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INSIGHT 45: FASTER, BIGGER, BETTER. EVERYTHING FASTER, EVERYTHING BIGGER, NOTHING NECESSARILY BETTER. SO FAST, SO BIG, SO EXCESSIVE, WE LOSE THE STILL SMALL VOICE OF THE SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE THAT IS THE MEANING OF OUR LIVES AND IS THE DESTINY OF OUR SOULS. OUR PURPOSE, THE MEANING OF OUR VERY EXISTENCE, IS FOREVER SACRED, FOREVER DEEP-SET IN THE MYSTICAL. ALL THE HASTE AND NOISE OF THE LIVES WE HAVE CREATED, DROWNS OUT THE TRUE SPIRITUAL ESSENCE OF OUR SOULS. WE MUST PAUSE, AND BREATHE, AND LISTEN TO THE SACRED WHISPERS OF THE STARS. ONLY THEN CAN WE AWAKEN; ONLY THEN WITH OUR AWAKENING SHALL COME OUR SPIRITUAL HEALING OF OURSELVES, OF EACH OTHER, OF OUR COMMUNITIES AND OF OUR MOTHER EARTH, OUR HOLY GAIA. ONLY THEN: IN THE SACRED STILLNESS AND PEACE OF OUR SOULS.

Do we need to motor along a highway at seventy, eighty or a hundred miles an hour, when it is probably safer and more relaxing and more environmentally appropriate to travel at some slower speed? Is an increasingly hectic world a boon for humanity? Is a noisier world to our advantage? Speeds and size and noise seem to dominate our national and world agendas. We have certainly improved when it comes to safety, but there seems to be very little room these days for matters such as beauty or elegance. Where are we in this brave new world we are creating? We have spiritual responsibilities to our Holy Gaia and to ourselves and to our fellow sacred pilgrims: namely us humans. We owe it to our environment and we owe it to the ultimate spiritual unfoldment of ourselves and our beautiful planet, our Holy Gaia.

OUR TECHNOLOGY IS OUR TEST. CAN WE USE OUR TECHNOLOGY IN WAYS THAT ENHANCE THE SPIRITUAL ASPECT OF OUR SELVES, OF OUR TRUE SELVES. CAN OUR TECHNOLOGY ROB US OF OUR HUMANITY, OR CAN IT BE PART OF OUR SACRED AND SPIRITUAL JOURNEY. DOES OUR TECHNOLOGY DIMINISH US AND SEPARATE US FROM OUR FELLOWS AND FROM OUR BEAUTIFUL AND HOLY PLANET GAIA, OR DOES IS AT LAST BRING US TOGETHER, BRING US INTO INCLUSIVITY? OUR TECHNOLOGY IS OUR TEST, IS OUR AWAKENING, GIVES, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, MEANING TO OUR LIVES. USED PROPERLY, IT CAN FURTHER OUR SPIRITUAL, MYSTICAL AND INDEED SACRED PILGRIMAGE TOWARDS ONENESS WITH THE ALL, WHICH IS WHAT WE CALL GOD.

Between the wars, when hyperinflation wracked Germany, the Berlin government was congratulated on its ability to speedily print higher and higher denominations of banknotes. To some extent they were forced into this. No-one chose for there to be such a catastrophic devaluation of the currency. But there was certainly nothing new in praise being heaped on people or organisations that could fashion such extreme achievements. And there is certainly nothing wrong in having ambitions to achieve new ‘heights’ and in actually achieving those new heights. But that being said, we do need to take stock of some of our ambitions and endeavours. It is laudable to run faster without the aid of performance enhancing drugs; laudable too to create a plane that can fly faster and higher than any other; or for that matter a car or train that can travel faster than any other. But what of our everyday lives? Is it really sensible to create trains that go fast, only to create new trains that go faster and so on? Do we need to motor along a highway at seventy, eighty or a hundred miles an hour, when it is probably safer and more relaxing and more environmentally appropriate to travel at some slower speed? Is an increasingly hectic world a boon for humanity? Is a noisier world to our advantage? Speeds and size and noise seem to dominate our national and world agendas. We have certainly improved when it comes to safety, but there seems to be very little room these days for matters such as beauty or elegance. Where are we in this brave new world we are creating?

In Richard Dell’s ‘STARS IN OUR SOULS’, poem 33 addresses this very point:

33

FASTER, BIGGER, BETTER

Everything faster, everything bigger; nothing necessarily better. 

Everything to be loud.

Everything to be allowed.

Everything to be fast.

Everything to avoid being last.

Everything beyond compare.

Everything beyond repair.

Noise upon noise.

Hype upon hype.

This better than that.

That better than this.

Me better than you.

Us better than them.

You race me.

I’ll race you.

We’ll race each other,

We’ll race the other.

The race to be bigger.

The race to be faster.

The race to be louder.

The race to be zanier.

The race to be cleverer,

The race to be racier.

The race against time:

***

Before time runs out.

Image courtesy of Marc-Olivier Jordoin of a city scene at night with high rise buildings with brightly lit windows, and streams of red tail lights of the traffic.

These insights, that were begun by Richard Dell back in the early 1990s, touch on all the most meaningful and indeed important religious and spiritual issues of our times. They are the same now as they were then. These Insights see religion just as firmly grounded in the Earth and in the stars as it is in the spirit and in the heavens. Richard sees no distinction between the material and spiritual realms. ALL is ONE. This comes through so clearly in these Insights, and that is why the environmental movement – our awakening at last to the needs of Gaia, of our planet – is as important as any spiritual quest, as important as all our need for healing, and is and must be an integral part of that holistic oneness that we must achieve in all that we do. It is also why issues such as Black Lives Matter are deeply spiritual. Richard sees inclusivity as being at the core of all our spiritual and religious endeavours. ALL is indeed ONE. And that mantra is the key to humanity’s future evolution: spiritual, social and political.

 

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