Lynn Wilson Astrology

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

What a profound statement. As this earth day has come and gone I’ve been thinking about the connection between our treatment of our environment and of other people on this tiny planet. While I am occasionally tempted to surrender to feelings of despair I take hope in the ways that nature heals herself. Watching flowers blossom in the desert after a rain, watching what’s left of a tree send out shoots and form new branches after being cut down, seeing grass sprout up in sidewalk cracks, knowing that people can survive childhoods defined by abuse and ignorance, and mature into loving compassionate adults; all these things offer reason to hope. I’ve recently read At Hell’s Gate by Claude Anshin Thomas and recommend it for a number of reasons. Thomas is a Vietnam veteran turned peace pilgrim and his life story is both personal and universal. In a previous newsletter I mentioned Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child in which she posits that German family structure and culture provided the conditions that allowed the holocaust to happen. Thomas makes the same observation in his book in regard to our society in the US. Many of our parents survived the depression and World War II and were never provided with a means of healing those wounds, which were passed on to the next generation. Thomas says that the authoritarian, abusive family structure he experienced led him to accept the shaming tactics used in military training as a natural thing. In reading this book it becomes very easy to see why soldiers would abuse prisoners as they have at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and in Afghanistan. It’s a logical extension of a training that teaches people to see another race as the enemy. And it’s the same separatist thinking that allows us to pollute our streams and air to the point where asthma, cancer, and ADD/ADHD and other thinking disorders, are increasingly common. At the same time Thomas’s story offers a powerful message of healing for all of us. After years of suffering addiction, alcoholism and homelessness (the figures on the number of Vietnam veterans who suffer from these problems is overwhelming) he turned to the Vietnamese people, and to Thich Nhat Hahn, in order to heal himself. He has since gone on to create his own foundation (www.zaltho.org) and travels the world spreading a message of healing and hope through conflict resolution.

I see a direct correlation between disregard of the earth and violence toward other cultures. Anytime we separate ourselves from nature or from other people we run the risk of acting in an unconscious, destructive way. We allow ourselves to feel “better than” or “justified” in our actions. In describing his spiritual practice Thomas says “It is not possible to live in mindfulness and destroy life.” For those who would like a primer in mindfulness practice I recommend any of Thich Nhat Hahn’s books. They are beautifully and simply written and offer numerous very simple suggestions for examining our habitual ways of interacting with ourselves and with the world. There are many in our world working for peace, whether through environmental activism, through the political process, or through personal healing. Dennis Kucinich has had the courage to run for President on a platform of peace and fair treatment of labor. He is still in Congress and is gaining more support and recognition for his work.

The following groups are working hard to educate us about environmental issues:

• NRDC
• Wilderness.net
• Earth Watch
• Environmental Defense is a group of lawyers taking action to protect the environment. GlobalMindshift.org provides a forum, with exercises, for stretching our comfort zones in this direction. And I heartily recommend CenterChange.org for those of you who have an interest in the UFO phenomenon. Even here it is only our limited mind set that keeps us from accepting evidence of intelligent life beyond earth. Though I was very disappointed in the lack of intelligent inquiry provided in Peter Jennings’ ABC special on UFO’s, at least he brought the discussion into the mainstream.

What If

This month’s thoughtful What If? Comes from Perch Ducote, author of The Soul of Communication: Communication for a New Era.

What if we realized that the way we listen to others shapes them like a piece of clay?