In the bad news of the day BP stands tarred in condemnation for the horrendous crime against nature their incompetence has unleashed. The bad news does not stop there. It is not just BP. This is an issue for all of humanity and none of us can dodge it, disclaim our responsibilities, or ignore it.

Only one issue in this matter is of any significance. Are you as a human being aligned with your soul in service to the divine so that you live every day in reverence for the life of all beings and the earth herself? This is a question both for the individual and for humanity as whole.

The primary purpose of humanity is to master free will and choice. Two main paths lead to this mastery. One is the often traveled road of self destruction. By ignoring our connection to the divine we can focus on our own unbalanced emotional needs or mentally driven ideas that spin out of control without the vital surrender to the divine. Greed, war, excessive self-indulgence, and other atrocities mark this path.

The far less common path is that of choosing to surrender to the divine which leads to the joyful acceptance of all the life on this planet. This path usually gets scant attention, which is reason enough for our predicament in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Mastering the art of free will and choice by massive self-destruction is a gruesome and painful way to learn the consequences of our choices, but the mass consciousness of humanity has mired itself in that path.

I have witnessed a wide range of responses and reactions to the oil spill. I saw a comment online by someone complaining his vacation to Florida was being spoiled and he wished the oil spill had been delayed a few days. How small minded and self interested is that?

Others have reacted with anger or emotional pain at the huge destruction to the ecosystem. Still others are left wondering how to survive with their livelihoods damaged or destroyed. And then there are those who discuss using a nuclear bomb to seal the oil leak.

Blaming BP is epidemic. BP is, of course, far from blameless, but their acts are only the tip of this particular iceberg in human consciousness.

No one doubts that this is a time of massive upheaval and change. The havoc in global financial conditions is unmistakable, even to those who usually keep their minds buried in their television sets. Other changes even more unpredictable loom on the horizon.

So what on earth is going on? That is indeed the question.

Great transformational energies are moving through our entire solar system, our planet, our own individual beings. This is not a tidy process. Everything mired in outmoded patterns is getting thrown out in the cosmic house cleaning. New patterns we do not understand are replacing them, in a great stew of chaos.

The earth has her own deep transformation moving with inexorable power. For untold eons this planet has been a refuge for those of us who came to hide, to struggle with our wounds from unknown battles. The earth has been a sanctuary, although not often recognized in that role.

Now the earth sets a new course as her own transformation unfolds. She is no longer holding the sanctuary but is moving into some new role of her own choosing. That profound shift has been like an earthquake in human consciousness, just as though our anthill had taken a huge kick.

Without pause, another change enters the world with the BP oil spill. The earth is choosing not to tolerate the misuse of humans she has endured for so long. The choice to master free will and choice by self-destruction will be accelerated now, even as the choice to master free will and choice by service to the divine will also be accelerated.

The division is wrenchingly deep as humanity tries to make its own evolutionary leap in this chaotic flux of energies. Unfortunately even some of those who cry out against the destruction in the oil spill are still doing so out of self interest.

I love the beauty of this planet and the way I have experienced it in my life. I do not want to let that beauty go.

However, I have to ask why should the earth hold back from choosing a cycle in which she is loved and respected by all who live here? Does she deserve to be plundered and despoiled? Do any of us deserve to be plundered and despoiled?

The answer seems obvious enough to me. If I am serious about my choice to align my soul with the divine, I must surrender to this process. I do not understand it all and I do not know how the transformation will complete. As humans we may not be part of the picture anymore if too many hold to the path of self-destruction.

I do know the choice that I find worthwhile and trust that path for myself. And I ask for a blessing for the earth in her new cycle as she shakes off the old patterns, the old ways of being.

So what choice do you make at this crossroads for humanity?

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Then I met Mohanji. I thought we were going to have someone come set up a fire walk, and instead Mohanji came to share Agnihotra with us. I still have no desire to be someone’s disciple or to search out gurus, but I learned a lot spending time with this man. He genuinely exemplifies the qualities a guru is supposed to have. He is spiritually dedicated to his work and is a man of powerful humility and compassion.

Mohanji has an effective teaching style, which I watched in action in our group conversations at the Diamond J Ranch in the mornings before our CCT teacher trainings. I loved his way of correcting anyone who quit paying attention, the approach Gia calls Guru Smackdown.

He has a way of posing questions to make people think similar to the training I received from my father. However, unlike my father, Mohanji generally had one specific answer in mind that would be the only acceptable reply. I strongly suspect he sometimes would change that in mid-stream just to keep people off balance so new ideas could enter more easily.

But what puzzled me the most was his dedication to the Agnihotra ceremony itself. He will be the first to say that once you reach a certain level you do not even need it, but he completely shapes his life around this ceremony.

What can be accomplished by burning cow dung and ghee (clarified butter) at sunrise and sunset while chanting Sanskrit mantras that cannot be accomplished by meditation or other methods? Yet he is adamant that this ceremony is essential.

After attending his ceremonies I definitely felt their deep power. In fact, I could feel them even when I was not physically present for them and absorbed in other activities.

Some of the answer began to emerge at Yellowstone when we went to the edge of the caldera, our potential supervolcano lying in wait, and he performed a major healing fire ceremony there. Despite the lack of discipline in our group during the ceremony, it was still a potent ceremony nonetheless.

Discipline is a necessity for spiritual development or for mastery of anything really. As an artist this necessity is ever present for me. In jewelry designing I often work directly in wax with an alcohol lamp and dental tools, working with the cooling cycle after leaving the flame with the tool. This is a demanding technique few use, preferring the less precise but far easier electric wax pens.

Watching Mohanji tend the cow dung and ghee fire during his ceremonies reminded me of the jewelry work I have done with wax. After enough years of practice it becomes an effortless rhythm, and he certainly had mastered that rhythm with his fires. A couple of other people had their own fires and they lacked his degree of grace in handling the fire.

Tending the fire requires physical engagement with the process. It also requires an alert attentiveness. The mind is further engaged with the Sanskrit mantras. In my experience the mind definitely needs to be focused properly to keep it from causing trouble.

His explanations of the Sanskrit mantras also showed the emotional component of the process. They had a loving, compassionate, and sharing quality to them that surely would engage the emotions as one chanted the mantras.

The entire ceremonial process was intended as a spiritual practice, so the spiritual nature was fundamentally involved. Combining physical, mental, emotional, and mental energies into one precise endeavor is a powerful process indeed.

I see why he would immediately reject the idea that one could work with him by doing meditation instead of the fire ceremony at the specified sunrise and sunset times.

But however powerful it is to engage physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energies simultaneously, it is still a long slow process. I do not have thirty years to spend following that particular path, which is easily what it could take.

So the question that lingers for me is how I use what I have seen on my own path. How do I achieve that singular alignment of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy in such a potent form? I have components of it from my art work and healing energy work but they are not integrated in that manner.

Just being in Mohanji’s prescence changed me. I found myself less resistant to changes I find unwelcome, such as the recent foolish destruction of some wonderful old trees because they cause a few snowdrifts in winter.

Likewise, seeing how he works with the Agnihotra ceremony also changed me. The process continues to work through me, so I am waiting to see what crystallizes from the time I spent with him combined with the CCT teacher explorations of healing energy at the ranch.

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One of the biggest struggles you can encounter is the process of reaching this decision to surrender to a higher purpose, to your own soul purpose. This is not an easy matter for anyone.

In the course of human evolution we develop ourselves, usually gradually. After developing a solid and effective ego to handle the necessities of living a physical life, the soul is delighted. Now it is time to do what we came here to do in the first place.

The ego, however, is perfectly content to continue without handing over the steering wheel. The ego really thinks it is in charge and this illusion starts the battle of all battles. The inner battle may appear to be external struggles with other people, as it is projected outward into life.

To the developed ego, surrender to the soul is death pure and simple, so the resistance is total. The soul does not surrender to the ego, so this battle may continue for a long and increasingly painful time.

Eventually the denial of the ego does give way to the beautiful and life affirming surrender to the soul purpose. It is not the fearsome death the ego expected, but truly a birth into a new level of life.

It is easy to assume that once surrender has occurred, all is well going forward with soul purpose. Won’t that bring a path of roses and joy?

But what birth is without its pangs and difficulties? What birth does not signify a new beginning, a new cycle of learning?

This particular new beginning turns life upside down and inside out. Longstanding relationships may fall away. The line of work may change completely. Everything is thrown up into the air and comes back down in unknown and unexpected patterns.

These changes are a death of the former way of life indeed. Sometimes the outer reality does not actually appear to change a great deal, but the inner changes are as enormous and transforming as though every external detail had turned into its opposite.

Navigating this set of challenges is demanding. You get to practice surrender on a continual basis. It is not as though we surrender once and it is done forever. It is more a matter of learning to flow with surrender continuously.

As with riding a bicycle, it is hardest at first and then becomes effortless grace. Most of us who have chosen surrender to our soul purpose are unevenly finding our way to the effortless grace stage.

What are your experiences with this process? What would you like to share with others? What questions would you like to ask?

This post is concludes the Change of Being Series begun on Earth Day. The prior posts were Self Responsibility and The Unvarnished Truth.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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We all think that we know the truth and that we act on that knowing all the time. We manage not to notice the myriad unresolved contradictions in our behavior, ideas, opinions, and beliefs, thinking of ourselves as unified and consistent.

Emotions play an enormous role in obscuring our vision in such matters. The more deeply we are emotionally attached to something, the less likely we are to clearly see it.

This is evident all around us. Why does that woman keep taking the abusive spouse back and why does she say he really loves her and has changed? We can see at a glance no such thing is the truth.

Her emotions and needs interfere with her seeing the stark truth. Her illusions are more comforting and do not require her to take action to change her situation. So she sees what she sees until she is ready to take responsibility for what is really happening in her life.

My cousin used to quarrel with kids at school. He would get mad, start to cry, and go sit in his seat, ripping all the buttons off his shirt. Afterwards he would tell his mother the other kids had done it and she would go on the warpath in his defense. She never noticed he was really a bully himself.

Later when he was in high school and I was still in grade school, we had a painfully sad conversation one sunny afternoon. He was slow in school and I was not. So, this particular afternoon, just the two of us stood in my driveway after the bus had gone. He timidly asked me if people ever just wake up knowing everything one morning.

I said I did not think so.

He replied that his mother always told him not to worry about having troubles with his schoolwork because one morning he would wake up and know it all.

I was thunderstruck. I did not want to tell him his mother/my aunt was feeding him bogus lies, but he plainly wanted to know the truth. As diplomatically as I could manage, I said I supposed that might happen in some rare case, but as far as I knew it was highly unlikely.

He sadly said he had begun to realize that was true. Then he thanked me and went home.

For him the recognition of the truth had to be a deeply sorrowful discovery, but it freed him to work with the reality of his situation and start finding what to do with his life. His mother certainly had done him no favors in avoiding the truth.

Truth can sometimes be a bitter pill, but then new doors open to possibilities hidden behind that ignored truth. I myself would rather find new doorways than remain stuck with nowhere to go.

This post is in the Change of Being Series begun on Earth Day. The prior post in the series was Reverence for Life. The next post is Commitment to Soul Purpose. Photo by Bern Sundell.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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We hear all kinds of arguments for preserving the rainforests and at least slowing down the destruction of species we have not even discovered yet. One of the big arguments is that these species might hold secrets that could heal us of some of our difficult diseases.

That sounds stunningly like more exploitation talking instead of any genuine reverence for life itself. If we can wring something useful out of it, go ahead and let it live, at least until we get what we want from it.

It has been awhile since I saw the story and I do not remember all the details, but a woman with a terminal illness was outraged she could not get an experimental drug that might (note I said “might”) prolong her life. The problem was that the source of the drug involved killing an endangered species.

She protested vehemently in the news, “I am a species too!”

I remember that line quite clearly. But she is an individual, not a species. And an individual of what possibly is an overpopulated species at that.

That is typical of human thinking, we as individuals or as a species are all important. We should have whatever we think we need or want, regardless of the cost to other beings and the planet herself.

Property rights are touted as inviolable, entitling owners to plunder the land for whatever gain they can achieve. Mounds of toxic mining wastes are one result of this approach. The loss of half our precious topsoil in the Midwestern USA is another. The list can go on much longer, but I leave it to you to observe all around you.

Where in all this is a sense of stewardship? A concept that other beings might actually have the right to exist for themselves, not just for us?

Without even that idea in place, how do we as a species deal with the living being that is the planet we inhabit? Taken as a whole, the earth herself meets scientific criteria for being considered a living organism.

What does that mean in our daily lives? Not much apparently. The earth as a living organism is mostly a dry academic concept, not a heartfelt reality that shapes our lives or infuses our way of being.

We are asking all the wrong questions. Instead of how we can get what we want (voraciously and endlessly want as consumers) and how we can get it cheaper and faster, what if we asked a different question? What if we asked how we live harmoniously on the earth with the earth?

That question leads to completely different answers. Answers many of us do not want at all. It might cost something to live in balance with other living beings that are not human, that may be smaller or larger than we are. It might require surrendering many of the common distractions in our lives.

And if people want anything at all, it is to hang onto their distractions so they can avoid really seeing that person looking back at them in the mirror. Enough distractions and we can avoid the real questions of life and feel like we are all right, nice people, as we consume more and more and more. We can become a toxic malady of the earth and not even notice we are doing so.

However, the earth will continue, even if she ultimately has to shake off a nasty human plague.

So, how about you personally? Do you think you are part of the malady or part of the healing? How do you see this? What choices do you make every day that reveal your deepest attitudes?

This post is in the Change of Being Series begun on Earth Day. The prior post in the series was Self Responsibility. The next post in the series is The Unvarnished Truth. Photo by Lexi Sundell.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Anyone can have a sad story. After all, life brings its troubles to everyone one way or another. However, taking a sad story of troubles into a persistent view of being a victim is following the saddest path of all.

Being a victim is easy to justify, easy to prove to yourself. The victim mindset interprets any experience as additional proof of powerless and helpless existence, increasing the victim spiral.

Fortunately, at any time, you can choose to take responsibility now for your own life. This is an empowering stance that is as easy to justify as the victim stance, but far more productive.

I find taking a sharp look at my own contribution to my problems can be extremely revealing, even if quite painful at times. Sometimes the problems may seem out of scale with the error that led me into them, but no matter.

The important thing is to simply take responsibility for what I am doing now about the situation and move forward. I may discover a new understanding about my errors or lack of perception that led me into the situation. I can then alter my behavior, and therefore my results. At the very least I can alter how I am handling the situation in the present, even if I cannot change the past.

This mindset leads to effective problem solving and the awareness one can always change what does not work. If one method fails, try another until you find something that is effective for you.

Contrast this with the victim state of mind, where the pain of recognizing your mistakes and/or taking personal responsibility for handling the problem is completely avoided. This avoidance comes at the cost of forever remaining in the pain of the unresolved situation.

Victims may appear humble but really are often highly arrogant in their avoidance of any personal responsibility. They stubbornly believe they are exactly right in their thoughts and actions, and if things go badly, it can only be everyone else’s fault.

The other common but sometimes more subtle way that humans avoid personal responsibility is in handling our emotions. We project our emotions onto others without recognizing ourselves in the process. We use other people as garbage pails into which we dump our own toxic emotions. We also allow our unrecognized emotions to spill into apparently unrelated actions with distorted and chaotic results.

In short, we human beings often utterly fail at recognizing or understanding our own emotions. As a result we then do everything we can to make others responsible for our own emotions, which is inherently dishonest on a deep internal level.

This lack of energetic integrity makes communications distorted and clean solution of problems impossible. It is vital that we take responsibility for our own emotional and energetic space and learn to handle it effectively.

This may lead to actions we might prefer to avoid, such as recognizing our own incorrect patterns in order to identify the changes we need to make. This can also lead to removing or drastically altering interactions with other individuals, which can certainly upset relationships.

In some cases these are likely to be relationships we would rather not disturb or even see too clearly. There certainly are serious consequences for increased self responsibility.

At the root of this self responsibility is the honesty to look ourselves in the mirror and work with what is really there. Anything else is a sham, a pathway to nowhere.

The practice of self responsibility opens the doorway to authentic being. Authentic being is the only way we can experience our own genuine inner joy, so the prize is well worth the price of admission, at least for those of us who choose that path.

I would like to ask for your comments on how you deal with your own self responsibility and the results you have seen in your own life. I would also like to hear how you handle your interactions with those who remain stuck in a victim mentality.

The next post in this series is Reverence for Life.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Here it is Earth Day again and time to write a post. Am I going to exhort you to recycle your plastic bottles? Wash and recycle your cans? Gather pop bottles and trash along the freeway? Use green products in your homes? Plant a tree? Bicycle instead of driving?

Not really. These are all useful enough behaviors and I am sure plenty will be written today about such matters. The sad truth is I think much of this activity will be nothing more than slapping an eco-friendly veneer on a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship with Gaia, the earth herself.

I would rather see a deep realignment in how we work with our own energies and how we work with the earth. Overall humanity’s approach is flawed and needs a serious overhaul, starting with each person individually and spreading out into the group energies.

The main areas that need immediate change are as follows:

1. Self responsibility. We too often do not take personal responsibility for our own attitudes and the way we use our energies. Victimhood is alive and rampant on the planet. Many of us do not even take the slightest responsibility for our emotional stance in life.
2. Reverence for life in all things. We frequently look at anything outside our own species as stuff to exploit, spiritless raw material to feed our needs. (Actually plenty of us even look at members of our own species as stuff to exploit.) Some make exceptions for animals, perhaps only certain animals. Others make exception for a few plants. But, by and large, the rest of the universe is regarded as inanimate stuff to use however we can manage for our own purposes.
3. Willingness to see and act on the truth. We make many assumptions in order to function in life. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but becomes a juggernaut for destruction if those assumptions are never examined or challenged. In an ever-changing world we must be prepared ourselves to change when needed.
4. Commitment to higher purpose. I am speaking here of a life-altering surrender to the soul and its purpose in life. I mean a total commitment to honoring the positive path and walking it daily in our physical lives.

If we all individually embraced those four points, we could approach living with the earth in a completely different way. Instead of taking small actions to stem the rising tide of incorrect behaviors and attitudes, a new way of being would naturally arise from within us all.

We would find new ways of relating to the living earth and working with her. Given the surprising creative aptitude of human beings, it would be marvelous to see what might result.

In closing, I ask for your comments on these ideas. I will be writing a series of posts, one about each of these four areas needing change. What are your thoughts about these underlying patterns and how we live on the earth both today and tomorrow?

The image shown above is a detail from a painting titled “Aldebaran Sings” by Lexi Sundell.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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For example, if someone has an intention of being well liked and popular, but goes around acting cranky and irritable, the intention does not have much likelihood of manifesting.

However, in other cases, the individual is taking actions to open the door for the intention but still remains frustrated with a lack of results.

In that situation it is useful to look at the four layers of intention that must harmonize for results to manifest. If these layers of intention do not align, the intention will be ineffective, like a camera out of focus.

Conscious Level of Intention

This is the direct conscious thought that forms the intention. As a simple example, let’s use “I want to manifest a new car.” This can be a perfectly valid intention based on the obvious fact the old car is not reliable anymore.

Shadow Level of Intention

The subconscious level of intention works with all those energies, both positive and negative, that the individual is suppressing in order to get along in the world. In this case, let us use the statement, “I reject the current financial system of society.”

Actually there may be multiple shadow intentions, so let us add a second one, “No one in my family ever gets ahead.”

Soul Level of Intention

This intention holds the purpose of the lifetime. For this example, let’s use, “I want to create the embodiment of divine grace in physical form.”

Looking at these three levels of intention some immediate problems for manifesting a car show themselves.

Shadow level indignantly asks, “You want to use money to go buy a car?”

Soul level asks, “Car? What does a car have to do with anything?”

Conscious level gets irritable, “Why can’t I just have a car, I need a car!”

Unified Natural Level of Intention

This level integrates the preceding three levels into a unifying statement that accommodates them all in a positive statement. A harmonious alignment between the levels is essential for manifesting.

When the conscious intention is not manifesting, the unified natural intention is likely to be completely missing or malformed.

Creating a Unified Natural Intention

If the shadow level rejects the current financial system, little will be gained in arguing with it. That merely forces it deeper into shadow energy.

However, sometimes a shadow intention can be a statement that points to a need for healing. For example, the shadow intention of “No one in my family ever gets ahead” is a statement ripe for deep healing.

A Crystalline Consciousness Technique™ session that uses an intention to clear, heal, and release inappropriate belief systems and replace them with new effective beliefs is highly useful in this case. Afterwards one can check to see if the problematic shadow intention has changed or disappeared.

Arguing with the soul is a wholly pointless exercise that many people persist in doing. All that does is prolong the frustration and intensify the lessons. The sooner one embraces the intention of the soul, the better.

At this point it is now time to find the wording of the unified natural intention that accommodates the conscious, shadow, and soul levels of intention.

Finding the Wording of the Unified Natural Intention

Experiment with different wordings until the first three levels of intention actually fit together without conflict. For this example, “I intend to manifest a new car in a way that transmutes my existing financial system into an expression of divine grace” might be just the ticket.

All three levels can nod in agreement to that statement. Alignment has been achieved.

To further accelerate manifestation, a CCT session can be used to fully activate this intention.

How Do I Recognize My Shadow and Soul Intentions?

For shadow intentions I suggest you sit down and quickly write an answer to your question to yourself, “What are my shadow intentions?” Just start writing without mental editing (No, that can’t be it, etc.) and without worrying about correct spelling and punctuation. Just write a stream of consciousness list as quickly as you can.

When you feel like stopping, do so. If you are skilled with muscle testing, go through the list testing which ones apply. If you are not able to muscle test, try to feel which ones stir up the strongest feelings in you and use those.

Soul intention can be more elusive to pin down because it may not come into conscious awareness for quite some time even after choosing to commit to your own soul path.

If you have not committed to your soul path, gaining clarity about your soul intention will be doubly difficult. The rejection of the soul path caused by not committing to it will combine rejected shadow energy with soul intention, making it even less recognizable to the conscious level.

If you choose to make a commitment to your soul path without yet having any clear wording of that soul intention, you can try using a generic wording such as “in alignment with my soul path” until you reach greater conscious clarity about it.

If You Are Having Trouble Doing This

If you experience difficulty in recognizing the shadow and soul intentions or in formulating an effective unified natural intention, I might be able to help you.

I firmly believe each individual is empowered on their own path so I am not interested in substituting my efforts for the ones that are rightfully yours. However, I can assist you in learning to work with your own intentions so you can readily identify and apply them effectively yourself.

I also highly recommend using Crystalline Consciousness Technique™ to jet propel your intentions when you have reached clarity about them. By working with me, I can do the CCT on your behalf if you are not trained in that modality.

If this sounds helpful, you can schedule a telephone appointment, just email me for details.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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The most thought provoking question was when someone asked me what I thought I had to do to rectify the karma of the situation. Well, now that is a quite a question, isn’t it?

First of all, does a child who is not in a decision making role take on karma for participating in activities decided by others? My brother and I were children, you will recall, and never burned cars as independent decision making adults.

Our father was going to burn cars without regard to our point of view. As kids who did not know any better, we did like burning them as it was a lot more fun than what happened next. My father’s health was failing so my brother and I were forced to work. After those burned cars cooled our task was to strip the copper wiring from inside the charred cars.

We were small enough to stand inside and pull the wiring out of the top of the car, down the doorposts, along the floor, under the dash, etc. Every pull stirred soot and ashes that flew in the air and all over us. Wearing a scarf over our faces did not help much and certainly did not save us from the ridicule of the other kids in the neighborhood.

I wonder if breathing that ashen debris had anything to do with my struggles with lymph cancer in my twenties? Or was it the polluted river? Or the fumes from the chemical plant near my high school? My graduating class has an exceptionally high death rate no one has investigated.

In any event, if you say that participating was enough to create karma, more questions arise. I direct these questions at those of us who live in the United States. Those of you who live in other countries are welcome to wear however much of this is appropriate for how you and your countrymen handle things.

If participation is sufficient to incur karma, how many of you can truthfully say that you never rode in a family car that had any parts made from the recycled steel that burned cars produced?

After all, burning cars was a standard practice for recycling scrapped metal at that time. Our societal group deemed that was the normal way to do things so as a group everyone participated in one manner or another.

Where is the karmic burden in that scenario? And rather than talking about yesterday, how about talking about today? As you stand in your driveway beside your car with a lawn drenched in poisonous chemicals and a house full of consumer goods, how much environmental pollution do you think you have caused?

Just getting the food on your table causes an immense environmental burden, let alone all the rest. Due to current agricultural practices the farmlands are losing both quantity and quality of topsoil. Destructive herbicides, insecticides, and soil depleting fertilizing processes are intrinsic to current methods of crop production.

In addition to that, animals are routinely misused as part of food production. Do you think the recent news stories of birds being urinated upon by the slaughterhouse workers before killing the birds is an extreme perversion? Or the torture of downed cattle at another slaughterhouse?

Actually those are slightly more extreme examples of the way our food animals are handled all the time. Animals are forced to stand in masses of their own waste while being fed antibiotics to keep them from being killed by the detrimental effects of eating the grain that fattens them for slaughter. Their bodies are not meant for eating so much grain and cattle are killed shortly before they would have died from grain acidosis anyway.

This does not yet address the environmental costs associated with transporting and processing food over long distances. All those costs silently add up to far more than you pay for that food on your plate. Turning a blind eye to this behavior and racking up more farm subsidies does not solve it.

So, if you eat food that is not locally grown and locally processed with sustainable methods, I guarantee you are daily participating in far more environmental damage than those burning cars produced.

And we have not even started discussing the consumer goods gathered from all corners of the world with production methods that create all manner of havoc in many countries.

The big difference is a burning car produces a really noticeable plume of acrid black smoke that allows you to point a finger in horror and shock. That pollution is unmistakable.

Apparently participating in more diffused pollution spread all around the globe you can’t personally see is far more acceptable. After all, you are just living a normal life according to the standards society has set, right?

Hmm, isn’t that what my father was doing when he burned cars as part of the scrapping process?

So where is the karmic responsibility in all this? Are children exempt from the karma created by the decisions of their elders? They certainly don’t have a way to escape the consequences, that much is certain. Are all individuals to be held personally responsible for how they participate in their societal group, in those karma producing decisions?

And who, exactly, do you think is going to clean up the whole mess anyway?

Jared Diamond asks “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” in an excellent article. If you want to measure your own ecological footprint go to Redefining Progress and take the quiz listed in the left sidebar.

When I took the quiz my numbers were far better than the normal for the USA but still too high to be sustainable. Guess I have more work to do on that…

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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I would say that people are more afraid of succeeding than afraid of failing. The responsibility of stepping fully into your power can seem a terrifying proposition in the face of our individual and group memories of misuse of power. Our entire histories are littered with those misuses of power, both great and small.

It may seem safer to remain powerless, helpless, and ineffective since that at least appears to reduce the damage possible. However the fact is that by being powerless, helpless, and ineffective, you are withholding all that could be positive if you did step into your own amazing power.

That unquestionably creates the greatest damage of all, both for you and for those around you.

None of us can “save” anyone else. None of us can make the decision for you to commit to your own personal growth. None of us can decide to do whatever it takes for you to accomplish that growth.

The good news is that none of us can stop you from doing those things either.

If you are committed to your personal growth, you will find a wealth of information that can assist you on that path. If you are not truly committed to your path of growth, nothing you find will counteract your choice to refuse growth.

That choice is yours and yours alone. You can decide to discover how to disarm your own wounded awareness that resists your personal growth and assert a path of healing for yourself, in however many steps it takes and however long it takes to do so. You can decide to take the steering wheel away from your wounded self and give it to your greater self. Or not.

I speak from the experience of having been quite a train wreck in my twenties, with my father dead from a heart attack, my mother having committed suicide, my ex-husband having gone violently insane, and my own health shattered from the violence.

I was suicidal, but decided to teach my daughter a different way to live than I saw around me. I knew I could not teach her what I did not already know and do by example. I had no idea how to accomplish the changes needed, but decided I was going to do it no matter what.

I failed often but I persisted anyway. Over a number of years I eventually devised for myself a far better manner of living to share with my daughter. I began to appreciate the joys of life, to have gratitude for life.

That was some 30 years ago without the numerous resources here on the internet. Now more help and information is available than ever. I know anyone can move forward if they actually choose to do so. The act of making such a commitment opens the door for new opportunities from divine source you can then recognize and use.

It all begins with self responsibility. Commit to your path and then make some changes in your life, and if they do not work, try something else until you find what works for you. Personal growth is not a straight line path of progression, or an easy one.

Actually, the only thing harder is choosing not to do it at all.

You are correct if you seek out those people who have accomplished what you want to learn. However, you will not be able to effectively apply their solutions without bringing your own commitment to your growth. That is the real starting place.

I wish you well with this process. The discoveries that await you are magnificent, if you choose to find them.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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