Climate change – Disasters – Definitely

‘Man-Made’ – Or Not?

Brisbane 2011 From Past to Present This text below which, within the framework of spiritual philosophy, deconstructs some of the most striking ‘occurrences’ that have made world headlines, is the 4th of a series written between 2010 and 2014. This amalgam of sorts offers a glimpse back in time but, since 2010, what, really, what has changed? Hubpages article#1: Karmic Gravity-Climate Change – Angry Planet Hubpages article#2: Man-Made Disasters or Angry Planet? Hubpages article#3: Un-Natural Disasters – Angry planet Home of many more Mind-Meanders: https://hubpages.com/@ccsaintclair

Deep Horizon – Karma on the horizon

“Just when oceans cannot stand the pollution, and junk humanity has been pouring into them, she sends it ALL back with a Tsunami, with floods and heavy rains and hailstones,” explained my spiritual teacher. “So, there is no reason to blame Nature or Planet Earth. There is no such thing as an angry planet – only angry people. Nature and planet earth are only doing their best to keep everything in balance, to clear the air and to bring us blue skies and green flora and nice winds and good rains and warm sunshine. The French did their nuclear testing for thirty years until 1996, and the Chinese become the fifth nuclear power – after years of testing underground, surely we can expect that such activities will affect the balance of Nature which will eventuate sooner or later in earthquakes or tidal waves.”

Inseparable From … What?

Our inability to truly see that we are inseparable from one another and from Nature is the cause of all the ecological disasters. Nature works hand in hand with Karma and together they bring ultimate justice. Unlike the highest of judges in any country, nothing under the sun can bribe either Karma or Nature to change their mind or lessen their blows – just as there should be no reneging when it comes to unconditional love; love that simply doesn’t waver in peaks and troughs once exchanged between lovers, families, people nearby or people across the globe. And this brings us back to the Mammoth or Sleeping giant, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano that, with its ash kept us grounded – as we should be, energetically-speaking. It halted a powerful continent, unravelled society’s interdependent web of globalization, affected thousands of lives, detouring some personal journeys – for better and for worse and, of course, the volcano’s eruptions short-changed the ailing international economy of billions of dollars. Another disaster making the headlines at the time of writing is that which has been created by the Horizon deepwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The grim oil slick, though technically man-made, is nonetheless karmically induced and is yet another visual representation of our deep-set carelessness. While the volcano-controlled air and sky with its first plume, a symbol of our pent-up dark energy that bursts out and creates havoc, the oil slick is spreading beyond 40 km wide x 130 km long. It is growing by 5,000 barrels of oil a day. This disaster, too, will alter human lives on personal and professional levels. It, too, will further deplete tax payer’s pockets in many insidious ways. It is important, now, to make one other parallel, that of money and love. And Where Do WE Stand on This? Deng Xiaoping, the once leader of the People’s Republic of China in the years that followed Mao’s death, has been quoted for having said: “To get rich is glorious.” Back in those days, this comment was welcomed by many, in Washington, as one of the most intelligent thoughts ever formulated from a member of the Communist Party. Still back in time, in ’87, the Vatican slammed Gordon Gekko, the character in Wall Street, a film, for having stated that, “Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love – knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

Gordon Gekko was almost right

The grip we close over our own money and our covetousness of moneys that are not our own do clarify, cut through and capture the essence of the spirit – but that of the de-evolutionary spirit. And, yes, greed in all its form has marked the upward surge of de- spirited mankind. Facts: How Comforting! 27 September 2014 – Mount Ontake, Japan Magma heats up water deep inside the volcano. Water becomes steam. Steam bursts out of the volcano = a highly unpredictable phreatic explosion. It is satisfying to lean back on such scientific facts and talk about the viscosity of silica-rich rocks, the degassing process happening inside a dormant volcano and Hydrogen sulfide gas. However, it fails to explain why more than 200 trekkers and strollers out on the mount to admire its colourful foliage on an otherwise lovely day, ended up trapped in horrific, eerie darkness and struggling for breath in the billows of thick ash clouds. It fails to explain why most of them eventually made it home, while more than 50 persons [all there at the same time and at the same place, presumably for the same reasons] have become part of the death toll stats. Today, rescue efforts have been halted by the approach of Typhoon Phanfone. Money Money – Lyrics Liza Minnelli – 1972 Money makes the world go around [ … ] A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound [ … ] Is all that makes the world go around That clinking, clanking sound… Can make the world go ’round Money money money money [ … ] Forty-Five Years Later – A different Tune?

From Rich to Less Rich to Poor

From rich to less rich to poor, the one single-minded pursuit of humanity seems to have been the pursuit of money. Coming in second is the pursuit of sexual gratification in any which way possible. Third place goes to the pursuit of all that the senses perceive as pleasurable. Which brings humanity back to the main pursuit of all, that of making money – to spend more, to save more, to spend more – because not much of what the senses perceive as pleasurable is free. In fact, the higher the arbitrary pleasure factor, the higher its access price. Pleasure derived from the delicate flavours of coral-fresh sashimi or the robust fragrance of Thai crab from our local haunts is far less costly than a portion of braised abalone that sells for $138 per 100 grams. The pleasure sensations derived from going to work on a scooter are easier to access than those provided by driving a Jeep, which are far more accessible than the thrill of posturing behind the wheel of an Aston Martin. Though most of us manage to adjust our compulsion to spend on thrills, comfort and pleasure beyond our means – but within reach through loans – many of us do entertain wistful thoughts of one day ‘making it big,’ through one means or another and, as opposed to hazardous gambling, the lottery system and its Scratch-IT avatars seem to be the safe means of choice.

Damned – Dammed Up or Flowing?

The bottom line is that money hoarded in vaults, money tied up, virtual money, money for favours, money as bribes all have a corollary in the ways we generally handle ‘love’. But, as Moriya reminded me, “What we do not give or adjust willingly, Nature and Karma will adjust for us.” Money flowing freely from the one to another without fear, calculation and tight-knuckled attachment symbolises intelligent love, selfless heart-chakra love. Thus, money, too, is intended to flow free of barter, conditions in their many guises. It is important to understand that, karmically, we are unable to hold on to and/or enjoy more than is our intended bounty in this lifetime. It is equally important to accept that neither can we be irremediably ‘cheated’ of what has been karmically hardwired in our energy field – be it wealth, health or love. Good news: Once this understanding begins to dawn, being in the moment in matters of money, love and health choices does become easier.

Just Going About Their Business

However, since this understanding has clearly not manifested itself in the past many thousands of years, the cost of repairing nature, of rebuilding the economy of stricken areas, of rebuilding lives and communities, as well as managing the political cost posed by the magnitude of the chaos should be accepted as the price we, members of the greatest herd on earth, have to pay for some six billion hearts that have become too closed to all that cannot be bought and open, mostly, only to all that feeds quick gratification of the senses. The forces of nature along with personal as well as separate/collective karma are going about the business of teaching us, mankind, essential lessons in spiritual survival with the single-minded energy of the one who, stranded on an island, must break open coconuts with bare hands to get to the sweet flesh within. According to a snip on Wikipedia, “On 20 April 2010 Icelandic President Ólafur Grímsson said, “The time for Katla to erupt is coming close…we [Iceland] have prepared…it is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption.” Right. And then what?

Queensland – Australia – Floods

At the moment, Nature is still not that interested in destroying lives, only livelihood, savings, personal plans, hoarded billions of taxpayers’ money = the Economy. And in that respect, yes, 2010 has been a BIG year. Epic floods that began on the last days of 2010 are currently still affecting the state of Queensland, in the south-east corner of Australia, a predominantly agricultural, cattle-farming area also responsible for 75% of our coal export. This area is bigger than France and Germany combined. In its early days, the massive 31 ft [14 m] flooding has so devastated the towns of Rockhampton [population 75.000] and St George that it will take many, many months to rebuild the colonial waterlogged homes and businesses. Snakes, such as the deadly taipans, brown snakes and red-bellied blacks, floated from the undergrowth, are clinging to trees and fences, just as they search for dry corners in people’s homes. In this corner of the world, when town streets become overflowing wide river arms carrying fragments of putrefied, drowned cattle, pets and thousands of bush carcasses, crocodiles – symbols of the mechanical nastiness that lurks deep within each of us to strike from ‘below the surface’ – cannot be far away. The residents of Gympie, in that same corner of Queensland, have faced 60 ft [20 m] river swells through their streets since the Mary has broken its banks. And, because *separation is only a figment of our imagination*, other towns and communities downstream are bracing themselves for the worst. All Is Fair In Love and in War [and Karma]: Floods and, the greater the flood, the greater the need for us, as separate entities, to wash from ourselves all negativity of thought, all dark emotions and actions or risk being flooded by them, swept away and left to drown in them – literally as well as figuratively. With that in mind, Senator Barnaby Joyce’s words on Sky News, are anything but ‘spiritually’ encouraging. Still, they are the words that the afflicted residents want to hear. That, and the word Compensation – of course. “It’s not fair on people’s lives to have water tearing through their homes,” he said. “It’s not good for our economy to be shut down and lose billions of dollars in production. In the future, I think we need to look at building dams to mitigate the effects of floods.”

She is Listening but not Hearing It

Clearly, the message from Nature, our benevolent Nanny, is still not being heard. Yesterday, January 10, 2011, still in Queensland, twelve days after the first flood in Rockhampton, pedestrians downtown Toowomba [population 90.000] ran for their lives to escape a tsunami-styled torrent of muddy water, a flash flood, that came out of nowhere, overturning cars and tearing trees in its path while inflicting quick and hulk-like unbelievable damage to homes and businesses. Then it was in Grantham that many houses were ripped off their stumps and floated away. The list of victim-towns grows daily. The floods have kept rolling down south. Tonight, at the time of writing, they have just now reached the first river-side suburbs of inner Brisbane – third largest city in Australia, Brisbane [population 2 million approx.] where I live. The flood, here, is due to peak in two days’ time.

Heart-Warming Stuff But

In the sort of outburst of concern and emotion that has become familiar all over the globe every time a disaster strikes, our Prime Minister, the State Premier and the leaders of all manner of support groups involved are urging us to keep ourselves safe, to look after each other, to go ‘meet’ the neighbours we normally don’t see – or choose to ignore – and check up on them. We can replace your house, is the current motto, but we can’t replace you. Your personal safety is our priority. Please, make it yours.

Absolutely heart-warming

At the same time, many people are offering their time and efforts as volunteers. That IS the Spirit. That is the blue-print of how Nature wants us to DO life – from now on. Lesson learnt if we can sustain this new M.O. Although the Queensland flood death toll is for now at an incredibly low 10, it will undoubtedly rise – maybe triple. Still, Nature seems much more interested in cleansing the planet by reducing our belongings to a watery pulp, by leaving behind most of what we could not do without, and by forcing us to rebuild from the ground up – literally as much as figuratively, with a different awareness, with different personal priorities. However, as the saying goes, there is no dumber than the one who does not want to learn and we are all familiar with the determination of five-year-olds to get what they want. Collectively, in spite of our self-inflated perception of maturity and in spite of our collective brain potential, we position ourselves again and again on the side of the ‘dumb’ and the childlike. Our material losses break our heart. And in 2017, What Else Is New? We hit our head against the wall and we pop our pills and drown our pain. We cry, “My god! Why me? What have I ever done to deserve that!” We accuse Nature. We call her violent and we call her angry. We call her random and erratic. We call her all the things that we, humans, are. And we keep our purse strings wrapped tightly around our heart.

Time to Rethink Thinking

And on this glorious day … what else is new? More importantly, dear Reader, where to from here?