Greetings all!

I have a passion for taking pictures of certain things or from certain perspectives. Shadows are one. I often take my shadow picture. It feels like that’s how I know I’m in 3D, how I have a physical presence. Another one is trees. I look for the faces in the trees. I look for the roots. I look for the hollow places which are entrances for the inner or other worlds. This is one of my tree pictures that the face or at least one of them is pretty obvious to me. What was surprising is that the homeowner had never really looked at or seen the faces. It reminds me how easily we are unconscious or unaware of all the expressions of creation.

Today’s reflection comes from a note I wrote November 22, 2021. There I go with these dusty notes on my work table. And now they are being seen, reviewed and released. This sounds and feels so much like what is happening across the Earth and humanity currently. So here goes:

“Cruelty is weakness. Self-cruelty, animal cruelty, torture. All of this and more. This is blasphemy. This is sin. This is profane. This is taking the name or nature of God, The Lord, the Law, in vain. This is placing Gods before the the Source, God. Idol Worship.”

Wow… That’s how I felt when I found this and read it. Wow. What was on my mind at that time I wonder? What happened almost two years ago that had me responding and reacting this way. As always these notes I made intrigue me. When I assess my state of mind now I am intrigued on my use of certain terms. God…Gods… I know that how I was feeling and defining this term alone has shifted dramatically in just the past few months let alone how I meant it back then… Back then, like that was so terribly long ago. I’m writing this in a daze of wonder on how much each of us can and has shifted in these past few years. If you have resisted the changes, I imagine you are enduring anxiety and depression that’s leaving you exhausted and fearful. If you have embraced, even a little, the changes and shifts, I imagine you are experiencing some anxiety and depression, however, it fades away as you remember to enjoy life and living. I do a little of both.

What I ask you to focus on this time is how do some of these words leave you feeling? God? Gods? Idol Worship? and the big one, Blasphemy?

If you were like so many of us, the prevailing religious training of the day gives you one paradigm within which you define and understand these terms. What if you could expand that and see these elements, energies, words, as the operate in your daily living. What is your nature? This is always in development, in cycles, like the natural world seasons. And even if you know this is Spring, Summer is next, followed by Autumn and Winter, none of these seasons will be this year like they were last year or as they will be in the coming years. Yet we expect them to fit within our learned paradigms so we can continue to live unconcsciously or semi-conscious at best. When something or someone is not fitting into your paradigms our learned response is often fear-based, which means we have a greater chance of being or becoming cruel. Cruelty is often learned as well. It’s so easy to say children are cruel but i venture to say children, like adults, give what they got. Children are cruel because the adults in their lives are cruel and we know they these adults are often just reproducing the patterns they caught, were taught. So, I can take some more time to look at this behavior, cruel. Many times as children or even as adults we define discipline as being cruel. Yet discipline is what occurs at every level of the physical world. Gravity, disciplines us. Inertia disciplines us. Chemistry disciplines us. Each of these sciences reminds us of what we can and cannot do as well as what the results will be of our actions. So learning and being disciplined allows for greater positive outcomes. It seems generally.

Well, I feel another rabbit hole opening so I’m going to stop now. My thoughts remain that when we are cruel with ourselves, or any other living organism, there is fear at the base of it. Fear; False Evidence Appearing Real. The presence of fear indicates the absence of love; the absence of faith. When you find yourself feeling cruel or being cruel and unnecessarily harsh to yourself or others, look for what is causing you to be afraid and bring it to your inner faith and love space. It’s there. You still have it. Just sit for a bit and let it show itself again.

Peace & Blessings,

Philana