Category Archives: Positive Energy

The Time Machine Dream

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Often in the morning, I am blessed by several wonderful ideas that have come from my nighttime mind. These ideas sometimes come from remembered dreams and sometimes from thought processes unremembered. Cultivating a friendship between my nighttime mind and my awake mind seems to spur this on. The nighttime mind brings us many crazy dreams and many useful dreams. Some dreams even flow from our nighttime mind’s deep stirring encounters with God, our All in All. The dream I’m sharing now from 1997 is one such dream.

Jugglin on the Berlin Wall 1989

Jugglin on the Berlin Wall, photographed in November 1989 by Yann Forget.

It was evening. About five or six of us were in a meeting room with a table. Each of us was enthusiastic about the work that we were pursuing. Each of us was deeply involved with building a better future for humanity. We were also realistic about the difficulties involved in fulfilling our dreams.

Our enthusiasm was in part based upon a special opportunity we had that evening. We had a time machine in our building. First, we had to decide who would go. I guess since it was my dream, it was decided that I should go. We discussed the trip and decided that I really did not need to take anything. But as I began to enter the time machine, I realized that it would be really good to have a camera. Quickly someone ran into a nearby room and brought me a high quality camera.

I set the time machine on ready, and immediately I found myself in the future. It did not seem to be a far-off future, something like maybe 7 to 25 years into the future, but that’s just my guess, I really don’t know when it was. In the time machine, I was being transported from one part of the world to another. I was flying about 30 yards above the ground observing a particular day. I went to many places all over the world and everywhere I went there were people of all cultures and backgrounds jubilantly joining together and marching, carrying banners, singing, chanting, swaying together, spinning, and dancing in the streets. The gatherings were spontaneous and free spirited. Something utterly incredible had just been realized or had just happened and the people were celebrating the resultant oneness of humanity and thanking God for this great victory.

All the while I kept taking pictures. Then I was brought back to the present and to the meeting room. Right away I began to tell others what I saw. I was so moved by what I saw that I teared up. Everyone was impressed by my words, but it was not until someone brought in the large developed pictures and placed them on the table that everyone began to really take it in. The others in the room began to speak breathlessly about how these pictures could change the world, because people would see in these pictures a real future that will happen if we work together now. Besides speaking of how others would be affected by the pictures, each spoke of how they were now going to work much harder and in a much more directed and concerted manner to build a better future for humanity. For in these pictures, each of us saw this wonderful future reaching out to us, inviting us to live in the faith that this is not only possible but very realizable.

Two additional themes strike me from this dream. First it points to a great trial and a great victory ahead of us. Second, it points to “vivid pictures” within each of us, gifts, talents, and energy that we can bring forth to build a better humanity.My daughter, Mignon, sent me a link to the positive video on the right. It suggests something of a better world as well. Click it and enjoy it.

 

Our next Future of the Gulf – Community Brainstorm is September 30, 2010 at the Coastal Response Center – 7385 Highway 188 in Coden, Alabama. Our purpose, in light of the ongoing oil disaster, is to share community needs, resources, ideas, and opportunities with other people who care. We will brainstorm and encourage one another to act and move positively together to restore our way of life, health, and community.

 

 Nic Marks and the Happy Planet Index

 

Burning Your Brothers’ Books

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Peace Train

“You see the splinter in your brother’s eye, but you do not see the beam in your own eye. When you remove the beam from of your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” All of us, brothers and sisters, need purification, and every religion needs purification as well. Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Moslems … can best help each other by giving one another the good example of focusing on their own purification.

Today we remember those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001. But how do we remember? Do we remember our brothers and sisters with the same hate that led to their deaths? Is more burning the answer? Or do we remember our brothers and sisters with acts of service? Couldn’t the world use a lot more love? Isn’t it time to heal?

Those who died on September 11, 2001, including the terrorists, were victims of religious intolerance and fanaticism. The spewing hate from that day and from many centuries past and from all sides poisons our world. But by taking the beams from our own eyes, we can build bridges for the whole human family.

Being Friends with God

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Two friends, Arian Brazenwood and Edward Denton, get ready for an Island adventure

Arian Brazenwood and Edward Denton after doing dishes find that friendship also leads to many adventures, photographed on Dauphin Island July 29, 2010.

God gets a bad rap sometimes from those of us who believe. By our words and actions, we often portray God as a cop in the sky out to get people, or we portray God as a genie with a magic wand who fixes all our problems. No description of God is ever complete, but God is like the Wind, beyond our grasp yet within each of us – like the Universe, beyond our understanding but present all around us – and like a Friend, mysterious, surprising, and alive.

God is the Spirit connecting us All, the Infinite Lover of All, enlivening All persons and All things, bearing All individuals within All individuals, our All in All, our I-Am-Who-Am.

There’s no need to shrink in fear of God. God is always calling, welcoming, listening, comforting, healing, forgiving, creating, … God loves each of us with an immensely pure, energetic, and endlessly generous love. “I love you! I love you! I love you! Even if no one else loves you, I love you! … … …”

Inasmuch as we live as Friends with each other, we also connect with God as Friends. When we enliven others, nourish them, and bear them up in love, God thrives in us and we fulfill our destiny as God’s Children. God is love, the deepest Wind within our lives, and where that Wind will carry us step by step is beyond our wildest dreams.

What a People!

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Jeff McCollough and others prepare to help animals affected by oil disaster

Jeff McCollough and others prepare to help animals affected by oil disaster, photographed July 14, 2010.

Training workshop for the peer listening program presented by Dr. Steve Picou

Training workshop for the peer listening program presented by Dr. Steve Picou in Bayou La Batre, photographed July 14, 2010.

The gulf coast is not just home for tragedies and crises. It’s the home of incredible people! In 2004 numerous hurricanes struck Florida and the northern gulf coast including Hurricane Ivan. Other areas suffered greatly too particularly with Hurricane Jeanne. 2005 brought more destruction with numerous communities all along the coast from Central America to United States and throughout the Caribbean being devastated from severe hurricanes including Dennis, Emily, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. With barely a breather if that, rough economic times came our way and are indeed affecting the whole world. And now we’re in month three of the oil disaster.

Today we are shocked at the inept care that was given to our environment and shocked at the long-term environmental destruction of our home and the home of so many other creatures too. Yet positive energy is the focus of so many people! “I love Dauphin Island!” “I love Bayou La Batre!” “I love Louisiana!” “I love Mississippi!” “I love my community!” “I care about you!” “Let’s help one another!” “Let’s take care of our environment!” We are a people who have kept coming back! We are a people who are still coming back today!

With confidence, even after all this and with whatever will come in the future, be it natural or unnatural disasters, I know that we will continue to live positively. There’s an incredible faith inside all of us, a faith that creates an unconquerable, spirited synergy between us, a faith that is lived out in innumerable acts of kindness, friendship, and generous initiative.

Volunteer update

There is a new volunteer program being offered on the gulf coast called “peer listening.” Peer listening is a community service that proved valuable in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Training workshops are currently being conducted in Alabama and Mississippi coastal communities. According to the program’s website (which contains lots of helpful information), “peer listening is a type of support that occurs when people provide knowledge, experience, emotional, social or practical help to each other.” Pictured above is a training workshop that was held in Bayou La Batre yesterday.