Embracing Endeavour

The Space Shuttle Endeavour took to the skies in a series of flyovers this week to travel from Florida to its final home in Los Angeles.  Last night a friend sent me a note asking why people were making such a big deal about it. 

This was my response:

On behalf of the entire human spaceflight program I'll take it as a compliment that there are those who have come to view putting humans into space as so commonplace as to be yawnworthy.  And certainly we've 'been there, done that' long enough with the Shuttle that much of its initial gee whiz techno-novelty has long ago worn off. So on that level perhaps it is nothing special anymore.

But I think people are perceiving and reacting to it on entirely different levels than that. There are many who recognize and take a great deal of national or just plain human pride in the amazing technical accomplishment it was, and who realize that in spite of the seeming mundaneness of launching people into space these days it's anything but simple and safe and easy even after all these years.

There are those who have a general interest in atmospheric aviation and in space travel who still marvel at the fact that we were able to marry the two and develop a vehicle capable of flight in both realms.

And there are those who appreciate the fact that NASA has returned many dollars in advances in technology for every dollar we've spent in every major space program we've undertaken from day one. From the Apollo program alone, I think you'll typically hear quoted that we returned $8 on every $1 invested in that program in the form of new products, new technologies, new innovative processes, etc. Although I don't know the exact numbers I suspect the return has been similar for our other human spaceflight programs.

More importantly than those things though, I believe the public reaction now is more about what Endeavour represents or symbolizes. People connected so strongly to the sight of the Shuttle launching, or now in its final flyover, because it gave form and energy to our individual and collective drives to always be reaching and growing, expanding our horizons and surpassing our current limits, facing and overcoming huge challenges of all sorts in pursuit of a shared yearning to go beyond. Especially during difficult times here on earth it gave us hope, it gave us a sense that we could still join together and do great things, overcome obstacles, and reach the stars. It brought us together in triumph with each successful launch, and it brought us together again in tragedy in the heartwrenching losses of Challenger and Columbia and their crews. Through it all it reminded us of our shared humanity and interconnectedness.  Deep down I think we all yearn to live more consciously from that place, and with every new mission the Shuttle Program enabled us to feel that more fully together.  

So as Endeavour came back to earth for the last time when it landed in Los Angeles, it wrote the final chapter in the story of an incredible, inspiring, transforming human venture. It was built and operated by the United States but it carried the hopes and dreams and excitement of people all over the world each time it launched and undertook a new mission. It flew high above us and sent back images of a gorgeous planet, one that no longer reflected any artificial political boundaries, and allowed us all to more deeply see and feel our true interrelationship with each other and with our home.

It is these things that I believe people were feeling and reacting to when they saw Endeavour in all her airborne majesty soaring over them one last time, almost close enough to embrace in their arms as they'd embraced her and her mission in their hearts for so many years.  She and her siblings were never just carriers of cargo and crew.  With each mission they also carried our collective human spirit, a spirit of exploration and of unity that transcended any lesser differences we may have been feeling among ourselves.

She's handing off the torch now, and we will continue to experience these same sorts of feelings and rewards through the International Space Station program. Then after it's gone, or perhaps even before, there will be another space program, although its form and specific mission are not yet defined.  But it will come. It must. Because the human spirit is alive and well and is compelled to find expression in ways big and small, universal and personal.

So look up into the night sky when the ISS is flying over and allow yourself to be immersed in that same sense of wonder and oneness that others felt while watching Endeavour fly over this week. And then look back down, at your family, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your fellow citizens, and at all the world around you and the planet we live on, and realize that while one big high visibility space program may have just ended, we are still blessed with endless opportunities in every day, in every moment, to reach out together, to explore, to go beyond our current limitations, and to more deeply and fully connect with all of life.

Godspeed, one and all.

Leia Mais…

There but for the Grace of God Go I

We've all heard this sentence before, and many of us have probably said or at least thought it in response to different scenes we encounter, maybe like the one below.

I think because it uses words like "God" and "grace" people tend to think it's some sort of hgh-minded, spiritually mature thing to say.  I'll bet though that most of them, like me, haven't ever really stopped to consider the deeper implications of it.

It only recently struck me how totally inaccurate, degrading, and separating that mindset is.  I can see nothing about it that's enlightened or aligned with spiritual truth.  When I say or think that sentence, it basically says, "I sure am glad I'm not that guy." Not only that, but it also suggests that I'm somehow deserving of God's grace while the other person isn't.  And finally it emphasizes the separation and differences between myself and the other person.  These are hardly values and perspectives of an enlightened spirit with a truly love-based relationship with God/Spirit/Source/etc.

From the perspective of oneness or connectedness, a more accurate restating of the sentence might be, "There with him and God am I."  Instead of celebrating the fact that I don't share someone else's condition, I remember and respond from my true nature when I acknowledge the shared humanity that links us and the shared spirit that indwells us all.  This then leads to an entirely different response than the original statement, motivating more positive healing action and less indifference and self-focus.

Leia Mais…

Climate Change or Consciousness Change?

I got involved in an online discussion ostensibly about climate change, whether it's real or not, etc. the other day and offered a couple of posts to that discussion that I thought I'd repeat here since the theme of interconnectedness ran fairly strongly through them.  Any time someone wants to debate the validity of global warming I end up feeling like they're missing the point.  So I offer this as a possible alternate way of approaching the issue, and other related issues dealing with the various major changes we're now in as a society and a planet...

The simple fact of the matter is that the world is changing. Rapidly. And for the worse in a lot of ways. It's changing physically, socially, economically, and in just about any other way you can define, at a pace we haven't experienced before. We all know it. We all feel it, see it, sense it, experience it, and are unsettled by it. It's changing in ways that threaten the lives and well being of virtually every creature on the planet to one degree or another, and those degrees (no global warming pun intended) are only going to keep ratcheting upward as long as all we do is sit here arguing with each other about whether it's really happening and who or what's responsible for it.

Change is unsettling, especially big change and change we aren't in full control of or don't really understand. And I think there is a large subset of the population that, when faced with such conditions, wants to beat a hasty and fear-driven retreat back to the old days, the old ways, when we couldn't see where the road was leading yet so it was okay to remain on it. It's a natural response, but it's one that we can't afford to indulge in now I think.

We are into the 6th mass extinction in the history of life on this planet now, and the first caused by man. That in and of itself should be indication enough that we can't keep proceeding down, or retreating down, the well-worn path of ever-increasing mass consumption and environmentally destructive fossil fuel-based energy production. Have our lifestyle and energy consumption choices had an effect on this situation? Of course they have. How could they not, given their scales? The degree to which one choice or another has contributed to this situation is essentially irrelevant at this point.

To me, given the dominion we exercise over the other life forms and affairs of this planet, and given the amount of impact the human footprint has on the condition of the planet, we must also now more fully accept our great shared responsibility for stewardship of the planet and all its inhabitants. The planet can no longer exist first and foremost to serve us, with our insatiable hunger for consumption and immediate personal gratification and our abhorrence of the least bit of personal discomfort or sacrifice, or relatively soon none of us will remain in existence. We must now exist to serve the planet. And we have to start there, standing together on the common ground of commitment to that perspective, before any of these other discussions can do anything but drive deeper wedges between us at a time when we need to be uniting as one global family.

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Once past that milestone, "what can we do about it?" becomes the central question, after we've all agreed we want and need to do something about any of these major changes and once we've come to see that these are global, not national, issues, and they'll require coordinated global responses from all of us acting together.

The whole 'us vs. them' mindset must be transcended, especially when it's devolved to the remarkably juvenile level that it has with respect to our own country's political environment. I think that as a country we can start by really challenging that and overcoming it so that we can begin to take effective action together. Then I'd suggest we also apply that change to how we view other countries, and stop waiting for smaller, poorer nations who have contributed the least to the issues to take the lead in making changes to address those issues. We as a nation can also commit to ending our exploitation and domination of those less devleoped nations in all the ways that we historically have in service of our own self-interest, economically, militarily, and politically,. And we can all stop living from the mindset that growth for the sake of growth is the ultimate purpose and goal of all life and must remain the bottom line driver for all nations. I saw a great quote by Edward Abbey the other day - "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."  The fact that we in this country have lived from that mindset for so long, and are finally becoming more aware of the cost of doing so, doesn't mean that we and other nations can't now learn from that and shift to a more sustainable and more highly evolved way of being.

And we can, and indeed must, begin to take personal responsibility and action as individuals first and foremost. Maybe retrofitting one's home to full solar power isn't economically feasible for most of us now. But we can commit to consistently doing the little things first, like recycling and reusing all that we can, attending local discussion forums to explore local ways of making positive change together, transcending old rigid political ideologies in favor of supporting candidates and ideas that we believe will act in the greater good to address these issues effectively, and learning to live a life of service to others much more consciously and fully in our own lives. And as we do these things, the change we seek and need will begin within each of us, it will develop in others too and solidify locally, it will affect things more regionally, then nationally, and then globally. It has to start with personal transformation and commitment though I think. And as others have argued, I too think faith is hugely important, but faith without action is just a way of trying to relieve ourselves of any personal responsibility or internal conflict over our part in perpetuating the issues.

Finally, I think whether we act or not, whether we end up on the extinction list too or not, the universe will continue onward, with or without us humans. But we are the only beings, on this planet anyway, who have the power to consciously shape our own evolution and that of the planet as a whole. And with that unique gift and power I think we have a tremendous opportunity to further our own individual and collective development if we choose to actively face the challenges before us now. Or we can choose to sit back and assume that somehow it'll all work out and basically do nothing. But what a profound waste that would be of this tremendous opportunity.

Leia Mais…

It's Scientific

Check out this article in the Atlantic magazine (it's a short article) that relates a sense of connectedness to well-being and longevity...

 

The Need to Feel Connected

Leia Mais…

When Words Get In The Way

My dear precious boy Bogey passed on to the next stage of his existence this past Friday. He was an amazing, wonderful partner and friend and I miss him greatly.  I've written elsewhere about him and our time together; what I want to write about here is a lesson he helped me learn about true connectedness in the time leading up to his passing.

For years while we were together I'd talk to him about all kinds of things.  Of course he didn't understand most of the words (but he was very clear about the meanings of "treat" and "walk" and "ride").  But somehow it felt important that they all be said, as a means of helping to reinforce the connection between us.  Maybe in that sense they were more meaningful to me than they were to him, but I think they helped let him know he was important to me and that I cared about him and about our relationship enough to focus on him and communicate with him.

As the end drew near for our time together, I found myself pressing more and more to find just the right words to try and tell him how special he'd always been to me, how we'd meet up again someday on a trail by a lake full of ducks, how he'd always be in my heart.  What I think I was trying to do was to make as certain as I could that our connection was fortified as much as possible, so that nothing would break it as he crossed the threshold he was facing.  The more I tried to find all the right words though, the more I sensed my frustration and concern mounting that maybe I should try to say it all better, or more often, or in some different way, or that maybe I was forgetting to say something important.

Then one night just a couple of days before his passing, he stumbled into the family room where I was lying on the floor and lay down next to me, his eyes looking directly into mine.  And in that moment I felt him say, without making a sound, everything I'd been so clumsily trying to put into words.  I felt like he was letting me know that he knew, and that it was all okay.  Whatever happened, the love and the bond between us would remain. 

We use words in life to convey thoughts and express emotions, as one way of connecting our minds and hearts.  But ultimately we are all already connected, and there comes a point where words are just no longer necessary and even become distractions from that reality.  The connection of the heart that we all share deep down needs no words to establish or maintain it when we strip away all the things that make us feel separate and we return to our essence.  That connection is already and always perfect and whole without any words or other devices required on our part.

With attention and effort, we can choose to live consciously from that place of awareness of our oneness with all and enjoy a deep, rich sense of connection throughout our lives.  And anytime we forget that and get all caught up being egos exchanging words and feeling separate from each other, we need only look to our dogs to remind us of who we really are and what really matters in life. 

Leia Mais…

A World Once Hidden

This video pretty much says it all...

Welcome to a world once hidden from you

Enjoy and embrace!

Leia Mais…

Daily Word

Today's Daily Word (from www.dailyword.com) speaks from an awareness of our interconnectedness and how that awareness guides our interactions as we participate in community with each other.

Community

 

I am a beneficial presence in my community.

 

I am often part of a group - my family, colleagues at work, fellow passengers on a plane or subway, or neighbors at the local store. In every situation, I create community as I share and seek to discover the common threads that weave us together. 

I commit to being a beneficial presence in my community. I make connections and demonstrate the qualities I wish to experience. When I see love, I reflect it back. When I see sadness or anger, I embrace the individuals with compassion. When I see conflict or confusion, I center myself in the calm peace of God within so that I may be divinely guided to the right words and actions. My community is uplifted as I act with peace and love.

I think this is a great perspective to start the new year with. I'm grateful for every member of our community of humanity, for the awareness of our interconnection, and for the opportunity to live in loving service to all.  In this new year, may we all embrace the awareness that We Are All One and respond with love and compassion to this awareness in each of our interactions.

Leia Mais…