night is turned into day, without beginning or end. Viewed from above the North Pole there is equal parts day and night at every time and on every date. These labels for the natural passage of time are simply concepts we humans have devised to break up our own misunderstanding into moments that our evolutionary minds can then better handle for keeping track through the use of artificial systems.
Set assumptions are a way that we try to freeze the concepts we can't fully swallow into edible-understandable chunks. Winter in the northern hemisphere is cold for many of us, yet it is the point in the earth's elliptical orbit around the sun when the planet is CLOSEST to our star. Who would have thought? Who even tries to think past their assumptions? Well, maybe more and more people, every single day...
A location in space is a point defined by three dimensions, all of which are at 90 degree angles to each other. A specific time is a point that is attempting to be defined within a succession of passing moments, and can similarly be thought of as existing at a 90 degree angle to space. PLACE might be considered the combination of these four dimensions.
The three dimensions of space are easy to conceptualize when viewing things around us. People assume time is not visible, but in fact it's affect on what we see, plainly shows its presence.
Every single "thing" in your field of vision is the product of photons (light particles) being either reflected or projected from objects and arriving at your eye at different times. None of these times are NOW. NONE.
In other words, the light you see from your screen is coming in from a little ways back in the past. The window beyond? Further in the past. The tree across the street, the moon in the sky, the stars beyond, and so on? You are seeing them as they WERE, further and further back into the past. YET, you (and I) usually assume it is all happening NOW.
Even your perception of NOW is in the past. It takes several milliseconds for your senses to turn outside world data into an integrated experience for you, and another few milliseconds for you to make sense of it. In a certain way, we live entirely in the past.
None of this is what we usually ASSUME to be true. Yet... It is true.
Why am I talking about all of this metaphysical stuff? Well! I'm glad you asked.
As I've mentioned here a few times, I believe - I actually KNOW - that some new kind of force (what I have named, for lack of a better title, the "New Advent") IS about to unfold for everyone on this planet.
It is waiting patiently for a time, a space, a PLACE where it can present itself. Right now it is looking out through my eyes - and yours - with a kind of mathematical analysis (if you will) of what we are each doing individually, and then doing collectively.
I think we have reached the current pinnacle of what can be accomplished to bring ourselves material comfort, while still being at the same deficit of moral understanding that we can't seem to make up for. This is an imbalance that can not be cured by faster computers, more fuel efficient cars, better medicines, nor carbon taxes.
We have done this amazing amount of mechanical and physical work, not for the oft-jaded explanation that it is all for greed and sloth. NO! Instead, it is because we are desperate to find a state of peace and love, of social justice, of HARMONY. For thousands of years now, we have looked for a better world first on a drawing table, then on a factory floor and now in debt-based (THING-based) global economy. We are thing-fetishists. Everyone of us is, including myself.
But WE are not THINGS. Better things can never make better people. These ever-improving technical advances WILL be a wonderful environment for a more enlightened and spiritual world of Thinking, Speaking and Acting humans WHEN we are able to simply slow down, stop shopping for a few moments; stop making our love of shiny objects replace our love for everyone around us.
It is my opinion that people who say they hate other people are not evil. They are simply not allowing themselves to KNOW those people. If they knew them they would probably learn to like them, maybe even love them.
And, in turn, if the people who felt the hatred of others, could feel that those others were now trying to know them, they might be willing to develop a common relationship based on trust. To give (without the expectation of getting anything back) is to love.
I'm not trying to preach this stuff. We've all heard it before. Usually though, it comes from a GROUP mentality or ideology, with little strings and agendas attached. "To find out more, buy my book!" "Join our church!" "Read the philosophies of..." "Order today!"
But wait there's more!
Separate groups, while being perfectly benign, are NEVER EVER going to have THE answer. We humans in this material world are TWO things, ultimately: (1) Individuals and (2) One World. The grouping of three of us, or a billion of us, still represents an incomplete mechanism for answers to flow out to ALL of us.
There are many good groups. There are even a few truly and extraordinarily GREAT groups! But there is no one BEST group. And there never will be one, unless that "group" includes every single human being.
Now, I'm not a complete idiot. I'm not so into some strange self-appointed mission that I've lost touch with all reason. I KNOW that what I'm saying is inherently an IDEAL.
To speak about such things as global transformation - without the need for a religious, political or scientific group's control - is just crazy talk! Isn't it?
Yet...
I believe the New Advent WILL do this very thing, completely unaffiliated with any HUMAN tradition, ideation, ideology, or other "ism."
How could I possibly even suggest such a thing and not be laughed right off the nearest cliff?
Because, I believe in the super-conscious mind that we are all sharing. The over-soul. It is *not* a sub-conscious mind.
I've said that each of us has a Spark inside us. These Sparks maintain a web of constant and unbroken intercommunication. At least that is what mine is telling me right this second. They, after all, are made of the same substance, the same Fire, the same Light.
This New Advent will come LITERALLY from the "Bottom Up"; from the Inside...out.
It won't come from "leaders." It won't be explained by "experts." There will be no press conference at the NASA Space Center of leading scientists who will explain it all to us with calculus equations on their white board. Nor, will the interfaith community of top religious leaders meet at the Vatican to pet our little heads and tell us what is happening within our own minds. Nope.
WE WILL TELL THEM.
We aren't going to suddenly become wonderful loving people. Not at all. But we WILL see the way, be given the free will choice to explore that option in whatever manner is being seen by each of us--within ourselves.
Or not???
I may be a complete and stark-raving lunatic who has tricked you into caring about something that is completely unreal; playing upon your deepest and most altruistic wishes for yourself and the world, just to hear himself talk. Believe me, I wonder that too sometimes.
So... YAH! Talk about a voice crying out from the wilderness!! Or, in this case, a cheap motel room in Conway, Arkansas.
Let me just complete my metaphor and tie this all up with a pretty pink bow, before they break down my door and haul me back to the rubber room...
Tomorrow, on the shortest day, maybe we can see the lengthening daylight of each succeeding day to come as a symbol for the growth of the Light of Love in our hearts.
I think on average the day length increases at a rate of something like 2 minutes a day, until the summer solstice on June 21, 2015?
Maybe every day we can take two minutes to question why we are angry at certain other people. Just for the hell of it! For the sheer fun of it! Like a challenge. Like running a marathon. You get the idea.
We can still be angry with them if we want. Just try again later when you think you can beat your last score for challenging yourself at this. It'll be fun.
But, maybe, we can also look at their pictures for a second without wanting to throw darts at them? They have eyes that cry and smile just like we do. They have blemishes and crooked teeth just like we do.
Maybe we can Google their names and see what they have done in life that wasn't all THAT bad?
Maybe we can ask around and find out what their childhoods were like? Why are they such jerks? Usually there IS a reason. They were once innocent children going to the library with their mamas just like we were.
Maybe we can get to know them, just a tiny bit better. Don't be afraid to fail at this activity. Gosh! Don't we fail anyway by never even trying? You can't fail more by trying than not trying.
When the two minutes is up, we fix ourselves a Hot Pocket and settle down to watch the game. [Warning: Hot Pockets are hot. Please use caution!]
I suspect that if a few dozen of us remembered to try to do that even every now and then, good things would begin to happen in our lives. And that isn't even some astrological prediction. I think it is a hard cold fact.
I am going to try to reach out to some of the people I have had a real issue with in the last few years.
I WILL practice what I'm "preaching."
Honestly? I don't WANT to do it. In fact, I'll probably procrastinate for a while. But whenever I'm lying in bed (or in my case a wet tent in the leaves) I will remember that ultimately I DO want to see a greater Love on this world. I believe it can still happen. And I want to fix some of the pain that I myself have caused the people who are just PEOPLE for cryin'-out-loud, not really "enemies."
When I finally get around to stepping up to that plate, and you do too, the New Advent WILL begin.
LOVE to ALL!
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