. . . we allow them to unfold. A couple of years ago, when I was listening to the Pacific ocean, trying to sink into sleep, this was the message I received. What a comfort. To understand that the chaos of the modern age, so magnified in cities where Corporate Whoredom is the only way to make a decent wage (unless you are an exceptional human being with your own business, for example), is a passing phase. To understand that chaos is illusion, that the universe is a place of profound order and harmony where all is profoundly interconnected, brought my life's experiences up to that point into extreme focus. I proceeded with an elementary understanding of that message and have built upon it ever since.
But complications, as they are wont to do, arise. People act dishonorably and maliciously, injustice abounds on social, political, and economic fronts, and instability threatens, at times, to undermine our best efforts. It's the wheel, Jellybean, it turns and turns. Yes, Fortune turns her wheel. Sometimes, it's the chickens, and other times, the feathers (a rough paraphrase of some folk wisdom distilled by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes [check her out]). I've found that the most unhappy people seek to inflict misery on others or use power plays to gain a temporary advantage. And though I strive to practice compassion, I'm not that elevated yet, and I pity those fools, for fools they are, and I hope one day to live in a world where injustice is not a worldwide reality.
Take last week's jaunt to the mountains, for instance. I, against my better judgment, agreed to be escorted to a little resort community in Colorado. Telluride. Some would consider it paradise. On my most fundamental level, the place offended me. Imagine: a place overrun by yuppies and WASPS, not just your run of the mill variety, though, filthy rich motherfuckers who all looked the same. Those are the types that own the town. Then you have your standard issue hippies. I love tree huggers, don't get me wrong, and although I don't look like one anymore, I still am a bonafide granola on the inside. But these hippies are the types that must love shi-shi, and I don't get that because my bohemian friends abhor gross displays of wealth where capitalism has run totally amok and squashed any sort of real culture or beauty. Sure, it was there if you looked up, but for a few hellacious hours, I was in the Scottsdale of the mountains, and I hated America. Telluride exemplifies exactly what is wrong with this nation. How such a divide between rich and poor can exist in a land where the American dream is promised to all mystifies me. Why you would choose to subject yourself to an environment that displays this divide in its gross excesses and materialistic squallor for any length of time is not only puzzling, it is humorous, in a sardonic, mad kind of way. Whoop it up on the mountain, and pretend that the rest of the world is not enduring the effects of a quickening, an acceleration toward a new vision of community where everyone has enough and wealth is spread equally among those who work to create this new vision.
Hold on to your bootstraps everyone, because what is going on in the world is going to become absurdly tragic for a while. Work to make your own life a testament to your principles. Utopia may seem an impossibility, but it is in the works.
Check out an excellent new book by cybercaster Meria Heller, The Mouth That Roars, soon to be published and made available on Meria.net and via the Mythville community of self-publishers who promote literature that enhances the world. More to come when it is hot off the press. You want an amazing vision of the possibilities of your life and life on this planet? Then you gotta read this book. Beauty and truth distilled.
