Thoughts on the Gulf Oil Spill

The enormity and tragedy of the Gulf oil spill takes a while to sink in. I know it did with me. The array of emotions was palpable: sadness, disgust, anger, shock, among them. Heeding the advice of Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, I let the intensity of the feelings work through and did not shy away from allowing myself to really feel what was going on in mind and heart. Macy says that it’s important to feel the great tragedy of the destruction of our home planet in all its ramifications to avoid the danger of becoming numb.

And it’s so easy to become numb. I was watching a popular PBS political talk show called the McLaughlin Group recently and listening to the speakers rattle on about the spill as if it was something that didn’t really affect them, as if it was something outside themselves. They seemed only interested in calculating the political effects of this great human and environmental tragedy. What’s wrong with this picture?

The shift in consciousness will take place only when all of us “get it” and allow the enormity of earth changes to break through our carefully constructed wall of consensus reality. This means letting the import of these events seep through our natural psychological self defenses and barriers. Admittedly, this is not easy. Reflexively, we want everything to be “all right” and if it isn’t in the external world,there’s a tendency to try to make it so in our minds by denial or various forms of cognitive filtering(which are,in essence, lesser forms of denial).

All in all, the Gulf tragedy is a powerful metaphor for what we have already been doing to the planet for hundreds of years. It’s almost as if that process has been speeded up for us to see in dramatic fashion as the Shift intensifies, a form of karmic reckoning. It is also a strong message about the limits of technology and messing with things we don’t fully understand. The Icelandic Volcano, Hurricane Katrina, Nashville, Haiti, and now the Gulf spill are all potent but deeply saddening examples of shifting earth energies of the prophecies and underscore in dramatic fashion the need to change our view of our planetary home and the cosmos.