by Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking
Imagine a scene more than one hundred thousand years ago, the Neanderthal are quickly dwindling and homo sapiens are succumbing to increasing drought and climate fluctuations. On the Euro/African continents the human experiment teeters on the brink of extinction. Over the arctic regions of prehistoric North America and Siberia a train of atmospheric low pressure cells form and strengthen; warm moist air siphons northward on the back side of a late season high stalled near North America’s Atlantic coast. Drawn up into the bitter cold arctic air the moisture turns to snow. Over the planes of Greenland molecules of water crystallize and conjoin dropping and ascending or drifting as updrafts and outflows of storm gusts mindlessly propel the budding snowflakes.
Our lives are the out picturing of a million variables every day. World politics, local politics, family and career politics; some we participate in actively, some shape our experiences without our knowledge. From our experiences, we form our beliefs; ideas become planted in our minds. There is no grand plan at play, just an endless series of random reactions to unseen forces.
Earth’s climate patterns are changing and the northern latitudes are cooling. Snow falls regularly now and where it had melted away in summers past it now lingers into the next winter becoming buried under the new season’s deposit of random snowflakes. Millennia pass and the snows are compressed into massive ice formations that become rock grinding, land shaping machines.
Our Homo Sapiens ancestors empowered by their evolved larger brain have reasoned solutions to their impending doom. Humans are on the move seeking more hospitable lands and developing tools to work the lands in hand; agriculture provides year-round sustenance by allowing humans to make food where nature has been miserly in its provision. Humans recognize their insignificance in the overall bigger picture; surly some powerful super intellect is driving all the natural occurrences unfolding around them. They recognize a greater intelligence and ponder their relationship with it.
The ice spurred on by nothing more than simple physics moves downhill where it eventually encounters the sea. At land’s end the ice is suspended briefly between the familiar land and the promise of the sea. Released into the sea the ice assumes a new identity, becoming an ice berg. Its new-found freedom has a price however, and from its first moment the ice berg begins to pay with its very life.
Our intellects evolved along with our growing brains. We developed an ego, a sense of self that assigned value to our own existence and demanded justifications for our decisions and actions. The hunter who ranged into another tribe’s domain, or the farmer who siphoned off more than their share of water justified their actions by convincing themselves their families depended on them to do whatever it took to provide the means of survival. In time, mere survival evolved into surplus, and surplus into profit and the Lord saw the profit and said it was good! Well actually, it was the ego of humans who said it was good, but by this time mankind was convinced that it was the very picture of God, so any popular human endeavor was by extension endorsed by God. Human ego was supplanting human recognition of its Spiritual nature, a blindness that has altered human history and threatened our very existence.
Relative to the land locked glacier an ice berg is a free spirit travelling along its merry way; having its grand adventure. It is however, anything but free. The berg never chose a short life floating free in the warming ocean waters. It succumbed to conditions it had no control over, broke off and floated away into warmer waters.
We often succumb to our egos in a similar fashion, leaping into regrettable decisions seemingly due to forces beyond our control. We differ from the hapless iceberg though in that we have the power of choice. We are faced with millions of variables each day and fortunately most of them allow hard wired responses; we turn left at the intersection and go to work, order ice tea with lunch because we like it and its endless refills. A few times each day we really need to show up; our value is questioned, our principles challenged. These are the key choices; does someone else define us? Are principles negotiable? Answer: No to both questions.
Ironically, we really are the very picture of God, we have simply reversed the relationship in our common consciousness. God is not human. Humans are God. It may be easier if we change the name, many say Spirit or Higher Power; there are dozens of other names, but the nut is that this thing is infinite therefore we are of it, in its image. It does not know anger, shame, doubt or any other human condition except through us. It is Love.
All the misery and strife we encounter and observe is the result of our collective belief in duality; a world of us versus them, a vengeful god, and limited resources. One hundred thousand years ago, a snowflake fell onto an expanding ice field; an idea onto a fertile mind. The snowflake grew into a glacier, the glacier calved an iceberg; the idea grew into a belief, the belief became a definition of self.
The iceberg drifted until one fateful night its path led it into a collision with history. The arrogance of man in the form of a ship, indestructible, racing into its destiny. Was it the fire in the coal bunker, the nature of its steel, inadequate design or just bad luck? Or was it just because a snowflake fell one hundred thousand years ago, and set into motion a cascade of random events that hundreds of people are now cast into a watery grave?
Many of the ideas we plant grow into greatness, and some few lead us toward destruction. We are blessed with the knowledge of the Universe to guide us, and the power of choice to adjust our course before colliding with certain ruin. The iceberg survived that night eventually dissolving back into the sea ignorant of the chaos it spawned, unaffected and uncaring of the heartache and loss in its wake.
Spirit provides for us as we believe with identical engrossment, ignorant of its effect, only certain in its end; to give to us without question. Aware of our power we are responsible to guide it in harmony with Spirit; to choose love, as Spirit is love. In harmony, we sing, without it we screech. One hundred thousand years ago, we teetered on the edge of extinction and became aware of our potential. If it seems we are once again headed over a cliff, be still within the chaos and remember that we are more than snowflakes drifting in the wind.
Learn more about the power of ideas and how Spirit acts on your beliefs at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.