When Donkeys Fly

 

Some people thought that everything was rotten and that we ought to tear it all down and let Daddy build it back up.

When donkeys fly.

Let's take back our power by listening to that still small voice that says, "What!!!?" "What were you thinking?" 

Remember when we got excited when a President told us that we would send a man to the moon and bring him back safely before the end of the decade? We didn't know how in the world we were going to do that, but smartness rose to the occasion.

We had a vision.

We developed space travel when a leader told us we could. I remember when Sam Shepherd, the first man in space, did a quick up and down, only going into orbit. And I remember Shepherd while suited up and sitting in the space capsule regretted his morning coffee and needed to go to the bathroom. The crew discussed the problem and finally told him to wet his pants.

Remember when John F. Kennedy conceived the idea of the Peace Corps? 

Kennedy, arrived in Michigan at 2 am in the morning, not to speak, but to sleep. When he found himself surrounded by 10,000 students he spoke extemporaneously. Kennedy challenged American youth to devote a part of their lives to living and working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a way to foster goodwill and peace. 

Their response was immediate: within weeks students organized a petition drive and gathered 1,000 signatures in support of the idea. Several hundred others pledged to serve. Enthusiastic letters poured into Democratic headquarters. This response was crucial to Kennedy's decision to make the founding of a Peace Corps a priority.  He executed it by executive order, and three days later appointed R. Sargent Shriver as the Director?

Maybe you don't remember, for this was March 1, 1961.

Maybe you weren't born yet--that's the reason you need old codgers like me to tell you.

 

From the podium that  March 1, 1961 came these words from President Kennedy:

 

"How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world?"

 

"On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend on the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we have ever made in the past."

 

By 2018, 141 countries had hosted more than 235,000 Peace Corp volunteers.

 I once witnessed the far-reaching arm of a Peace Corps volunteer:

I was part of a training session. One of the group, a Caucasian young man raised in Africa, was deep into his feelings of being alone. not wanted, grieving for what he had lost. He lamented that once in Africa, he knew friendship where boys would happily walk down the street with their arms around each other, and think nothing about it. He had no such friends in America.

 From the back of the room came a voice in Swahili.

 We didn't know what it said, but the boy did.

 Neither did we know we had a former Peace Corps volunteer in the group. The voice said, "Welcome, brother."

 The kid fell apart, and so did we as soon as we knew what had happened. We were leaping from our seats, hugging the kid and each other, crying and laughing all at the same time.

 

 

 

 

Once, Abraham Maslow a psychologist, said: "Stop studying the ills and look to the positive way things work."

 What a concept.

Spiritual life, as Maslow puts it, is an instinct. One hears it from the voices that arise from within. However, two forces are pulling at the individual. One pulls us toward health and self-actualization, the other towards weaknesses and sickness.

 

Geesch, big decision.

 

Self-actualization (Maslow's term) is not an endpoint or a destination.
 

It is an ongoing process in which people stretch themselves to achieve new heights of well-being, creativity, and fulfillment.

Maslow believed that self-actualizing people contained several characteristics—self-acceptance, spontaneity, independence, and the ability to have peak experiences.

Peak experiences are high points where the individual is in harmony with himself and his surroundings. Some would call that one's spirituality.

Peak experiences are moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels whole, alive, self-sufficient, and yet a part of the world. They are more aware of truth, justice, harmony, and goodness.

Religious or spiritual values are not the exclusive property of any religion or group. Self-actualizes are religious in character, attitudes, and behavior.

 "Spiritual disorders" tend toward anger or a loss of meaning. Sometimes, it is grief or despair regarding the future. There is often a belief that one's life has been a waste and that finding joy or love is impossible.

I'm attempting ever so carefully to pull myself out of media whitewashing of the Present President. although tears are appearing in the fabric of his mighty plan, and people are peering through its holes. It's like:

"Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."

I'm sorry civilization creeps along slowly. We make giant strides ahead, only to lose some. It wobbles. We oscillate between elation and depression.

It's easy to have slogans like, "Make America Great Again." All you need is a good ad writer. 

What we need is people in the trenches, like my friend Bill Fisher, the former Peace Corp volunteer, who one day called out in class to a lost boy: "Welcome Brother."

 

Space/Brain

 

“Experiments show that the focus of our attention changes reality itself and suggest that we live in an interactive universe.”—Gregg Braden

 

 Have You ever been in a room that was buzzing with conversation--when suddenly all talking stopped?

Gregg Braden tells of such an event that was better than any I have ever experienced. 

As he sat eating dinner in a hotel's large restaurant where there was a buzz of conversation, suddenly, silence.

He looked to the entrance where a group of people had entered. One of the group stood out, for he was dressed all in white and looked rather like Jesus. 

As the group walked past Braden's table, the man in white nodded a greeting, and when Greg looked into his face, he was shocked. 

The man had an open wound that extended across his forehead and down his nose. It was unmistakably in the shape of a cross. Gregg looked at the man's hands wrapped in gauze. Red seeped through. 

 

As the man and his entourage walked past Greg, the group members gave Braden a look that said, "Haven't you seen a man bleed before?"

No, he hadn't; not like that. He whispered a word, "Stigmata."

Braden said he had read about stigmata, but he had never seen it.

The bleeding figure was to be a presenter at the hotel the following day, as was Braden, their reason for being in that hotel. However, later Braden learned that the man had other conditions on his body that identified with the crucified Jesus. 

 

Braden's observation: If we don't believe that our beliefs can affect our bodies—look at this. This individual so identified with the passion of Christ that he would develop conditions similar to the crucified Jesus.

 

I had to buy Greg's book, not when I read about stigmata, for I didn't know that story was in it. I bought it when I read his comment about space. 

 

Scientists now think that space isn't empty. It has something in it.

 

Braden's suggestion is that something is where our beliefs are made manifest.

 

That blew me away. 

 

The book is the spontaneous healing of belief (no caps) by Gregg Braden.

 

In one of my blogs, I mentioned that my purpose was to wonder about things and invite others to wonder. And you know I talk about whatever I am into. I figure it will all sift down to readers as curious as I am about how life works. 

 

Braden suggests that we're bathed in a field of intelligent energy that fills what used to be thought of as empty space. Evidence shows that this field responds to us—it rearranges itself—in the presence of our heart-based feelings and beliefs. And this is the revolution that changes everything. 

 

Now, doesn't that excite you?

 

Yogis have long told us that we are both the vessel and the substance in it, and we didn't know what they were talking about. That we both observe and create, like the tiny quantum particle that changes as we observe it. Look into quantum physics. It is crazier than anything we can make up.

 

We have long thought that our DNA was fixed. True, it defines us, our hair color, and our physical apparatus, but now they find that genes click on and click off, affecting our DNA.

 

Wow. It boggles my mind.

 

On the one hand, we are told we are frail and powerless beings who live in a world where things just happen to us. On the other hand, spiritual traditions tell us there is a force that lives within every one of us that nothing in the world can touch. That gives us the assurance that difficult times are a part of the journey.

 

Is it any wonder we're confused? Is it any wonder that the first Star Wars movie with the introduction of The Force so resonated with people? What appeared to be a simple little Space Sci-Fi flick became an outrageous blockbuster.

 

Now, here's a thought: "If quantum particles are not limited by the "laws" of science—at least as we know it, and we are made of the same particles, then can we do miraculous things as well?"—Braden.

 

In Egypt's Nag Hammadi library (Early Gnostic Christian writings found sealed in a jar by a farmer in 1945), verse 48 says, "If two (thought and emotion) make peace with each other in this one house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move away, and it will move away." 

 

I figure 100 years isn't enough time to figure out the mysterious workings of life, but we can try.

 

The 100- year lifespan that we have come to accept is another thing Braden addressed. Why he wondered, is heart disease the leading cause of death in human beings?

 

The heart is the strongest muscle of our bodies. It begins to beat in an embryo even before the brain has made its entrance. And it doesn't need to replace its cells. It beats continually 100,000 times a day, day in and day out. Should it wear out around the 100-year mark?

 

If we believe some of the age spans recorded in The Bible, supposedly Noah lived over 900 years, and built the arc when he was strong and healthy at age 600, why the long ages then, and not now?

 

Braden proposes that the heart doesn't wear out. It "hurts" out. And it seems that around 100 years is its time limit. 

 

Since our subconscious mind records everything that happens to us during our lifetime, every frustration, injury, insult, the heart takes a beating. And you know how it is with human beings, the negative stuff sticks. (What? The ancients didn't have insults and injuries?)

 

However, if Braden is correct, we're really lovers at heart.

 

It's isn't time that stops the heart--- It's the hurts.

 

That is the reason for us to clean up our act.

 

"How?" you might ask.

 

Well, how should I know? 

 

Let's look into it.

 

Calling All Renaissance People

Which is it?

 

"Are we hopelessly fragile victims of events beyond our control, or are we powerful creators harboring dormant abilities that we are only beginning to understand?"

 "Both questions have the same answer.

 "Yes."—Greg Braden

 

On the one hand, we are told that we are frail beings who live in a world where things just happen. On the other hand, ancient and cherished spiritual traditions tell us there is a force that lives in every one of us that assists at the darkest moments.

 No wonder we are confused.

 Sometimes we think we make no impact on the world, and what we do doesn't make any difference.

Yet, think of it this way, leading-edge people do make a difference. 

Let's say that one person buying an electric car doesn't change the carbon imprint of the planet much. But carmakers look at what people are buying.

 

One person putting solar panels on their roof only impacts the world a smidgen. Still, solar panel makers listen and change their way of making solar cells and selling them.

 

Hospitals must have listened when women demanded to be awake and aware when they delivered their babies, and they proved that husbands wouldn't faint in the delivery room. While I was hauled off to a delivery room that looked like a surgical theater, my daughter gave birth in a bed with a drop-down foot and was never moved on a gurney when she was doubled over with contractions. 

 

Used to be only hippies were into organic foods—now look at the grocery stores.

 

Used to be, we thought in terms of this table is hard, solid. This glass of water is just that, a physical object. Now we look at things a little differently, like everything is made up of molecules and atoms and magical DNA strands. And that between it all is space.

 

Recently, I picked up Greg Braden's book, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief.

 

 Two assumptions that have been basic to science for the last 300 years have been:

 

1.     The space between "things" is empty. New discoveries now tell us that this is simply not true."

2.     "Our inner experiences of feeling and belief have no effect on the world beyond our bodies. This has been proven absolutely wrong as well."

 

"Paradigm-shattering experiments published in leading-edge, peer-reviewed journals ( ? ) (question mark mine) reveal that we're bathed in a field of intelligent energy that fills what used to be thought of as empty space."

 

The thought is that this field responds to us and thus rearranges itself in the presence of our heart-based feelings and beliefs.

 

"In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe—the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of the world"—Greg Braden.

Could this be true?

 I knew that scientists now put forth the idea that space isn't nothing. It has something in it. When I read Braden's statement that that something is where our thoughts, feelings, our very consciousness works, I was astounded.

 I am wondering if this time is a time of renaissance. (Rebirth) Remember how Florence, Italy pulled the world out of the dark ages and into a Humanitarian era?

 A competition to sculpt bronze doors for the Florence Baptistery did it. Lorenzo Ghiberti won the competition and became the arch-enemy of Brunelleschi, the architect of the Duomo, the Dome of Florence's The Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral.

 Brunelleschi won the Duomo competition with an egg trick. He asked the commission if they could make an egg stand on the table. They couldn't. He smashed the egg into two pieces, placed one piece on top of the other, and the egg stood.

 He used that principle to build the dome, a dome on a dome. And the builders began. At that time, there was no technology for constructing such a thing, so it was left unfinished until someone came up with a solution.

 It took 142 years to build.

And Brunelleschi had to endure Ghiberti as his co-superintendent. (With many fights, I might add.)

 

Ghiberti's bronze doors are an exercise in perspective, with items close, middle and far, including vanishing points, all in exquisite Frescoes. 

 I did not know there were three Davids in Florence, Italy. The oldest was sculpted by Donatello in 1400. It is of a prepubescent nude male and cast in bronze. It was a classical nude that a generation before would have thought to be shameful. 

Now it is considered art.

 Florence had moved art out of the churches and into rich people's courtyards.

 A celebration of life occurred. Art for art's sake. 

 What does it take to push people into a new paradigm?

 Could it be that is what's happening now? The trouble is, since we are in the thick of it, we can't see it?

 In 1962, President John F. Kennedy said, "We will send a man to the moon and bring him home safely by the end of the decade."

 "We choose to go to the moon," he said, "not because it's easy, but because it is hard."

Sure, we were in competition with the Russians, but Kennedy also invoked the pioneer spirit of Americans, emphasizing that we choose our destiny rather than have it chosen for us.

 The engineers, scientists, and mathematicians didn't know how to do what Kennedy requested. But they set out to do it.

 And they did.

 So, dear ones, if there is a space within objects that looks empty but is not, let's fill it with good stuff. That we heal this pandemic, that the world's people see that we are stewards of the planet, not takers from it, and that "Swirled Peas" do exist.

 Here’s what Obi thinks of my blog.