In this issue we have a great article about the plastic bag, often called the ‘national flower’ here in South Africa! I realised when I was reading it that the whole culture of plastic, and bags in particular, mirror so perfectly the state we have got ourselves into. It appears that the vast majority of people don’t think twice about whether to take a plastic bag or not. If it is going for free, they just take it.
I can’t remember last when I was asked if I would like a bag, it just gets pulled out from under the counter and in goes the stuff, and when I tell them “I don’t do plastic bags, there are enough on planet earth”“, while pulling out my cotton one, they look at me squiff as if I have lost the plot, “but it is for free” they say!
Hardly “for free” I would say! We just have to read about the Minke whale which washed up on a beach in Normandy with 800 kilograms of plastic in its intestines to realise that they are not “for free”! Some people avoid them because of the cost involved, but very few are motivated by the fact that they are a huge pollution hazard.
The words used to describe them by Matthew Carmichael… “convenient, flimsy, cynical, manipulative, wasteful and DEADLY”, could just as well be applied to the state of our culture’s overall consciousness. It’s more often than not about the “quick fix” and forget about the consequences, and this applies to virtually every facet of or our existence. I wonder what will get it to change? Maybe when the morphogenic field gets thick enough with love for our planet and everything that lives on her, people will wake up and want to live a harmless life?
I stopped reading newspapers and watching TV (especially the news) a couple of years ago, and this has impacted so positively on my life it is amazing! I know very little about the rapes, the murders, the frauds, the thieves, or the corruption that is being played out in our business or government arenas and as a result I feel very little fear about anything! I do my best to avoid people that are caught up in the ‘system’ so I don’t have to listen to their negative fear-based stuff, mainly because it does not interest me one bit (and there is nothing constructive that comes out of knowledge of that sort) and secondly, because most of it has absolutely nothing to do with me, it is just about other people and the lives that they have created.
We are creating our crime ridden society, as we allow this fear and belief that we are in danger, to fill our thoughts and determine our actions. We are like magnets, and our beliefs and thoughts will determine the quality of our vibrational field and what happens to us in our lives. Maybe if people learned to share more, we would reduce the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”, and that it is quite ok, if we feel like it, to give money and things away and not expect them back. Maybe if we realized that the news about crime is a game which is played to keep us fearful.
Think about it: the fact that someone has been murdered, or that some company has embezzled funds, or that there is a war raging to the north of us, is not something that we need to know, and all it does keep us in fear and dis-empowers us.
This is a complex subject and too long to cover in depth here, but I am really going to do my best to visualize the world I want to live in, and do it every day, so that I get good at it and it becomes part of my sub-conscious belief system so that I can allow it to happen with ease.
The following words from the Dalai Lama sum it all up so perfectly: during these really challenging times we are being given such amazing gifts to learn to grow and transform ourselves and our planet, we just need to be committed and acknowledge and embrace them.
“We have bigger houses but smaller families:
We have more degrees but less sense;
more knowledge but less judgements;
more experts but more problems;
more medicines, but less healthiness.
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,
but we have trouble crossing the street
to meet the new neighbour.
We build more computers
to hold more information,
to produce more copies than ever,
but we have less communication.
We have become long on quantity
but short on quality.
These are times of fast foods,
but slow digestion;
tall man, but short character;
steep profits, but shallow relationships.
It is time when there is much in the window,
but nothing in the room.”
~ Dalai Lama
Anthea