Monday, July 18, 2011

Your Were Born For A TIme Such As This

The following is taken from James O'Dea's website.  In the event you are not familiar with him, he is the former President and on the Extended Faculty of the Noetic Sciences and the former Director of Amnesty International.

I was most disappointed to have missed him when he was in Boise earlier this year. Currently he is known for his social healing and peacemaking.  You can read the entire article here.

Here is a portion of his article: 

You were born for such a time as this.

I ask you to look at your world. In fact, I beseech you not to live in denial. Be courageous and face this moment in time consciously and with all the discernment and clarity within your power. With intellect, with heart, with spiritual intelligence, decipher the hour, the moment in evolutionary time that calls you to be a witness. Indeed you are called. Whether you are young or old. Otherwise you wouldn't be here now in this defining epoch of Earth's story and of the human story, itself.

You were born for such a time as this.

I know that you must feel challenged, because we are all challenged. The air we breathe is challenged, the oceans are challenged, the great forests, the birds, the fish, the frogs, the butterflies, and thousands of species of Earth's great masterpiece of life are challenged in every way. The scale of humanity's challenges can seem overwhelming. As I ask you not to live in denial, I also ask you not to become disillusioned, to throw your hands up in despair or to become numbed. For we know that this is the time for an awakened consciousness, for alertness, for a heightened focus and clarity about the nature of our challenges.

An awakened consciousness is fundamentally different than one which is distracted, anxiety-ridden, or preoccupied with blame. An awakened consciousness is radically open to transformation at all levels, from you the individual to the collective. We know that transformation is also more than mental formulas and good ideas. It touches something very deep, something so essential that it affects both heart and mind. Of course there is no single type of transformation, no singular modality where one recipe works for all, nor is it linear-sequential. Transformation... has its own mystery. It can bring a subtle shift which reveals an entirely new perspective, or it can bring a jolt or flash of insight which has the power to reorganize our lives, or it can provide the impetus for a great leap of faith. More than anything, transformation requires courage, the courage to face the truth that your own being has great depth.

In honoring uniqueness and diversity...we have begun to glimpse as never before a world that works for all.  It takes courage to heal. It takes courage to speak on behalf of the whole, to be a voice, a full expression for the Earth and for its diverse species, for all human life, for a consciousness that knows that peace is our inheritance and that our responsibility is to reveal our interdependence. It takes courage for science and spirituality to dialogue and illuminate new possibilities for humankind. It takes courage to reach towards the manifestation of a vision that transforms enemies into allies and disillusionment into hope.

But you were born for such a time as this.

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I particularly liked this article because he is encouraging us to step up and be engaged with our planet and in a similar vein, I am too.  I truly believe that it is only by working together that we will ultimately succeed.  My vision of creating a global community of people sharing their stories and offering encouragement and support to each other seems like a natural progression to James O'Dea's ideas.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

2 comments:

Lauren N. Stephanoff said...

My husband and I were totally saying this same thing on our walk a couple of evenings ago... We love knowing that times like these serve to push us in ways we're needing to be pushed. Thanks for posting!

LifeLines said...

Thank you for your comment. I also think that O'Dea's call to action is so timely. It's all too easy to get caught up in not knowing what to do. But really, any action, whether large or small makes a difference.