Spring is Coming, I Trust
Along with the sap rising in the sugar maple trees, the sap was rising in me/us too. It was an invigorating feeling!
On March 1st, with a sense of delight I/we completed our very large “to read” pile, some of which contained articles already read in earlier years. There was a double pleasure: first, when I had imaginatively anticipated the process of completion in the forthcoming week, and then when I/we actually did it. It was interesting that some scientific materials I had just read talked about how feel-good chemicals can be released during the expectation period of an event, and then again when the event takes place.
At dinner that evening, I told Jim I felt like there were a whole lot of pictures and perspectives swimming around in my psychic swimming pool regarding our world-of-today. Then that night and in the early morning hours, during my dreams I revisited much of my past life, experiencing vaster connections and themes than I had done before. I saw they all had been part of focuses and experiences wherein I have had opportunities to continue to accumulate increasing Understandings, including what and how cultural emotions are used as connectors, energizers, motivators, intimidators, and attention-getters.
The next day in the bathtub I redid more of the past from the present because I had already digested and assimilated what I needed from the experiences and was now applying those Understandings. It felt like I/we were saying goodbye to our joint spirit-being’s and body organism’s DCBA life. Since it is a process, I had no idea when it would be completed, but I knew portions of it were already gone. I really felt increasingly liberated: I had redone past scenes in such a way where I am now free to energize what I choose, while leaving other participants free to use their own “points of power” as they make choices or non-choices.
I was quite clear that as an Essential I/spirit-being, one of my central purposes was to come into this reality system and have experiences that would give me the Understandings I needed to have to be the self I could eventually be and become when I could effectively apply what I had learned in terms of various forms of Love, Liberation, Gratitude, Freedom, Compassion, and Potency, without needing to funnel them through DCBA mental and emotional patterns. I was also quite clear that I had made connections with Jim as a spirit-being, where we would be co-crafting different patterns for a male/female relationship—and then play them out in our day-to-day lives.
On Friday, March 2nd, there were more good feelings as I/we finished a thorough upstairs housecleaning “we” do periodically, that we’d been involved with throughout the week. (I think distilled white vinegar is a fabulous multi purpose cleaning agent for floors, sinks, tubs, showers, counter tops, and elsewhere.) Jim joined in by cleaning the smaller bathroom he primarily uses that is near our personal rooms, along with vacuuming rugs and carpets. That night in dream-time I experienced myself as a guiding energy form surrounding my Jacquie body that was a character in a scene. It was like what I oftentimes experience during meditation where there is another presence guiding me, but in this situation my identity and experiences were within the guiding form itself.
The next day I/we went through some folders of significant materials that had been started in the fall of 2004, adding more to our big swimming pool of pictures. One of them was “Money.” Having over two years of articles about financial matters, extensively centered around what has been happening in the United States, was a sobering experience. It included report after report about our U.S. trade deficit; how CEO pay was on the rise, being more than 262 times the pay of the average worker in 2005; there is more personal debt that millions of individuals in our country have been accumulating; average wage earners were falling behind as the U.S. economy changes; large amounts of money for the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina reconstruction had been misused; how much the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had been increasing our nation’s long-term debt; and by February 2005, forty-three percent of all U.S. Treasury bills, notes, and bonds were owned by foreigners.
While reviewing an article in our local newspaper from 2004, I read that consumer debt in the U.S. had more than doubled in the past ten years to record levels, making it hard for many families to cope. That debt included credit cards and car loans, but not home mortgages. My thought is that some of this has come about because of the oft-repeated perspective that we are consumers. By thinking that way, it can become an automatic portion of one’s identity. One man I heard on NPR recommended that we become citizens, as contrasted with being consumers.
The picture I was seeing in the current-day United States’ DCBA reality was one where the hopes and dreams of previous generations for a better life materially were no longer available for many people in the U.S. now. Retraining and education were emphasized, but my response is that there are not enough good-paying jobs, even if one becomes retrained. Then there are also new graduates coming forth every year. In many instances older workers are taking lower-paying jobs and younger people are moving back home with their families.
A perspective I’ve heard of workers in India being the providers for many of the services we use in the U.S., and Chinese workers manufacturing large amounts of our goods, while we in the U.S. will be the innovators with the brain power, doesn’t make sense. Other countries are training their own engineers, scientists, and technological innovators at rapid rates, where there is a hunger by many people to raise their own standard of living.
Here in the U.S. there is a closely entwined financial situation where investors in a company want to see growing quarterly profits and returns, which increases pressures for productivity and successful competition, leading to plant closings and layoffs here, with lower-wage workers in other countries filling those jobs. At the same time, workers for companies that are still here in the U.S. are dependent on the companies they work for being economically successful in the global marketplace in order to stay in business and pay their wages. Additionally, many workers in the U.S. are invested in stocks and mutual funds for retirement that also depend upon the profitability of companies.
A national event in the immediate present called for what I thought was special attention: there were recent reports of substandard care for some outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. In addition to the newspaper accounts I was reading, I heard Dana Priest and Anne Hull—reporters for the Washington Post who broke the story by writing about conditions there—interviewed March 6, 2007, on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. Government investigations about Walter Reed were also bringing front and center what existing conditions are and have been for veterans across the country in VA facilities from all U.S. wars. (Walter Reed is run by the Defense Department and VA facilities are run by the Veterans Affairs Department.)
Together, this has opened up discussions about care and costs—physically, mentally, and emotionally—for all vets now and on into the future. With men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, I hear there are increasing backlogs of cumbersome paperwork and ballooning costs. Personally, I think “we the people of the United States” have a big-time responsibility to provide appropriate care and make it as easy as possible for each and every veteran.
At present I’m not clear about how National Guard and reserve forces who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan fit within the whole picture about aftermath care and benefits. And what, if anything, is being done about wounded private military contractors who have been working in those countries?
An overall picture I’m seeing is that in this country, since we have been so intently focused on realizing our dreams of better lives, we have continuously propelled ourselves into the future, asking what’s next and what’s new? And we haven’t paid enough necessary attention to taking care of what we already have in motion, such as the needs of men and women who have fought to protect us. Results of being future oriented without taking care of what we’ve already brought into existence also applies to repairing and maintaining our nation’s highways, bridges, levees, and to many other situations such as personal relationships.
As I understand it, we in the U.S. are now amidst new situations, both at home and elsewhere. It is obvious we are all intricately enmeshed in a global network of connections. Along with numerous previous opportunities not being available for we here in the United States any longer, as a country we have also lost considerable global respect with our activities at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with torture and secret prisons in other countries, and with other strong-arm tactics of various kinds. There are those in the United States who couple respect with fear, and certainly that’s one way to think about Life and other people. My design for respect is without fear.
I think an attitude of basic respect for others is important, both nationally and globally. Humiliating and trying to degrade another person, group, or country has stood out for me as emphases that have contributed to our current-day reality. One Russian commentator I heard on NPR said that Russia under Vladimir Putin has been trying to build back its sense of self-respect after being repeatedly mocked about losing the Cold War. Elsewhere, I have read that the Russians are using ideas clustered around a perspective that the West is not necessarily the force shaping the future.
And trust, both nationally and globally, is highly important. Our government representatives oftentimes say one thing while doing something else. Propaganda, disinformation and “the framing of issues” have been set forth in the guise of “facts.”
Occasionally on NPR I was hearing other nation’s and individual’s perspectives presented in ways where there wasn’t a dominate U.S. emphasis. I think that’s healthy, where contrasts can be made without disparaging, invalidating, or negating another’s worldview, and/or asking, “What's in it for me and us?” That is, listening with the intention of clearly hearing what someone else really thinks and feels.
While doing my own listening to other people’s viewpoints, I had been hearing some Muslims express a perspective about their past: the lands they occupied were united in an overall belief, with one ruler. So, from their viewpoints, our Western world ideas of nation-states and nationalism were primarily superimposed on their territories after the Ottoman Empire’s defeat by the British and French in 1918. And now the dream for some of them is to restore the caliphate so that the umma, the community of Muslim believers, are united again under the green flag of Islam.
I had also been hearing that many Muslims in the Middle East are fearing another crusade. (My understanding is that most Muslim people, regardless of the amount of formal education they have had, are keenly aware of their past and resonate with references to it.) Some voices from the Middle East are saying the U.S. is there to subjugate Arabs and Muslims, and take their resources.
What good does it do to openly listen to others? Well in practical terms, as a student of history and current-day realities, I think by going into an oppositional stance in relationship with others’ worldviews, there’s oftentimes a hardening of positions on both or all sides. Telling others they are wrong and I am right seems to be a non-starter, leading to arguments and counter-claims of rightness. By being sincerely respectful of others’ worldviews, there are opportunities for growing dialogues.
Do I see any overall answer to today’s situations? Yes, I do. That’s what Within the River of Love, Translations and Applications is all about, where I’ve been presenting a belief construction that includes a different form for one’s basic identity and what powers each of us has that we already use.
Standing back from all of what I’ve been reading and hearing as I examine the content of the vast swimming pool of pictures I’ve recently been studying, I’m choosing to energize a reality where we the people of the United States decide to take the lessons we have learned and can learn, translating them into a matrix that goes beyond bipartisanship and transcends our current-day reality.
What I’m proposing is that we the people of the United States of America co-craft A New American Dream, both individually and then collectively. I'm envisioning a framework that provides for individuality and the common good at the same time, nationally and globally. It’s like having a part to play in a great jazz group or orchestra, as both an individual and a member of the whole assembly.
An attitude and starting point that has worked well for Jim and I has been one of focusing on how to put something together in ways that feel good to each of us. From my point of view, this way of thinking and acting could also work well in larger contexts, as contrasted with compromises and threats. And, at the same time, here again it depends upon who/what the individuals are choosing to be, along with which matrix and wavelength they are choosing to be amidst.
There are strong indications that there is a large global groundswell taking place, that so far is not being seen clearly enough because it is so dispersed. I’m reminded of the 1960s here in this country when it seemed like all of a sudden multiple energies that had been developing for years emerged and began moving like a forest fire across our nation. That may be happening again, this time globally, where more and more groups of people and individuals are emphasizing our mutual interconnectedness, ecological sustainability, and social justice such as fair prices to growers, workers, and producers. It seems to be a grassroots emergence.
In this country there are many opportunities for participatory democracy in multiple ways, and to be involved citizens who are helping others in various communities such as is being done by some individuals and groups in New Orleans in the post-Katrina era. It appears there will be more devastations of many kinds taking place in the future, with more people everywhere being in need of assistance.
Yes, I was trusting that spring was in the process of manifesting again soon. Trust had certainly been a constant emphasis for me this past year: trust in overall divinity, in God as I know it, in my body organism, in myself, in Jim, and in others. One way I’ve used Trust has been by choosing to live with awareness amidst a larger, intermingled environment for my life. Hence, I had been experiencing what was occurring daily and nightly, both personally and beyond, as having connections and a vaster logic, to which I paid attention.
As I moved along—experiencing, recording, originating—there was an ongoing sense of suspense. When I went back to read what I had written, what would my responses be? In later December, I had made copies of what I had up to that time in my manuscript to send to my daughter, Kim, and a friend in northern California. That had been the last time I read what was already written. Since then, I had been proceeding with one chapter at a time.
News from Harmony Hill—March 3, 2007. It was usually woodpeckers and crows who ate from the suet feeder attached to a maple tree in back of the shade garden, but recently there had been many more species, including a squirrel, partaking of its nourishment. (Suet, for those unfamiliar with it, is the white fatty tissue of beef or lamb.) The day before, when I went to the kitchen in the later afternoon, there was our red fox friend in the side yard! During the past winter months Jim had been putting out food for him which was gone later, and even though it had looked like his paw prints in the snow leading up to the dish, Jim and I hadn’t been sure he was the one who took it. Well yesterday, there he was. He had survived the winter, looking strong and healthy! I waved to him, told him to stick around, and went into Jim’s room to tell him about the fox’s presence. When Jim took out the food, he also took a picture of “Foxy.”
On March 9th when I saw the newspaper, the main headline was about the Pentagon extending the troop surge in Iraq by adding more troops than the original 21,500—and it would likely last well into 2008. (This was in addition to the thousands of private contractors already there.) Furthermore, I’d been reading and hearing speculations about a limited use of nuclear weapons being on the table in terms of a U.S. determination to halt Iran’s further development of nuclear capabilities.
During the transition time from winter weather activities and the lead-up to spring, Jim and I agreed that by now we are both skillful enough spirit-being designers to be able to co-craft our present and future together, where we could each play out our personal processes—Jim with his video stories, photography, A Goose Family and Me book, musical compositions, and golf, and me with the manuscript I had in process—without either one of us having to “cave.” It was really a matter of artistry, facile communications, and recognizing the wisdom of not having to slot activities into a specific time mold. This was an update from decisions he and I had energized in early December 2006. Also, he and I both believe our relationship is an entity we each need to continuously feed and care for, in order for it to blossom and grow.
And so the fourth quarter of my natural world year of evaluating and contemplating the past/present while also preparing for the new sun cycle, was almost coming to a closure. The message on March 11th from my night of dreams was to begin to build my whole worldview and Life afresh. It was reinforced when I got up, by seeing the emerging sun as it spread across the horizon—a new day was dawning!
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