Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 68

Soul Mates – the video

I’ve had a number of delightful comments on my Youtube video on Soul Mates (about 25,000 views so far. It’s also here on this webpage if you go to the Youtube tab).

One interesting thing that I have noticed, though, is that every so often someone will post “I don’t believe I have a soul mate” or “my soul mate left me years ago…” These are real issues and clearly they are matters of some power for the people most concerned.

The thing I’d like you to consider, though, is that if we tell ourselves a story about who we are we tend to become the story that we tell. If you say your soul mate left years ago then it tends to slam the door shut on any discussion or on seeing it any other way. if you believe that to be the truth then it simply will not be possible to see a soul mate if he or she comes to find you. Soul mates don’t come with labels or a sign that says, “This one is yours”. The universe doesn’t work that way.

The universe sends us exactly what we need, and then it asks us to work with that – because we are in a state of becoming, not a state of completion.

Your soul mate will be the one who helps you move towards being a better version of you; and you will do the same thing for your soul mate.

But we have to keep our eyes open.

Is it me, or….?

Is it me or are people spending less time looking at the glories of the web? Sure, we all need to find stuff out, and the web is a God-send for that. But more and more people I talk with say they tend to go to just the same 5 to 8 sites briefly each day (work email, ebay, second email, and so on) and then they stop.

I’ve no problem with that — surely it saves time — but are our worlds perhaps narrowing down, even as we have so much more opportunity at out fingers’ ends, ready for us at any moment?

We can, if we wish, skip most national events completely in this way. Is this what we’re doing?

The NRA

The NRA has 4 million members. In a country of 350 million that’s not many, yet they seem to wield a disproportionate amount of power.

So here are a few thoughts about this. I’m not anti-gun, but I am pro-people. To my mind the death toll is simply too great and so the non-sensate item (guns) will have to be controlled.

Gun owners make a lot of claims about needing to “defend” themselves. Yet almost no one looks at the statistics. How many people have legitimately used a gun to defend themselves in the last 12 months? And how does that stack up against the 12,000 gun murders annually racked up? I suspect that almost the only people who do actually use guns for defense are police officers. The defense argument is at best spurious for the average citizen.

Similarly the argument about needing guns to defend our liberties and rights is nonsense. Any government that aims to tyrannize a population is going to have tanks, bazookas, drones, helicopter gunships, and so on. Oh, and lots of troops. If anyone thinks a semi-automatic weapon is going to make the slightest dent in that sort of fire power he/she has been watching too many Rambo films. Such a person is delusional and should not be allowed to have any kind of weapon.

People do exist who want to resist our government, of course. They are extremists like Al Qaeda, which exists right here in the USA, and those folks just love that they can get their hands on assault rifles so easily. Plus they really truly deeply want to die for their cause. Oh, and they want to kill you, too. If we asked them they might well say they are simply a “well-regulated militia” exercising their first amendment rights. Is this what we want?

Then we have the mental health discussion. It’s worth noting that a person has to show that he or she is not sane in order to be denied gun ownership. The trouble is that as a normal factor we assume that all people are sane -often without any evidence. Yet we also know that 1 in 4 Americans will at some point in their lives seek medical help for depression – a formidable ailment that leads on occasions to violence, suicide, and suicide-by-police. That’s about 85 million people to think about. This does not take into account the total number of people who self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.

It would be nice if everyone were sensible, sane, and well balanced. But the numbers suggest otherwise. And so we may need to do something about this.

The Soul

Peruvian Goddess

On my shelf I have a small clay image of a Peruvian goddess I picked up thirty years ago on the plain between the temple of the sun and the temple of the moon at Chan Chan. It’s very ancient.

On the back of this small figure is a little nub, so one can hold it, or so the artist could hold it as he worked on the image. The underside of that nub reveals the thumbprint of the person who made the image about 1300 years ago.

This struck me as a potent symbol for who we are. The personality, the image we present to the world, is like that clay goddess. And yet the thing that creates that image is much bigger, like the artist behind the clay, who leaves an imprint on us. That’s our soul, which is connected to all that is creative in the universe.

Discontent and the body

In the mall the other day I couldn’t help overhearing some young women complaining about how dissatisfied they were with their hair, their looks, and their weight. They spoke loudly as if out-doing each other in their declarations about the severity of the struggles they faced.

So I wondered — if they had perfect bodies in every way, what would they talk about? Perhaps they’d find something else to be discontented about, so they could keep one-upping each other.

The point about our bodies is that they are imperfect. They change, they get tired, they don’t operate perfectly all the time. And that is their job. The body exists like this so we can easily recall that we are more than our bodies. We are souls, encased in bodies for now. We are eternal energies temporarily manifested in physical bodies so we can learn a few things, heal a few things, and be more loving.

Our bodies are imperfect specifically so we can be reminded about this soul dimension, every day. Be grateful for your body’s imperfections.

I Have a Dream, also

I’ll admit it. I dream of the day that there will be a learning community centered around putting the promptings of the heart first. Such a place would study literature (of course) and myth but not simply to pass exams. The aim would be to discuss what it means to be human and how we can be humane, and the aim would be to keep that kind of discussion going all the way through the community. Things like yoga and mindfulness would be part of the curriculum, as would caring for the underprivileged and awareness of how to work with our planet in a sustainable way. Everyone would be encouraged to make art, sing, dance and express themselves in non-verbal ways. Perhaps there could even be a farm so that we could all be more aware of where our food comes from, and perhaps the developmentally delayed and the autistic could be encouraged to work with the animals there, alongside everyone else.

Sure, there are a few places like this already – think of the Findhorn Community in Scotland which as been doing work like this for 50 years. But there aren’t enough of such places.

So next time you see me buy a lottery ticket don’t assume I’m simply eager to get rich quick. Perhaps I have a dream.

Christmas, Change, Ritual, and You

About five hundred years ago not much changed. Yes, the seasons changed, but the way people lived was, on the whole exactly the same as the ways their great-grandparents’ grandparents had lived. Seasonal festivities like Christmas and Easter marked the change of the calendar, but because the ceremonies remained pretty much the same they also honored the timelessness of tradition. This gave comfort to many.

Today everything changes very fast, and most of us scramble to keep up with the latest thing, the hottest Christmas toy, the most current fads. We are in the midst of so much continual alteration that ritual occasions (like Christmas and Hanukkah, Diwali and Ramadan) have a quaintness to them that embarrasses many younger folks in our culture in the West.

It’s time, I feel, to focus on what does not change. For Buddhists and Hindus those are the only things that actually are real. Love, life, compassion, the cycle of the seasons, death — that’s what Rituals ask us to remember. We can still do that, even in the midst of all the changes we encounter.

Christmas – see it again for the first time

For most of us the word Christmas conjures up a world of thoughts and memories, ranging from familial delight to crass commercialism run rampant (and most things in between).

There is another way to look at it, though. The birth of Jesus was overlaid on a pre-christian myth honoring the power of the Nature gods, who are still alive even in the depths of winter. These are powerful hints of how we can choose to respond. Christmas is a time of year associated with starting again, with new beginnings.

In that way it’s a celebration of the Innocent archetype. Not only is nature starting over, but we can, too. We can reconnect with the innocent, playful, forgiving part of ourselves, if we wish. We can become loving, forgiving, open and accepting. What greater gift is there?

Giving requires generosity of spirit; and receiving requires us to see the love in the offering. We can manage that — if we let go of our old selves.

Curry College

People sometimes ask me about my college teaching career. They say – “Hey, you’ve written all these books. Shouldn’t you be out there doing international workshops?” And perhaps they’re right. Perhaps I should be.

So far I’ve chosen not to be. I chose Curry College, not Harvard or Oxford, because I know that the old saying is true: You can always tell a Harvard man – you just can’t tell him very much.

People at those high level institutions are not good at listening, and they’re especially bad at listening to their own inner voices.

This is not the case at Curry College. Many of my students are eager to listen, desperate to hear. They have real soul hunger to motivate them.

Similarly with international workshops we have a related problem. They don’t last long. At Curry College I get to work with the same people for a semester, or two, or a whole four year stretch. It’s astounding what can happen in that time. The lessons of one day may be good, but all lessons need constant re-enforcement, for all of us.

I could go on, but I think the message is clear.

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture

Hockney’s pictures of trees mesmerize. His huge canvas at the Royal Academy, made up of several hundred smaller canvases, speak to us of how we see the larger picture, but we see it in small chunks as our eyes move across whatever we look at. Those trees, though! Stark, bare, monumental, they tell us about the power of nature we so routinely overlook. Trees that grow slower than we do, live longer, stand more extreme circumstances. We are left in awe of such ordinary miracles…. And perhaps that’s the point.