As December 21, 2012 approaches, there are a few who await the end of the world, and many more who dismiss such thoughts as being silly, and others who just hope that nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary happens.
Is the end of the world such a bad thing? And what would it mean? Certainly, massive cataclysms and terrible destruction would cause immense suffering to people, to animals, and to the earth. Suffering on any scale is a bad thing, and whether or not any good comes out of it, we all seek to avoid it.
There have been cataclysms both recently and in the past, and one can only suppose that there may be more to come – with or without an end to the world. Perhaps there will be an intensity of disasters, we have no way to know.
But what if the end of the world also has another meaning? As we all realize, we live in a world that, at the very least, has many flaws, and at the worst, is a realm of extreme suffering for many beings.
What if the world and all of history, as far as we know it, is like a vast carpet being unrolled and stretched out? Now we have come to the end of the unrolling, and it is time for it to be rolled back up again – to go back to the beginning?
All the myths of the world tell of ages in the far, remote recesses of time, that were not mundane and prosaic, but that instead were magical, that sparkled with life and positivity. Of course, being “rational, modern people,” we dismiss these myths as being pre-scientific, irrational, and based on superstition.
The truth is though, only some of us dismiss these myths as mythical. There are those among us who, though we may not always say so publicly, hold a radically different view. Some of us, though we may not openly acknowledge it, do believe in magic, in miracles, in the mystical, in the visions and dreams of ages long past when the world was not boring, not prosaic, not humdrum, not filled with conflict and degradation – not, in fact, increasingly cruel and distasteful.
What if this great carpet, when it has rolled out to its end, simply begins to roll back up again?
For example, what if, instead of disappearing from the face of the earth, all the great forests begin to grow back? I understand that the damage has already been done and that it is very severe and irreparable, in any normal, sensible way of seeing things. We are so used to a world in which human beings are winning the war against nature, where the trees and the plants have no defences at all against the inexorable march of “progress,” though how it can be called “progress” is a great mystery. How can a world of steel and concrete be “better” in some way than a world of forests? But what if, by some magic stroke of a great wand, humans were simply no longer able to wreak destruction on the natural world – no longer able to cut down trees or to replace magnificent, ancient forests with shopping malls, parking lots, and garbage dumps?
What if the Amazon filled up again with trees? And all the forests of North America came back? And all the forests of Europe and Asia too?
Or what if humans no longer had the capacity to pollute the oceans and destroy the lives of the fish, the whales, and the sea creatures? It would take a while of course for all the pollution that’s already happened to deteriorate and stop causing death and destruction in the oceans, but perhaps some kinds of bacteria and enzymes would evolve to eat up all the plastic junk and horrible toxic substances. Then the sea creatures could live in peace and freedom again and swim in clear waters among the graceful plants of the seas.
What if all the farm animals; the cows, the chickens, the geese and ducks, the turkeys, the pigs, and the lambs were never killed for dinner? What if instead they roamed the hills, among the great trees, or swam in blue lakes? There are a few logistical problems, unfortunately, because modern farm animals are no longer adapted, as their ancestors once were, to living in the wild. So there is not a simple, easily seen solution as to how and where they could live. But the point is not that we have all the answers, which certainly we don’t. The point is simply that the way farm animals live currently, mostly on factory farms, is profoundly cruel and that the world should not subject all these billions of innocent animals to such an unkind fate.
A different world is needed – not one that is just a tiny bit better – but a different one altogether – a different situation – one in which the human-ruled world as we have known it, has come to its end, and there is a new world filled with magical animals that fly on the wind and graze on green hillsides – perhaps with dragons too, breathing fire.
An end of persecution is required – an ending of the persecution of all of nature, all animals, and the earth – and along with that end — assuming there are still some people living on the earth — the ending also of the persecution of tribal peoples, of the extinction of their languages and their culture, and ending of the persecution of all those who suffer at the hands of those who seek to subjugate the earth – the ending of wars, of economic injustice, of the persecution of women, of the young, of the old, and the disabled.
An entirely different world is needed, not an improvement of this world, not a updated model of the same thing, but instead a world where the sacred and the spiritual are alive, well, and recognized – a world that is in touch once again with the cosmos – with God and the Gods, with magic, with life and inspiration, with innocence, a world which has broken free of the bonds of slavery and the constraints of the gray misery that this current time has descended into.
Perhaps this may be what is meant by the ending of this cycle and the birth of another – the great rolling back up of the cosmic carpet, back to the beginning.
Despite all apparent evidence to the contrary, we do sometimes have a sense that the rule of tyranny and hatred, which seems so well established, will not endure forever – that, instead, the destruction of all that is innocent and sacred, will be brought to an end, perhaps sooner than we could imagine – and that there are transformative powers, immense currents, and great winds afoot in the cosmos that we cannot see or know, but that are there, all the same, and very real.
Top photo: Author: Wolfgang Sauber / Wikimedia Commons /http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maya-Maske.jpg / National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Maya mask. Stucco frieze from Placeres, Campeche.
Second photo: Author: Snezana Trifunovic http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tsnena / Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Biogradska_suma.jpg / old growth forest in Montenegro
Third photo: Author: Jon Sullivan / Wikimedia Commons / “This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Jon Sullivan. This applies worldwide.” / Waves on the ocean coast
Author: Lea Maimone http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LeaMaimone/ Wikimedia Commons / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brahman_Baby.jpg / Brahman calf
Our real debt
Cows grazing in Sichuan Province, China
In the U.S. our debt is owed to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Brits, and our next-door-neighbors. Our debt is big enough so that if we put dollar bills end to end, they could reach to the moon and back about three thousand times.
This though is not in any way the full extent our debt. As humans, we owe a debt to the planet earth for having harmed the forests, the oceans, the air, the animals, the plants, the mountains, the climate, and then so many of the peoples of the earth, indigenous peoples who are now long gone or, more or less, hanging on by a thread, who once had languages, art, histories, sacred places, and culture.
Our existence on the planet has not been a blessing to everyone else who lives here.
Over the past few months, we have watched escalating turmoil or transformation (depending on one’s perspective) afoot on the four corners of the earth, and this may end well or badly—or both – again, depending on which side of the fence we are on.
The state of our global pocket book is part of this wild ride.
Imagine for a moment that all economic activity has ground to a halt, then after a while, a short time or a long time, there will be no more rings of space debris encircling the earth, no more plastic trash clogging the oceans and the streets, no more slaughterhouses, no more research labs, no more pollution draining into streams and rivers, no more of the black rider of death who gallops across the earth doing away with all in his path.
What will there be then? No one knows. There may be great swathes of burned continents left behind in the wake of this rider of death. But maybe there will be flowers that emerge to dance in the meadows, striped fish that play among the river rocks, or chickens that once again can spread their wings in the jungle. Maybe.
So, as we watch the stock markets of world teetering across our television screen, if we catch flashes before our eyes of our diminishing lifestyle and the prospect of standing on a street corner, tin cup in hand, there is a reason not to be overcome with fear and doom, but to be joyful. A reason that we may not instantly welcome —a reason that we may find alarming in the night – but a reason all the same.
Because with the end of this skeletal rider will come release and freedom for the earth—for the cows, the deer, the turtles in the sea, for the eagles that would like to breathe pure air and fly through white clouds, for the dandelions that would like to peek out through the snow, for the moon that would like to shine bright in the clear night sky. And whether all these events take place on an earth reborn and re-awakened, or whether they happen on different worlds, in other dimensions, or in the landscapes of heaven, somewhere they will happen.
There is one option left yet to try—and that is an economy based on the restoration of the earth, rather than on trampling it under foot. And whether one wins or loses in this endeavor is not the question; as it says in the Hindu scriptures, one is not to be attached to the fruit of one’s actions. Walking on the path that gives life, rather than death, is the way to go.
Is it possible that people may play a part in a magical new beginning, may walk by the sea listening to the waves fall on the shore without envisioning recreating Miami Beach or live again in the forests with the birds and the animals, without harming the trees and without taking over more land than is their share?
One way or another, the consciousness that has worshipped the radiance of the tumbling waters, the shining sunlight, and the beings of the heavens will do so again—on one earth or another, on one level or another. Those who have hands will offer a drink to the thirsty fawn, and those who see the spirit world will give the gifts of peace and beauty and a link to the worlds of the stars.
In the meantime there is the debt that will be paid, the great cosmic ocean that will be churned again, the great unsettling of the world as we have known it, and the dismantling of the armies of iron riders that have plundered the earth.
Photo: Sharon St. Joan