Ardi Rizal… took his first smoke at 18 months… The boy’s family now claims the 2-year-old is so hooked he can’t kick the filthy habit.
“He’s totally addicted,” said his mother, Diana, 26. “If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.”
Mohammed Rizal, the boy’s dad, seemed unconcerned, British media reported. “He looks pretty healthy to me. I don’t see the problem,” he said.
…there is data showing low-income Indonesian families spending as much as 12 percent of their income on tobacco products.
Hey Ho’oponopono fans, did you catch that word: DATA?
I wonder how many of us have judgments come up when we see something like this. I know I do. Maybe not the same judgments you have, but judgments nonetheless. “This can’t be good!” or “Oh my God, the poor thing must have parents that don’t love him,” or “Those %#*@ tobacco companies will stop at nothing!”
This is where the rubber meets the road, and the real issue of our perceptions comes quickly into focus. We ask, “How can I be alright with this?” But, can we see that it is all a matter of perception? If we hadn’t heard this story we wouldn’t be experiencing these perceptions, right? (Gee thanks Oh Be, now I’ve got even MORE stuff to clean on.)
I am sorry and please forgive me, but ignorance is not bliss, this is a great learning opportunity: Notice that it all takes place in our mind — a cigarette smoking baby — what horrible data. But it is an experience of data, not reality. Data being analyzed and edited and replayed. Data on top of data, ad infinitum. Reality is pristine and untainted, simply perfect.
This is accepting responsibility. Remembering that we are clueless (regarding anything but the fact that we have perceptions and judgments) makes it possible to turn down the volume on the outrage, and focus our attention on letting the Divine take care of this too. Again and again we remember: this is for the Divine to work out (if indeed there is anything to work out; we don’t know for sure because we are clueless). It is really a happy arraignment. What we are responsible to do is to not do anything. Being clear is not doing, it is being. Just give it back.
If you believe that people need to get involved and fix this kind of “atrocity” then have at it, but be warned: there is no end to that kind of busy-ness if you want it. Jesus said, “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” What could he have meant by that? (STOP: I am not inviting some left-brain, scholarly debate here.) If we are not like little children we cannot enter the kingdom. To know that this cigarette smoking little boy and his parents rest securely in the hands of The Divine, and that my true responsibility is to stop second-guessing The Divine, is wisdom not apathy.
A little back-story for the record: I am not a Christian, but I was raised in a Christian faith, and even spent a short time in the seminary; all the same, the teachings of Jesus Christ are very dear to me. In my “personal cosmology” Jesus was a Master Wayshower, spiritually developed far beyond all but a handful of others to walk this plane. And when it comes to forgiveness, his teachings are unsurpassed.
I feel that The Master was teaching us that our highest option is to always remember The Divine, and trust that It knows what It’s doing… even when It pretends to be neglectful parents and abusive corporations. This is not to say that if someone in my direct sphere of influence seems receptive to input, that I wouldn’t gently explore the issue with them; of course I’d want to share fellowship with them. But all the while I’d be aspiring to remember the perfection that is, and allow the data to transmute back into light.
Namaste, Oh Be
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May 31, 2010 at 1:35 pm |
I have the “Clueless” part down pat. It’s the “Responsible” bit I have trouble with.
May 31, 2010 at 4:40 pm |
Cosmic Connie,
It seems as though once we understand the basic science of the conscious mind, and its capacity to process so little compared to the unconscious, it becomes a no-brainer (or close). But 100% responsible? Wow, that’s hard to wrap ourselves around logically. To me it’s all a matter of perception. What I perceive is what I “know” in this moment, and any more than that doesn’t exist. And in the next moment, when by some mystery of consciousness we “know” something either basically the same (memories repeating), or we know something different; perhaps hugely different, depending on how much “room” we have prepared in our space (what we call the conscious mind) to receive it. I don’t mean to sound cliche but these questions always come back to “Who am I?” Who is being conscious? Who is doing this preparing of space?… Mirrors facing mirrors.
I’ve found that if my cluelessness can grasp, however feebly, that all I can know is my perceptions, then I begin to wrap around the feeling of 100% responsibility. This is my perception. (No one else is responsible for my perceptions — Responsible for perceiving that I have perceptions, but then those are their perceptions, which they are responsible for. It is almost a circular argument, but if we step back far enough we see it as sort of a spiral; a clearer and clearer awareness of awareness.) Dr. Hew Len says we are nothing. All the masters that I’ve been turned-on to say the same, we are pure subjectivity. (In having touched the hem of the garment myself I feel this resonates intuitively.) While all the rest of this “dream” is just that, a dream — I am the subjective and the object is a dream. Like a spider web the manifestation spins out, serves the function of giving us a perception/experience, and then gets pulled back in. All of creation is within consciousness; our vastness is who we are, infinite potencial experiencing its self. And the perceptions come one on top of the other, without a break for most of us, so it all seems so congruent. As long as there is an unnoticable gap between each observation, we are convinced that up is up and hot is opposite of cold, and I better know what I am doing. That’s where 100% responsibility becomes confusing. We think of ourselves as “to blame.”
To me, what it gets down to (no matter how we see it) is that we have just enough awareness available in the moment to notice we aren’t in charge — not our localized self anyway. We are both the conscious and the unconscious, but we operate from the conscious. The unconscious is the part of our self that complements our conscious self. Like two sides of a coin, you can’t have one without the other, but we can only appreciate one side at a time. The term “subject” is meaningless with out the term “object.” In human experience, we are normally only aware of the conscious, and our function is to trust and allow the unconscious to do its thing. That is what Ho’oponopono is; that is 100% responsibility.
This is just my explanation of how I see it in this moment. In addition to the fact that I am a falable reporter, I’ve noticed that words fail more and more, the closer I get to what’s real.
Much grace, Oh Be