Cosmic
Spirituality
“The
deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless.
It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that
we have to discover a new unity. We discover an older unity…We are already one.
But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original
unity. What we have to be is what we are.”
Thomas
Merton
I saw a
post on Facebook yesterday announcing that the Age of Aquarius is upon us—supposedly,
an age of peace and enlightenment. However, when I did the research, I found
that the astrological age of Aquarius does not begin according to the
astrological calendar, until 2595 C.E. And even allowing for the usual period of
change between the conjunction of the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius of
360 years, we still have a way to go. The age of Aquarius is described by Lynn
Hayes on the website, Astrological Musings, as follows:
“In
the best of all possible worlds, humans could evolve during this phase into enlightened
beings, able to link the best of science with the best of spirit in a Utopian
paradise of freedom and justice for everyone.”
In the
worst of all possible worlds, I suppose that we could devolve back into tribalism
and anarchy. Humm…at least we have a little time to decide which of these
outcomes we would prefer. I can tell you this factoid from the small amount of
research I did this morning: “The last Aquarian Age occurred around 28-30,000
b.c.e. and marked the abrupt disappearance of the Neanderthals and sudden take
over of Cro Magnon man.” (Wikipedia) That does not bode well for some of
us.
Thomas
Merton, an American Trappist monk, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama met in 1968,
when His Holiness was only 28 years old, and Merton was 53. At the time, the two
were considered the most influential spiritual leaders of the twentieth century.
Merton made three visits to the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India, where
they struck up a spiritual bond around their shared commitment to the doctrine
of compassion. Shortly after that meeting, Merton died from an accidental electrocution
in Thailand. You may remember that 1968 was also the year when Bobby Kennedy
and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated. Who knows what the world might
have gained from a bond among those four spiritual brothers? Each of them, in
their own way, brought a new way of viewing the world and our place in the
grand scheme of things into human consciousness. Whatever else that
catastrophic year (1968) was, it may also have been a grand introduction to the
Age of Aquarius, the meeting of east and west on a cosmic spiritual level.
As we
move toward the Age of Aquarius, we have some awesome choices to make. Will we
move forward in compassion and harmony in the “best of all worlds?” Will we
rediscover our original unity, as Thomas Merton imagined, or will we go the way
of the Neanderthals? I suspect it is entirely up to us—though we can expect
Mother Nature to express her opinion on the subject. Uh-oh.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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