Our Eternal Earthly Energies

Either we believe in responsible compassion in humans, or in "gods;"
We can't simultaneously believe in both understandings of eternity.
The organizer of the Vatican II Ecumenical Council said it best:
"God" doesn't change, but our understanding of "God" continues to do so.

I, among others, have come to the point in my spiritual journey
That I don't believe the term "god" accurately reflects eternal energy.
How blind we have been, not seeing that all gods are based on homo sapiens,
Rather than that full humanity is based on eternal compassionate energy.

Why are homo sapiens so resistant to new attitudes and information?
Without growth and adaptability, every species on earth dies.
Unless we are willing to concede the end of homo sapiens civilization,
It's time that we acknowledge that we're already parts of eternity.

We can't hope to keep up or understand all universal knowledge;
We can only hope that our children allow us to observe the fruits
Of the labors we willingly offered up to sheltering and teaching them,
Trusting in the basic values of responsible compassion we shared.

Our era was created out of invisible universal compassionate energy;
We must not pull our heirs backward out of our own fear of change.

How the Sacred Spirit of their universe is manifested is beyond us;

Embrace the energy of The Eternal Sacred we impart while here.

Let them fly, knowing that our values are the tails on their kites;
Our earth is spinning at a rate that we could  never conceptualize.
How horrible it would be to consume our children's sacred energy
Because we're afraid of losing these dear physical parts of ourselves.

My most fervent wish is that the energy I've imparted to my children and others
Will bear positive energy, in many others, for many generations upon our earth.
I believe that the only heaven is the one we begin here in our shared universe;
What we sow in our earthly lives, many generations will continue to reap and re-sow.

What If We...?

Is it possible that Abraham loved his sister/wife Sarah,
Though her prostituted her to protect his own hide?
And why do we honor as our many nations' patriarch
A man who sent his son and her mother to the desert to die?

How can we ever change the way we relate to The Sacred Spirit
Until we admit that some of the scriptures weren't so sacred?
We lost our willingness to be true to our universal siblings
When we stopped standing before each other spiritually naked.

Hair we are given as mammals covers some of our vulnerabilities;
What we add to protect our identities is only window dressing.
The layers of clothing, housing and other indications of wealth
Cover sins that we should be, to our worldwide siblings, confessing.

How can we honor Abraham while we demonstrate against human slavery?
The many young brides of Muhammad deny any right to innocent faith.
Even Gandhi and MLK confessed their abuses of their own wives.
The stories of Jesus called for the world's focus to be on earth's future.

And Jesus stories demanded that we confess our sins against each other;
It has been the hallmark of honest relationship since the Garden of Eden.
The demand that we ask for forgiveness from those in our communities
Is the only non-negotiable way to become honest and eternal friends.

We are conceived as animals with an instinct toward survival of self;
Homo Sapiens have the option of opening ourselves to self-sacrifice.
To be fully human is to stop marking territory only for ourselves,
But to allow all of the sacred universe to put an eternal mark on us.

What if we got rid of the masters of law who only want to win power?
What if we made mediators of conflict our most highly paid profession?
Would we finally be able to live in truth and in worldwide peace,
And only those who create consensus would win places of leadership?

Alpha Animals

Do dogs ever ask themselves whether they have done the right thing to please their alphas, or are they more confident in their actions than we? Do they wait around all day, feeling insecure when their alphas are away?
I think they do, and that we are really no less needy of companionship than are most other mammals. We have need for familiar touch, taste and scent of those in our packs of people.

We have been led to believe that mutual need in community is a weakness in our human natures. Some have gone so far as to label mutual dependence on another as an illness. My husband likes to call our relationship co-dependability, rather than co-dependence. I am blessed that he honors our need for each other, though both of us can sometimes feel burdened by our mutual commitment to helping each other be our best selves.

I don't think humans are any less evolved because we still act like other mammals. In fact, I think we've done ourselves and others a disservice by pretending that this fantasy about our superiority is a good thing.  Early in our relationship, my husband clarified what he believed about the difference between us and other animals. He declared, "Humans have the ability to say no." I think this sort of sums it up.

I have noticed that, even a dog can be taught to deny itself immediate gratification, when taught to do so by a firm, yet responsibly compassionate alpha. The sad thing in denying our animal underpinnings is that we fail to see that dogs are best taught by observing the actions of others. If parents would strive to be better alpha animals, perhaps we'd be creating humans that act less like wild beasts.

A granddaughter recently said to me, "Granny, you said that you taught my mama to cook, but she said that you didn't." My reply to her, "I cooked while she watched and helped. That is how poor people teach their children. We didn't have the money to send her for lessons in everything." If we focus on walking in the direction we want our children to follow, maybe we will wear a path that they will feel is a comfortable permanent home. Even when we are gone, they will wear our spirits on the insides of themselves.

Favorite Photograph

I have a favorite photograph of my toddler son and his first female friend, in the kitchen of my first family home. She is squatting on the floor, hysterically crying, while he looks on with that look dogs give of, "What the heck is happening here?" This happened when they were both less than two years old, so it cannot have been training, only instinct. I see this as the perfect picture of the communication tactics of men and women.

Neither child had much hair, and the little girl's hair grew out red. I don't know that her hysteria was an omen of her hair being red, but I do know that her passion in life didn't diminish as she matured. Neither did my son's sense of wonder about what makes women tick.

My son complains about the favoritism I showed his older sister. It wasn't favoritism; it was simply something that came with our both being females. How could he understand menstrual cramps and mood swings accompanying menstruation, when he would never be inflicted with either of them? This was just as I understood that, when he reached puberty, I could never teach him how to act as a moral man. He went to live in his father's man cave.

As a family man, my son has made a married friend to whose home he can escape when he needs a place of safety and solace from his female. I hope, for the sake of both families, the two friends women's cycles never synchronize. He has also created an outdoor substitute for a "man cave," as his home is small and he enjoys the luxury of living in the deep south of the USA. His wife and her friends can have the house; the men will be out in an area with greater space.

I will never understand the need of men to escape into their own shells after confrontation by their females, but I do know that this instinct seems to be universal. How many hunting parties would never have been organized if it hadn't been for the need of men to have space to absorb and organize what their women expected of them? When men were confused, the family was fed.

The challenge in our modern world seems to be how to create prosperity without confusion and accompanying conflict. We must create areas where males can step away while they absorb and organize what others are meaning with their words. Only then can we hope to have a fully human family of peace on our earth. If churches/temples/mosques don't offer these areas, what real purpose do they serve on our earth?

Humans, including men, have abilities to reason that are not available to dogs or wolves. Why are we still acting as if we have no choice but to obey our animal instincts? When religions promote reason over worship of outdated idols, perhaps we'll succeed at exceeding our own dogs' abilities.

Looking at Life Like a Dog Does

Sometimes, I feel like I am listening to human speech like a dog does. You know how dogs cock their heads about thirty degrees to one side as we speak to them? They know you are saying something important, but the simply don't understand the words. This is how I feel when most people talk about God.

Even when I hear and read the same words, I experience different messages than do my most religious friends. Does this mean that they have special spiritual powers that I don't have? Many seem to think so. Religions seem to insist on all agreeing on everything in their professions of faith. I don't claim to know the truth for others, but I have come to comfort with what is true in my mind and spirit.

From the beginning of human ability to reason, it seems that all gods were to be feared, and demanded great sacrifices as punishment for their displeasure with their own creations. It seems that humanity was in dire need of crossing over from these fearful superstitions, into an era when we would understand our own indwelling ability to embrace, share, and grow The Sacred Spirit on our own earth (now the greater cosmos).

The energy of the universe we are, and to universal energy we shall return. This may be why we are admonished by Jesus to work toward heaven on while we are still physically on earth. What we sow, our universe will reap for many generations. For this reason, I believe it is a great evil to sow fear in any form.

I have come to reject any belief based on the fear of any power. This journey began with words spoken to me by my daughter, twenty-five years ago. "I don't think God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. I think God is like a good parent waiting at the door for his children to come home." This is when my head cocked thirty degrees to one side.

Once my way of "listening" to The Sacred Spirit was with head cocked to the side by thirty degrees, I never could hold my head straight in hearing what people say about The Sacred Spirit. Along the line of my research and isolation in the tomb-like quiet, I have lost contact with the term "god" as a good thing.  Looking at life this way, the whole story of original sin and repentance with a blood sacrifice son made for this purpose made no sense to me.

Just like a dog, I will obey a master that I fear, always looking for an escape from the feeling of fear, but I would die for those who fully open their spirits to me, and I to them.

I see the Judeo-Christian Bible as a collection of stories leading from the fearful superstitions of early humanity to the enlightenment of Pentecost. Only by a human's actions (fruits) will any know who is living in enlightenment and who is still bound by fear. Greed is a fruit of fear, as is hate and war.

Perhaps if we all start listening and living more like well-loved dogs, we can get past language and belief barriers and move onto universal agreement on The signs of The Sacred Spirit in ourselves and all others.

Running From Religion

I have been asked why I didn't hate my father for his fits of rage in which he would beat his children until he drew blood. The answer is a simple one; he closely resembled the God that I had been taught to see in the Bible on which I was raised. I was sure that righteous fathers were supposed to cleanse our sins by demanding blood sacrifice from their own children, as had God.

In modern times, we are told that God is love, as if the God that made children simply to slay them had never existed. How convenient the memories of people can be, that they forget the pain of the past rather that face it and seek to winnow out the truth from all the actions that make up the present. Abuse changes the brain into an animal brain by overriding judgement with raw animal instinct to fight or flee. Most of life is coping as victims, unless we own our human power to make change in our thoughts and actions.

This power that we call "free will" is what I believe instills full humanity into our animal bodies. This is what I refer to as The Sacred Spirit, which has nothing to do with the vengeful, jealous gods that early homo sapiens saw all around them. The God of Cain and Abraham seems to have nothing to do with The Sacred Spirit; it is, rather, a god of animal rage. This is the God my father followed. For this reason, I have had much compassion for the situation he was in as a father.

My mother was married to the fathers of her Roman Catholic religion. She tortured and neglected her children to purify us, and neglected her husband in order to purify herself and her children for her entry into heaven, where she would be forever married to God and his son. Apparently her God approved of this, as her church honored her with medals for her faith. I have little compassion for her, as she fed her family to the abusers in order to protect her own virtue and standing in her church family.

I feel greatly betrayed by those who act as if the abuses of this version of God and his religions never happened to anyone that they personally encountered. These fine folks want to say that those still suffering flashbacks of the trauma inflicted by this God are ill or unforgiving. How can we forgive or forget what still wakes us screaming in terror?

I have read the Book of Job. I see how this God rewards those most faithful to him, and I want no part of a God who would kill my children to prove his own power to a demon. I want no part of a God who tells fathers to kill their own sons and makes a son to sacrifice to himself. I want no part of a God who chooses, for eternal life in his heavenly family, only a few of the billions of people continuing to be created.

This was the God of my father and mother. Is it any wonder that my parents felt they should sacrifice their own children to this God? Is it any wonder that we have turned away from their God and his religion?

What We Want

I have been involved in a discussion with several female friends regarding the values by which we live. One of our group brought up the subject of living life without expectations. There seem to be many who practice eastern meditation who believe that this is the way to happiness. I think this may be true, but not in any earthly relationships, even relating to ourselves in a community.

I don't believe that we are meant to experience Nirvana on earth because I don't believe that level of peace is possible as long as The Sacred Spirit inhabits a physical form. One of the properties of earthly, physical person-hood is that we are expected to have expectations of ourselves. Without expectations, free will to choose a path to perfection is meaningless.Without this, we become animals of only instinct to guide our actions.

It is important that we humans teach our children that we have expectations for ourselves and for them; otherwise, we leave them with no rudders to weather the storms and guide their life's paths onto productive shores. Every generation is in danger of slipping backward if all of our energy is directed toward maintaining the familiar status quo. Life cannot stand still, except in a vacuum; life cannot survive without fresh breath.

When will we learn that expectation is our earth's life blood? We don't have energy to get out of bed in the morning unless we expect something from ourselves on that day.