Please permit an old man some reminiscing...
A few days ago I decided to try out a new pizza place in the near neighborhood, found out about from their flyer drop at my door. The one that I usually go to - the Pizza Hut; just a few blocks away - does a fine job, for the occasional pizza that I go for to vary my boring salad & hard-boiled egg meal (I can get 4 meals out of a Medium pizza, so it's economical as well); but since the first of the year they raised their prices on toppings - you used to be able to get 3 toppings for the basic price; now it's only one - and this new opportunity - with Domino's - offered 2 toppings, at the same basic low price. I had to walk a short few extra blocks to try them out, but I need the exercise anyway.1 So there I was, walking in a part of the neighborhood that I hadn't been in before; when I realized that that wasn't true.2
It came on me, slowly. It had a funny feeling of familiarity. And then I came across a school. A school that looked familiar; very much like my old junior high school. (They call them 'middle schools' now. Don't ask me why.) Franklin Junior High. Named after Benjamin Franklin. Where once, during my eighth grade year there - I went to junior high in 1947-49 - I won a competition in my 'Social Studies' class (I think it was called; a combination of History and Geography and whatever else they shoehorned into the concept) to represent it in a school-wide competition, the Finals thereof held before the whole school in Assembly, with questions by a small panel on the life of Benjamin Franklin. It was that experience that gave me a lifelong appreciation for the wisdom of the old 'homespun' sayings. (Franklin had made a living publishing a farmers' guide to planting called Old Richard's Almanac, which contained as well, as filler, those old folk sayings; mostly from England, the Mother Country for most of the colonists.) A stitch in time saves nine. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It is the early bird that gets -
and then I got it. There was a big sign painted at the top of what at least used to be the Boys' Gym that identified the school sports teams as the Wildcats; which was new. But in smaller print, it brought up for me ghosts from the past.
Franklin.
I was elated. It was the first time that I had ever been back there since I graduated. What was that. June of 1949. Now, spring of 2013: nearly 64 years.
Some people's lifetime...
The pizza became an anti-climax.3 I stood there for some minutes, taking it all in, deliciously. The broad-jump pit had been moved to the streetside of the playing field, rather than over against the wire fence separating the boys' playing field from the girls's. And the clear running track was gone, the whole field planted out in grass. Why was that? I wondered. And the football goal posts were not there; where there used to be at least three sets. Again, I wondered why. Do they play differently, these days?? Not like we used to???...
And speaking of playing: the row of rooms, away from the main building, that used to contain the Music Room and the Metal and Wood and Print Shops (the latter of which being where I learned how to print business cards), was still there. Ah; the Music Room, I reminisced, on my way back home from picking up my several day's worth of a Medium pizza. I was proud to have become the first-chair clarinetist in the school Band, and then afterwards, worked my way up in my last, ninth-grade year, to first chair in the school Orchestra. But a not-so proud moment came crashing back, as I recalled - the takeout pizza cooling in its container in my cradling arm, as though I were holding a violin, and not quite sure what to do with it - not making it to our final school-day city-wide junior high school orchestral competition, at which I had a solo to play in the middle of the piece.
Scheherazade. A moment of silence; and then I came in, with a gentle duh duh duh-duh-duh, di da duh-duh-duh, duh da duh-duh-duh, duh duh duh...
well, in the event, I didn't, because I was in another part of the city, as my school graduating class's recipient of the Lion's Club Award (as the Outstanding Graduate), at a luncheon in our honor, and I just didn't get that it was up to me to tell my mom that I had to leave early to get to the high school where the competition was being held on the same day...when I finally fully realized that it was getting late, and this thing wasn't over, and I had to leave, I whispered my predicament to my mom; whereupon we quietly made our excuses, and she drove swiftly to the school auditorium as I changed into my orchestral uniform, and she let me off (I don't recall why she didn't come in; I think there was no audience, just all the city junior high school orchestra members; and, of course, the judges), and I ran inside the back door - and saw, from the wings, my school's orchestra on stage, just about to start their - our - piece. And I left; stunned. Crestfallen. Feeling guilty, of something or other. Of not being sufficiently aware, in life. Yet.
There was a saving grace to the situation, I realized; the second-chair guy was a bit of a pushy sort, and had recently challenged me for first chair. We both played a short section of a piece, while sitting in the orchestra at practice one day, and Mr. Mitchell, our music instructor, chose to stay with me. And I think - if memory serves me (which is debatable, I admit) that the piece that was chosen for us to compete on was that clarinet solo, in the middle of Scheherazade; so the fellow would therefore have been given the opportunity to rise to the occasion with a bit of practice...I never knew how that day turned out, for my school orchestra; as I say, it was the last day of school, and we all moved on in our lives, from that somewhat bittersweet one of mine.
I hope you did well in that opportunity given to you, fella. And to Mr. Mitchell: I extended my apologies. Through the years occasionally, to the 'ethers', when something or other brought up that old memory. And again these couple of days ago, now, as I stood there, at the fence, looking in at the arena of my very long-ago memories. Still as potent as ever, to stir my sense of embarrassment, at that very mixed-outcome time of my life; when I still had some things to learn.4
And now here I am, in the twilight years of my life. What do I have left to learn??
Patience, I think is the key quality. Is at least the one that comes to me first. Patience; for myself; for not always getting things 'right'. (I'm still impatient over that one. Even after all these years.) And for others.
See, it's as plain as the nose on my 3D face - on this body that is part of the illusion of 'life'; part of the matrix that we are embedded in, learning our lessons (or trying to. Or at least being given the opportunity to) - that History, at least as we have known it (by Social Studies, or other means), is over. That with a confluence of events, and of time itself, we have come to the end of the timeline that we have been on; and now need to move on. Up. Or sideways, into more of the sad same; still caught on the wheel of rebirth, and karmic acting-out. Treating 3D life as the only reality, when it is not even real.
Like my clarinet compadre, we - here, now - have been given a great opportunity. We are 'alive' at a time when the monetary system that humanity has been embedded in for a very long time has reached a crescendo point, and is about to collapse in a huge clap of internal-contradictional noise (cue the kettle drum banging away and then the cymbal); this event happening simultaneously with overwhelming proof of reincarnation.5 Which is proof that there is something beyond life itself (in which we are just playing, and exchanging, parts, in an ongoing drama quite probably of our own making). Which tells us - at least those who have ears to hear, and eyes to see, and brains to think6 - that there is a Plan in, and therefore a Purpose to, 'the universe' (beyond just in and for itself only). To the classroom, in which we have been given consciousness to play.
And learn lessons in.
And graduate from.
Class by class. Density by density. Heaven by heaven.
Until we return
Home.
Our mutual Home.
For - as the phenomenon of reincarnation teaches us (or at least presents to us; the landing of the lesson is up to us) - We Are All One.
Of One Essence.
For now, in a state, and stage, of individuation: Aspects OF The One.
On Our way - as I say - Home.
Having turned a major corner in our spiritual evolution, on the spiral thereof.
Or at least, having been given the opportunity to.
And of such, is life.
Don't pass this one up.
Or you'll regret it, for the rest of your life.
So to speak. And to take it from me.
So - onwards and upwards. To such as free energy devices, and other technology that has been kept from us by our erstwhile masters. And to our own development into our truer, Light bodies; our raised consciousness allowing us to exist on the more rarified levels of All That Is.
IF we raise our consciousnesses sufficiently to be able to make the grade; turn the corner; close the gap.
As in everything else:
It's up to each one of us.
To each One of Us.
Being all in this scenario of Creation together.
Whether we all make it onto the same stage at the same time. Or not:
the beat goes on.
---
footnotes:
1) One might think that with a dinner consisting of but a salad & a hard-boiled egg,* I should be in pretty good shape. But I have to confess to a sweet tooth; and the healthy meal is followed by some chocolate. And then later, I finish my day with a bowl of ice cream. And (usually) half a banana sliced up in it. And a couple of chocolate chip cookies thrown in, for good measure. Actually, three.
All of which is to say that, and why, I walk a lot.
* I sometimes spell the egg with some canned mackeral; but there's mercury in fish - even the ones low down on the aquatic food chain - and even at my advanced age, I don't want my system and brain getting clogged up with the stuff. Especially since I found out that heavy metals/toxins (esp. fluoride) cause plaque formation in the pineal gland, which is our gateway to the higher realms; and I need all the help that I can get in that department, not being your basic clairvoyant, or otherwise psychic.
2) Excuse me; I just had to take a break to have a bowel movement. Hopefully. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was a bit weak. It happens when I vary my diet, away from the healthy roughage of my normal evening salad meal; and I have to take my chances in this department as they come. A good, satisfying bowel movement may seem like a small thing; but especially at my age, it is a big thing, indeed. It can make or break a person's day.
But I digress. Sort of.
(We ARE talking about life, and the vicissitudes thereof, and therein...)
3) It was good. But I'll stick with Pizza Hut. It has this taste...
Incidentally, to clarify: I didn't recognize the school immediately as my old junior high because, although I knew it had been - was - in this general vicinity/part of town, in my day there I had approached it from the exact opposite direction, had never 'seen' it from this direction before.
Same school, different perspective. Two different perspectives, counting the one of Time...
...There was a lesson in there, somewhere, I knew; but I was too busy at the time reminiscing to try to capture it, like a fleeting bird on the wing.
Thinking about it later, I realized that it had something to do with 'context'. For example: Yes, we have free will. But it's in the context of a just universe.
So: The context of something is all - except for the fundamental nature of capital-t Truth, which is absolute.
There. I got it. Or at least, I got something out of it. Out of the teachable moment.
That I still come across, even at my age. My old-man age, out for a walk in the woods of life; with Mystery behind every bush, tree, and stone.
And pizza.
4) I didn't continue on into high school playing the clarinet. I figured I was going to be too busy, with my more commanding interest in sports. And for some reason, I never thought to ask any of the other kids who went on to my high school, and continued on with their musical instrument playing, how that day worked out, at the city-wide competition in junior high.
I wonder why...
(I know why. 'I didn't want to know.' The same reaction I had when my mother took me, as a pre-schooler, to see the movie The Wizard of Oz, and I hid in my near front-row seat and shut my eyes and covered my ears from the terrible presence of the Wicked Witch of the wherever; and my mom had a hard time getting me to come back out and play again.
I saw - re-saw, to some extent - that original version of Oz a few years ago (on 'cinema night' at my spiritual community), and couldn't see what I had been so on about, as that little boy cowering in his seat from the larger-than-life spectacle of a (rather tame-looking) wicked witch. I wasn't going to have any of that; then.
And then we grow up, and look the likes of war in the eye.
Or do we.
Grow up, that is.
Well; and look evil in the eye, too.
Really. Look. At it.
With a proper eye.)
5) Besides all the videos and books in general there are on the subject these days: How much more evidential could you get than the experience of a neurosurgeon who had his brain completely knocked out, and came back to tell a transforming tale??? Come ON, folks. Wake up. It's being spelled out for you.
And this is why some of the religions of our time have to go. But that's for another conversation than this one. For this one: We have work to do, to usher in the New. Let's be about that better business, than the same old, same old. The details about absolute Truth can come later.
6) And with those 'ears to hear', to 'listen out' for the faint melody in the background, calling us home...
...with memories of the upper reaches of our instruments......
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