My friend Harriet wrote this & I thought I'd share it here with you:
Harriet Witt wrote:Pssst! You! Yeah, you… are a passenger on a planet... on a blue-green planet that’s orbiting a golden star. And right now we are traveling through the part of our yearly orbit where most people get a day off for Labor Day. But… I’m not one of them… I’m labor-free 365 days of the year… and all because of a demon. Once upon a time, I was possessed. But I didn’t know it; I was much too busy climbing the ladder of my career, mapping out time lines for each and every step along the way. My vacations were even busier - crammed with activities proclaiming my gain in altitude.
Then… suddenly, inexplicably, my career ladder collapsed. All my plans exploded in my face. Now… there was nothing for me to focus on – but myself.
What on Earth had made me think that success resides at the top of a long, straight career ladder? How had I forced myself to drive full-speed ahead, 24/7, on that long, straight, career-path to exhaustion? Why did I believe that time is a straight line when I know that a year is a circle around the sun? Why did I believe that time is a straight line when I know that a day is a spin of our planet around her axis? Why did I believe that time is a straight line when I know that a month is a “moonth” – the cycling of our moon around us? How did I ever forget that time is the cycles and rhythms of nature?
2500 years ago a philosopher named Euclid proclaimed, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” His book of geometry sold more copies than any book except the Bible, until the 20th century. All of our science – until recently – was constructed on the foundation of Euclid’s geometry. His belief that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points IS correct, but ONLY on a FLAT EARTH.
A light bulb turns on! Suddenly, I’m seeing a fatal flaw in my cultural conditioning … a bug in the social program that my computer-brain was running. This bug went un-detected (and un-suspected) for 2500 years - because it was flattering. It was the long, straight, line-in-the-sand that I drew between me and my fellow creatures - the story line that I am superior to all of nature: “I alone am civilized.” Now… I’m wondering: Isn’t this man-made line the very same line that can appear on a hospital heart monitor? Isn’t this the FLAT LINE of a heart that has stopped beating?
Yes, I fell off the career ladder. I exited the expressway to exhaustion. I deleted the story-line about my “civilized” superiority. And now… I’m exploring the cycles of seeds, buds and blossoms. I’m exploring the rhythms of feeding and breeding that are generated by ocean tides. I’m riding the waves of natural time, so I’m getting more done with less labor. Best of all, the waves of natural time are taking me to places – and spaces - where man-made lines cannot go. Now… all my days are holidays from labor.
This is Harriet Witt, your guide for this little ride on our passenger planet. You can find what you’ve just read here -- along with other maps of our cosmic journey -- at www.passengerplanet.com
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