I find myself thinking, often, these days, when I see or experience certain in-particular economic - or at least, economically-related - situations: "That's not how we do it where I come from."
It took me awhile to get up to speed on this 'take' on such things. For example, I remember, as a young kid - I must have been in around the seventh or eighth grade; so that would have made me around 12 or 13 at the time (I'm gauging my memory to the approximate age of a friend of my brother, who was three years older than me) - when a building was being constructed in part of the empty lot between the service station where our mother worked1 and the market where we did most of our shopping.2 We kids found out somehow that it was going to be a bakery.3 In due course, it got 'baked' into just that; and one day - for this telling - I went in to buy something (or just check the danish pastry out, and drool a little; I forget which), and lo and behold, one of my brother's friends was working there, doing various jobs.
Now, my brother had a newspaper route. (Which I helped him with. A lot.)4 And we took bottles back for their deposits (2 cents a bottle), and mowed lawns, and stuff like that. But that was kid's work, supplement-to-allowance stuff. This seemed more like grown-ups work. He spent a lot of time there. What about his school years? Wasn't he going to be able to enjoy them??
Little did I know about such things, then. Years later, when I would read about the likes of child labor in England - hours and hours in factories and such - it blew my mind. Why weren't they better organized than that? 'They': the adult world. It seemed so - strange, to me. When I came across the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama - who became The Buddha (whatever that meant, and means) - and his shock at discovering poverty, I felt I knew just how he had felt.
A stranger in a strange land.
Now, don't get me wrong, in possibly thinking that "and that's why I became a communist" is where I'm going with this reminiscence. I'm not. Nor did I become one.5 But the essence of my little story here, is to convey the 'message', if you like, that (a) there are more ways to organize our social lives than are dreamt of in the capitalist philosophy; and (b) we carry a memory of one of those with us, when we come back in here, for another bite of the apple.
And it's going to affect our thinking. And feeling. Until we change our outer to more closely match our inner.
And then will we be, and live, as One.
Which is coming up for humanity, whether some like it or not; conditioned, as they are, to thinking that such talk, and feeling, is just simplistic, pie-in-the-sky stuff. Communist moonshine. 'The reality is that life is hard and then you die.' And 'conditioning' is all that that attitude is. Based primarily on the Judeo-Christian belief in their Bible's version of the (more ancient) Creation story, where, in Genesis, it talks about Man being 'assigned' to 'live by the sweat of his brow', or some such take on life. We have left - been kicked out of - Eden; we are sinners; and we have to pay the price.
Well. That's not what it's like, where I come from.
And I'm here now.
And so are many others.
Too many, for those committed to the status quo to be able to stop the process of transformation going on. We have a loving message for you: You are defending a false belief. You will not be able to stop this tide. For this is the tide of history taking place. Our history, as 'spiritual beings having a human experience'.
You have two factors in particular opposing your stolid stance with 'the way things are' - with the status quo. One is the influx of a new breed of humans, if you will. (There are many indications that an advanced breed of souls is incarnating at this time, to help in this transition period into the New Era.)6 And the other is the cosmic time factor. It is, simply, time, for a major change in 'the way things are'. It has to do with what we in the West call the precession of the equinoxes, and what some eastern philosophies call a Grand Round - the 25,920-year cycle of the solar system on its 'wheel within wheels' of the cosmos. Different 'ages' call for different qualities to be foremost, and experienced. We are now entering a major one of those ages. Hold onto your hats, one and all...
As for the 'defenders of the belief' within our human ranks at this time: Your position, of defending a way of life that you believe in, is understandable. But it really needs, now, to give way to a superior way of doing things. One that inculcates the values of sharing and cooperation, rather than those of acquisitiveness and competition.
They have served their time (in particular for the lessons to be learned by them). And it's time now to let them go, for a higher way of being to enter into this level of the Creation, and this place on that level. Gaia. Mother Earth.
A good place to be And especially at this time, in her, and our, history, as the human race.
The human race.
One. Within the One of All That Is.
---
footnotes:
1 (a) a true 'service' station, where they came out and pumped your gas and checked your tires and cleaned your windshield; and (b) which was what our mom did, after she split up with our stepfather, and needed a job.
Don Slocombe's Texaco Service. She always acknowledged him for giving her a job when she really, really needed one. And I do, too. Thank you, Don, wherever you are. And whoever you are, if you have come back.
But those who are close to the angels usually move right on; to the next stage of our unfolding, as 'pieces of the continent' of our Creator.
2 The Californian, as I recall. Unless that was the name of the one directly across the street from it, that I remember the name better from, for its being more visible from my usual perspective. (I used to go into that one only for their ice cream. They had a better brand.)
They may have been known then as supermarkets, though they were a slimmer version of what that term stands for today. Although ours had a small section, alongside the checkout stands, that sold freshly-baked products. Van der Camp's Bakery; with the salesladies dressed in Dutch outfits. Looking like the mother on the tins of the Old Dutch Cleanser of the day, with the white peeked hat, like a secular nun, Devoted to her - their - homemaking duties.
This bakery outlet, with its fresh, enticing aromas, being a reason for question as to what I am about to get to, going in right next door. But that's 'the market' - and the competitive instinct - for you.
As to that, a curiosity (and sign of that time): there were the two independent 'super' markets right across the street from one another just down the street from our house, and a Safeway only a few blocks away. Plenty of business for all. And nearby, two drug stores, cater-corner from each other.*
Life wasn't so cutthroat, in those good old, non-monopoly days.
Incidentally (or not so): recently I had occasion to visit my old haunts, on a journey of reminiscence. None of that day (this is over sixty years ago, now) is there anymore. These days, people go to big, impersonal malls for all of their shopping. Takes some of the - what; romanticism? - out of it all.
No, I don't think it's just romanticism. It has to do with something along the lines of what Gandhi said once:
'We don't live in order to eat and sleep. We eat and sleep in order to live.'
Farewell, the corner store. It was nice having you in our midst.* In front of one of which I had parked my bike one fine day - it was a red Schwinn; one speed, of course - and it made the heart of a lovely classmate girl, whom I got to know better later, leap, when she spotted it there; she told me in confession years later.
Ah yes. That sort of feeling. I remember it well...
(...but I wasn't so much into it at the time that it stopped me from spending most of my time playing football with the boys on a weekend date to a distant park, with the very same girl, now grown up into a lovely young lady, during our high school days; which anecdote I wasn't aware of at the time, until she laughed about it to her sorority mates, and the word got back to me via the grapevine. So I wasn't so much into 'gather ye rosebuds while ye may' in my youth as into 'one more play, and then the girls will have our lunch ready'...
But I digress. Into a simpler, more innocent day...)
3 'We' got into trouble once - I say 'we' in quote marks because I was just tagging along with my brother, who was the real troublemaker in our family - playing in the site during the building's construction stage, when the owner - presumably - caught us in the act and chewed us out; mostly over safety issues, as I remember his harsh words.
(I hid from his sight on top of what was to become a large cabinet. Which later reminded me of the time, when I was just a little tyke, that I was sitting on a curbstone with a friend, and somehow got it into my head to throw a stone at a passing car. Fortunately - he said, with hindsight; perhaps being saved from a life of crime by the incident - the man stopped his car. I hadn't figured on that, in my little kid's head. What to do! 'I know; I'll go and hide behind that nearby tree.' Which I proceeded to do, briskly. And closed my eyes...
But on with the story at large...)
4 And got taken a bit of advantage of in it. I didn't mind the part where I would get up - after he had gone out and rolled the papers to deliver them - and start the water boiling for our porridge; which he would get back for from his rounds in perfect timing, and we would eat together. (He liked lumps in his. I wasn't fussed. Whatever.) That got me up for the day. But somehow - fast talker that he was - he talked me into doing his monthly collecting rounds for him.
In those days the newspaper delivery boys would do their own subscription-money collecting, going around door to delivery door, to those customers who had not already paid their bills, and giving them their little tear-off receipts in exchange for their payments. It made things more personal - and I'm sure paid off extra somewhat, when sometimes, at Christmas, the customers would leave out boxes of chocolates for their paper delivery boy (I used to deliver them for my brother sometimes as well, when he was sick or whatever, and can remember 'collecting' a few of those on the round) - but it was for sure extra work. I think my brother paid me something for doing it for him. He must have. I wasn't that naive, at that age. But knowing my brother, I'm sure that he got a good deal out of it, too That was my brother. A born capitalist.
5 My brother, apparently, at one time thought I was, had become. That was the only way, apparently, that he could make sense of the fact that I had one day, seemingly out of the blue, just 'upped sticks' (as the Brits call it; where I ended up, over a dozen years later, spending nearly half of my life. In Scotland, more precisely. In a spiritual community, to be even more precise) from my little flat in Hollywood and set off across the country, on foot, "to see the President and draw to his attention that the way to rid ourselves of all our aches and evils is to do away with money.
"If, after considering the matter thoroughly, you agree" - I went on, in a letter that I left in newspaper offices along the way - "and wish to raise your single voice also, may I suggest that you write a letter saying so to Mr. Kennedy" - the designated goal keeper.
Incidentally, I made it to Washington (in a month's time). Never got in "to see the President"; but left my message at one of the side gate houses. And made my way back to California (in a week); where my brother ended up giving me a home, with him and his wife and just-about-to-be first born, until I could get back on my feet.
In the event, it was fortunate for him, too, because I became quite an uncle for him and his little family; which in my time with them grew to four kids. (They ended up with five children, before - the last just as - my brother died, in an accident, that it would take too long in the telling to go into here. And one of which died, in an accident, a short while after his death. All very painful stuff; for his wife, for them, and for 'Koko Do-me', as the eldest called me while still a babe - standing for 'Uncle Duane' (my given first name). The latter of which appellation he calls me to this day; here some fifty years later.)
But about the money thing. It's a little ironic that he never quite 'got it' (after finding out, somehow - which I never learned - what I had been up to), given his religion's attitude about 'taking care of its own'. (I say "his religion": It was my birth religion, too - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the LDS; aka the Mormons) - but, and unlike him, where he got involved in the Church as his life went on, I read my way out of it. And then back in it for a spell; and then out of it again. Another story.) The Mormons are big on taking responsibility for each other; do it, not out of the motive of making money out of it. Do it, in a word, for the love of it. And that was all that my message to the President, in its essence, was. Just taken up to the global level. As children all of the same loving God.
I'm heartened to see, in this day and age, such initiatives as Jacque Frescoe's thevenusproject.com, and Peter Joseph's zeitgeistmovement.com. They've 'got it'. They - we - just need to include the spiritual component, dimension, purpose in the matter, is all.
That is to say: Where I come from. And am coming from.
For the concluding word on which, in this little round-about essay on the subject: read on.
(Almost there!)
6 A considerable fuss is being kicked up over what many are calling 'the Indigo Children': children who are a little 'different' from the norm. Some of the incarnates at this time are advanced souls, here to help humanity make the transition into the New. But a word of caution is in order. Some of this 'new' is rather due to brain damage - creating such conditions as what we have come to call ADD and ADHD and ASD - the latter standing for 'autism spectrum disorder' - and Pervasive Development Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), and other such gobbledygook terms. It's all brain damage. And a lot of it (not all) is caused by vaccines. Aka subclinical encephalitis, or vaccine-induced encephalitis. And some of the fallout of this category of environmentally-induced brain damage has resulted in the likes of serial killers - psychopaths who don't have the 'wiring' that normal people do, can't relate to such concepts as empathy; have a distorted sense of identity. The list of symptoms goes on. Symptoms of damage. Not just 'difference'.
It's time and past that we cleaned up our act in this regard. But that's another story as well. But it's well to be aware of this factor, when we look at such 'ideas' as our children being here to help us. Yes. And, we need to help them, too. And stop being so ready to believe 'the experts' in a capitalist society, whose main interest is in 'the bottom line'; however it is achieved. We are sheep to the wolves, in such a society. Each man for himself.
That's not how we do it, where I come from.
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