You are brilliant and the earth is hiring !
This fellow landed on my shoulder while I was reading
David Icke's book at home in Vilcabamba (see below)
'Everything is illusion, right?' I thought, 'but some illusions are just worth dying for'
- Pierre
"I was told that there was really only one thing I needed to know and these
words began to repeat over and over in my head: ‘Infinite Love is the only
truth - everything else is illusion'. I began to form a question in my thoughts:
‘You really mean everything?' But before the thought could
fully emerge, the voice interrupted. ‘Infinite Love is the only truth –
everything else is illusion; no buts, no exceptions, that's it'
The existence of one Infinite Consciousness is the only truth; everything else is
the imagination of that Consciousness – illusion. I should also define ‘Love'
as used in this book. It's not the ‘I love you darlin', fancy
a quick one?' version, or any other misrepresentations along the same lines.
Love in the context of Infinite Love is the balance of all. Infinite ‘Love'
is also infinite Intelligence, Infinite Knowing, Infinite Everything. Thus,
it is and it isn't; it is everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing.
It is All Possibility in perfect balance"
Excerpt
from "Infinite Love is the Only Truth – Everything Else is Illusion"
by David Icke – 2005
Below is a superb inspiring speech given by Paul Hawken and wish to share it with
you.
Paul Hawken is a longtime friend of CharityFocus, renowned entrepreneur, visionary
environmental activist, founder of Wiser Earth and author of many books -- most
recently Blessed Unrest. Last week, he was presented with an honorary doctorate
of humane letters by University of Portland, when he delivered this commencement
address to the class of 2009, May 3rd, 2009
**********************************
" When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple
short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering,
startling, and graceful." Boy, no pressure there.
But let's begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have
to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living
system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling
situation - but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can
refute that statement.
Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and
we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced
them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, and don't let the
earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster
Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue
that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with
no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food - but all that
is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case
you didn't bring lemon juice to de code it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE
BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn't afford to send any recruiters
or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming
jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's
the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required.
Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done,
and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always
the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't
pessimistic, you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working
to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you
haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing
to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance
of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So
much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better
description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action
is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge
camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a mult itude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations
are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation,
peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest
movement the world has ever seen.
Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse
concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the
job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides
hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides
in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople,
rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers,
students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors
without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United
States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator,
the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah
arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not
garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness
to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One
day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away
from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news
is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious,
even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were
the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of
those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except
on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown - Granville
Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood - and their goal was ridiculous on the face
of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving
each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement
was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists
as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they
would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in
history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know,
from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of
millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil
society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of
companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic
goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.
The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What
do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the
conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future
economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of
thousands of abandoned people without homes . We have failed bankers advising failed
regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only spec
ies on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells
us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and
sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail
out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present,
and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that
is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets
for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the
other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause
untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to
be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct
descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules
this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, a nd Bono. We are vastly
interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every
cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent
of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other
microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules
conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular
activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment,
a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone
ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe - exactly what Charles
Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was
a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably
minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment.
Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body
does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech
will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those
molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that
are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine
is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together
to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once
every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would
become religious overnight . We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by
the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple
dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years,
not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars
in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms
of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying
challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They
didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life
is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side.
You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is
the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn't make sense
to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on
it."
www.paulhawken.com/