Whether or not, weather

It was bright and sunny this morning, clear sky, with temperature about 66. Very nice, the Earth inviting me out for a meet and greet. I was able to relax and just take in the ambiance. I checked the weather forecast, and it said 30% chance of rain this evening, about 8pm.

So now, at 3:20pm, there is thunder and more pronounced cloud cover. I can feel the air pressure has dropped a bit, so there may be rain moving in. So much for doppler radar and the Weather Channel. Never a dull moment, I suppose.

I was writing earlier, and then reflecting, on a concept that’s taking root in me. It has to do with some old ways of looking at things, and changing my perceptions. These are more esoteric concepts, I suppose, but I am struck by how the new perceptions change my spiritual energy.

The first concept has to do with gratitude. I learned a while ago that I had the wrong notion of gratitude, or at least one that wasn’t terribly productive. My concept for quite a long time was that if something good happened, something beneficial, you were grateful. You said thank you to whoever and whatever had graced you with such gift, and you moved on. You remembered the grace, the blessing, however you named it, but you took it in stride and kept going, possibly with a little humility or even humbleness.

I was introduced to the more energetic concept of being grateful for something you wanted to manifest before it was apparent. You expressed gratitude for that abundance you were asking for, the new job you wanted, the new relationship you wished, and spun your energy as though you already had it. By generating the energy of joy and happiness and gratitude for the manifestation of the desired outcome, you would attract the energetic circumstances that matched that, and thereby manifest the outcome in real time.

Or something like that. I kind of know what I’m talking about, and it kind of makes sense to me, so just go with me here.

Anyway, that concept of manifesting the energy prior to the reality is quirky for me, because I’m a bloody Capricorn and we goats need to know where we’re going before we get there. So, that concept of energetic response prior to reality is challenging, and is totally an act of faith. Leap and the net will appear kind of thing. Hmm. That might take a second.

So, I’m working on that. I still want this job that I’ve applied for, still feel like it’s the job for me, but still have not heard a word from the employer. When I think about having that job, and what comes with it – like healthcare benefits – my energy definitely goes up a notch. I have to keep my energy there, and not let it dribble down into all the times I thought something was destined to be mine, only to have it evaporate into the ether.

When something does NOT manifest, should I accept that I have somehow failed at keeping my energetic output in the right place? Or did someone else want or need the opportunity more? Or was I simply wrong in believing the opportunity was perfect for me and that I truly wanted it to manifest? Maybe I’m just overthinking the whole thing.

This is kind of how it goes when I’m in my head, which is most of the time. One day, something tangible is going to shoot out of the back of my skull and run off under its own power, signifying actual overload of the finite capacity of my brain for useless thoughts and needless hypothetical queries. But I digress.

The other shift in perception has to do with something I am thinking stemmed from my early Christian upbringing. It’s the concept that was taught concerning bestowal of indulgence, grace, answers to prayers. The visual and verbal concept always included praying up to the heavens, and asking for something to come down to you. From above, so below. Please send down your grace. Bestow upon me down here on the Earthly plane. And so on.

What I’ve been toying with lately, though, is coming from my obsession with this volcano in Iceland. The volcano has been actively erupting for 47 days now, and showing no signs of stopping. When it first began, the lava spray came from deep within the cone, and shot upward several thousand feet, on a continuous basis. It was a spectacular display of molten lava spit out from a pool of boiling rocks and pieces of the Earth’s crust, in a red hot puree from deep down in the planet’s core.

After more than thirty days, however, the pattern changed. Now, the lava spray pulses, about once every 10-15 minutes, in a shorter but nontheless spectacular spray of red hot lava. Some of the expert chat has speculated this means the lava flow deep in the Earth is continuous, so after a fountain has sprayed upward, the pressure in the vertical lava tubes is mitigated. Because the flow continues, however, the tubes fill up and the pressure builds again and then it must be released. Again. Repeat. And so it goes, on and on and on.

This volcano is apparently produced as a result of tectonic plates moving apart. The lava is being produced deep in the Earth to move up and fill that gap. Iceland is apparently located on a rift between the plates, and that’s why there are so many volcanoes there. At least I believe that’s what I heard. Regardless, it’s a fascinating mechanism and a fascinating process to watch.

So, here’s where it comes into focus for me. That incredible energy that I see jettisoning millions of pounds of crushed and molten rock from inside the volcanic core is not coming down from above. That energy that can move things, reshape things, destroy things and build new things is coming from below, and pushed up and above. Not the other way around.

So, the whole concept of the energy of our lives, our life force, has generally been taught as something that comes from above, that exists above and then descends below. Maybe at least some of the life energy bubbles up from beneath us. Maybe the life force originates below, at the core, and ascends. That feels more empowering, less powerless.

Perhaps I am closer to Source than I ever dreamed. Perhaps I am more worthy of interacting with Source than I thought possible, maybe it’s closer to me, and more closely related to me, that I have believed in the past.

It’s interesting that our Christian vision of the after life involves Heave, which is above, and Hell, which is below. Heaven is your destination if you’ve led a good life, while Hell is the nether world, and your destination if you’ve not led a good life. That, of course, is the kids version of the afterlife, but that’s what I was raised on. No wonder I was confused.

These days, I don’t believe Heaven and Hell are quite so simple, and possibly exist only as part of the mythological world created in the Bible to explain how and why we got here. The inhabitants of Heaven were supernatural beings, of infinite good. Hell was also inhabited by supernatural beings, inherently evil. So be a very good child, and follow the Commandments, and don’t talk back to your parents or the teachers, and you will go to Heaven when you die. As someone else has pointed out today, why must one wait until death? Is Earth but an incubation period? If so, that design plan needs a bit of tweaking.

So, what the heck is this life on Earth, then? Is it the proving ground for something else? If so, why not let us in on the bigger picture? Perhaps I would be less inclined toward misery if I knew for sure this was but a phase of my development. Maybe I’d be more prone to experiment and experience new things, different ways of looking at things, if I knew I would not permanently cease to be. Even if I wasn’t assured to return to exactly where I departed, but knew that i would play some part in a continuing journey, I might handle things a little differently.

Or how about this? If life on Earth is what amounts to cosmological elementary school, how about some field trips? How about a break from the routine, just to show us what’s possible? Or better yet, show us what some other beings have come up with. This is why I go to my faith community’s annual “convention”, where they handle business matters. More important that business of the larger non-governing body, however, is gathering a few thousand people who share (mostly) a similar outlook on faith, on community, on humanity. I have found that to be energizing, and thought expanding; exposure to new ideas and new voices is essential to creativity and faith development.

I find the same idea of expanding one’s horizons true in the recovery community as well. I need a home base, and I get that from my regular groups and my “home group”, where I establish familiar contacts and areas of responsibility for keeping the meeting going. But I have to venture out to hear other people, see different ways of doing the same thing, experience different perspectives. It’s like travel – see the world, meet new people, eat different food. Free your mind.

So, at the very least, perhaps life on Earth is populated by the proverbial monkeys with typewriters who will eventually produce a Shakespearean drama. Maybe. Or maybe we’re a bunch of kindergartners who eventually grow out of our shoes and clothes and can be trusted with sharp scissors. I would say if that’s the case, we’re showing a bit of developmental challenge.

Who in their right mind would possibly think following in the footsteps of a leader who has failed time after time would be a productive course of progress? Who in their right mind would possibly think loyalty to a liar, a grifter, and somebody who actually denies the reality of a disease that has killed more than half a million people? Those people are not just playing dead, they are really dead. Not from the flu, not from something they did to bring something on themselves, not from their religious beliefs. They are dead because a virus propagated in their respiratory systems and overwhelmed their bodies. An organic process that doesn’t know where it came from, nor care where it winds up.

When someone tells a lie, and is caught in it, they usually have the good sense to be at least a bit embarrassed, and stop perpetuating the false assertions. A liar that responds by questioning the accepted and contradictory truth is nearly impossible to deal with. Contending that truth is variable is dangerous. That leaves us with questioning the nature of truth, not just what is true in any particular circumstance, but what is truth itself?

Unfortunately, this is where we are, debating the existence of truth itself. Most of us do not know quite what to do with this. I would contend that truth, as a component of reality, is immutable, inherent in the fabric of the Universe. It is something that can be replicated and duplicated by impartial evidence, tangible evidence. If we accept that 2 plus 2 is equal to 4, what is 2? Is 2 simply whatever fits my purpose at a given moment? If we refuse to agree on 2 as a unit that is composed of one single unit and another single unit, then 2 becomes totally irrelevant. Anything based on 2 becomes irrelevant and totally subject to perception. Societies and nations would collapse, because we’d have no basis of agreement on anything. Maybe 2 plus 2 is equivalent to 6 when you’re in the Southern hemisphere, and 19 when you’re in the Northern hemisphere. And only on Tuesdays, if we can agree which point in the Sun’s orbit is Tuesday.

This is much the same nonsense as the flat-Earth theory. We have photos and still images from space, we have laws of physics that affirm we are not a flat linear space, but still we have a group of people who contend that evidence is false and refutable. I have yet to see anything from their postulate that affirms their position, not anything from any other group that successfully disproves that Earth is essentially functioning as a round mass that rotates on a slightly tilted axis. Even if I were doubtful of that, I fail to comprehend what acceptance of a flat-Earth model does for us, or how it explains things like magnetic fields and poles. But, it’s a free country, I suppose so they’re welcome to believe whatever they want to. Bless their hearts.

Denying things agreed upon by scientific fact is like deciding general mathematical rules are negotiable. Like deciding that homo sapiens are not part of the animal kingdom, or that our brains are not located in our heads (although for some people who spout nonsense in the news these days, I might entertain that idea). Deciding that that science is political is devastating to society as a whole. It destroys faith and trust in the science of … things we don’t understand, but have no better explanation for than what science has to offer.

Dissidence is to be admired, except when it’s dissidence for the sake of dissidence, when it’s dissidence just to hear yourself talk. There are an awful lot of people who just like to hear themselves talk, and enjoy the attention that yields. Yakking about some mythical online personality who may or may not be real but who has top-secret security clearance and knows mysterious inner workings of the government is just that – yakking. Show me. Show me this person. Show me the evidence of anything they have said or warned about that has proven to be true. Show me the dead bodies of children in a pizza parlor where they have been consumed by high ranking politicians. Show me, and I might believe. Otherwise, this is a pile of stinky crap.

When I was a kid, we had to get certain vaccines to be allowed to go to school. No vaccine – no school. The law said you had to go to school, so to go to school you had to get the vaccine. We just did it. And this was after Tuskegee and all kinds of evil sadistic experiments perpetrated on communities of color back in the day. We did the vaccines, we went to school, we followed the rules. And we survived that, and even that medieval inquisition-grade torturous playground equipment that took chunks out of us at every recess period. We ate red meat, and fried food, and we did just fine. So get a grip, people.

My aunt had polio. She was in an iron lung when she was in her 20s, and lived the rest of her life in a wheelchair. If she’d been able to get a vaccine to change that, she would have been grateful to do so. I don’t remember anybody jumping up and down to decline vaccinations because God was going to cure them. It was pretty well understood that God put the vaccine on Earth to help us, so just get the damned shot already. And we did.

So now, the incidence of polio, and measles, and mumps, and whooping cough is greatly reduced. The incidence of influenza is also greatly reduced, although not eradicated. Most people agree, however, that we’re better off with a flu vaccine than without one. Again, get the damned shot already.

I sometime believe the only reason there is so much resistance to the COVID vaccine right now is that people want to be right. A lot of those folks bought into the lie that COVID is a lie, that it’s a political ruse, that the vaccine was developed for political reasons and will deposit a microchip into people who receive it. So they need to make the case for illegal tracking devices and other mind-altering stuff in the vaccine. Alrighty then. As has been pointed out just about everywhere, if you have a cell phone, you are being tracked. If you have a GPS, you’re being tracked. Nobody has a reason to add a microchip to your bloodstream. Your butt is already on the grid, in neon colors. And if there’s mind-altering stuff in the vaccine, I say bring it on. We can use all the help we can get.

So, I am back to the change in my perception about where life force, and Source energy, is coming from. I am leaning toward the image of it rising from deep within the Earth, from deep within ourselves, and rising up. Rising up through our spines, and our energy centers, as some of the ancients spoke of as kundalini energy. That’s where I’m feeling a resonance right now, and it feels stronger than having a celestial lightning bolt from the heavens bop me on the head.

I have to say this is my premise today, it may not be tomorrow. I also have to say this really does not make light of other ways to look at the issue of where and how Source energy originates. We’ll never know the answer to that, and we’ll never understand it if we did. In many ways, it doesn’t matter, because it just..is. Perceiving of energy rising vs. energy descending does not mean one concept is better than the other, or that yet another concept is not possible. It just means that my relationship to it, here in my little pixel in my little corner of the Universe, is resonating a bit differently, and that’s all.

Of course, with my luck, that difference in resonance could be the blip that raises an alarm flag somewhere on the console of the dark overlord who has been waiting for a signal to attack Earth. But, I think too much of myself sometimes.