Created March 8, 2024
Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.
Perspective is very helpful in dealing with the present historic moment…
These are the times that test what we’ve got. Each of us…
It’s time to be that best version of yourself.
Let the highest part of you come out now. This is The Moment.
My friend arrived and put down his bag and took off his scarf and coat and sat on the banquette seat I’d saved for him. I asked him in a cheery voice how he was, expecting his usual enthusiastic answer, and he made ambiguous body language.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, still upbeat.
“Overwhelmed,” he admitted.
“By…”
“By the cold, all the news, and age!” he specified.
I contemplated his answer. “I’m with you on all of that.”
“I was just reading The New York Times, and every story is bad news. I used to be able to find one or two ‘good news’ stories in every issue.”
“I’ve been advising cutting down on the news and all other media that brings you down.” He nodded in violent agreement. We ordered lunch.
“How do you deal with those things?” he asked.
“You know, my take on the universe is that we are all one unkillable consciousness. That on Earth you and I are part of a free will experiment the conscious intelligent universe is doing. It is that Intelligence which looks out our eyes as us.” He nodded, chewing, having heard this from me before, in other language.
“I feel certain that the test we are undergoing will teach us wisdom of immense value. I write to help bring an end to suffering. I feel great sadness for those suffering, but I can’t let that affect my effectiveness on their behalf.”
He knew me from a long way back and knew that was what I say whenever there’s an opening. Never the exact same words, but always the same idea we are One Consciousness. He also knows that is my best guess as to what is really going on and that I live my life within this picture of reality.
If I’m wrong, then so is Einstein; neither of us believe that this complexity has all put itself together completely by accidental collisions, without the inescapable logical necessity of prior Intelligence.
We ourselves are a micro model of the Conscious Intelligent Universe – we are a consciousness so we know intimately what such a thing is.
And we know therefore that it is possible for there to be a consciousness.
Therefore it is totally illogical to state that a much larger version of the same thing “cannot possibly exist.”
My view of reality has an equal chance of being either true or false.
The same is true of any other view of reality now on the table.
Until your next death, when you gain important evidence, or simply cease to be able to experience knowing. Maybe then you’ll find out my “guess” or “prophecy” was right or not.
In any case, the real question is how to deal with the frightening omens and general sense of alarm. How to remain on a positive course, and learn from the challenges now appearing.
Stoic philosophers were the first to write down their ideas for dealing with horrific circumstances, and the Spartans largely demonstrated stoicism in action, except when they didn’t. At least they proved that it is humanly possible to zoom back far enough out of oneself to grok the universe is going to do stuff and we are supposed to rise to the occasion and to control our inner reaction to whatever befalls us externally.
Epictetus didn’t link his exhortations to any cosmological theory, he relied upon common sense. He implied that who knows what the universe really is, what we know is that we undergo severe trials here in reality and we need to understand the best way to deal with them. We can choose to take a different emotional reaction to our favorite cup being broken. It works with practice, will does develop.
Perspective is very helpful to me in dealing with the present historic moment.
This is as big as WWII. Even if we avert war but remain at battle stations for the rest of our lives.
Or, we come out of this into a reasonable facsimile of utopia.
These are the times that test what we’ve got. Each of us.
This is the cold water in the face wakeup call that God – the Conscious Intelligent Universe – is watching, and it’s time to be that best version of yourself. Let the highest part of you come out now. This is The Moment.
Love to all,
