Heaven or Las Vegas – Part I

While this blog was getting up and running I was in Las Vegas for a week long tech industry event. It made me want to post something Vegas related – as sordid as that sounds. After being in that town for a week I decided that 2 days (when someone else is paying) can be fun, 3 days is too many, and 5 days is intolerable. I digress.

The Jubilee

Of the many outrageous signs and displays I witnessed – one struck me as particularly hilarious. A friend of mine uses the the word Jubilee often when referring to celebretory events. He is riffing on the traditional Biblical definition of the Jubilee which is defined here:

The concept of the Jubilee is a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon. In the Biblical book of Leviticus, a Jubilee year is mentioned to occur every fifty years, in which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest.

In humorous contrast, the sign for Jubilee in Las Vegas displays the word juxtaposed with a picture of a woman’s backside. My camera phone does this image no justice – but use your imagination – it’s probably better that it’s blurry:

The description of this spectacle is as follows:

The showgirl is synonymous with Las Vegas and there’s no show in town that glorifies showgirls quite like Jubilee! at Bally’s. It’s obvious from the opening song about “Hundreds of Girls” that this show is going to be all about the statuesque, sequined beauties. While there aren’t quite hundreds of girls in the show, there are about 85 performers — both topless and covered.

Why are you talking about showgirls in Vegas?

The contrast between these two reminded me of a fairly profound concept that was conveyed to me in a class on spiritual philosophy. It starts with the premise that we are spiritual beings – seeking to obtain spiritual attributes or qualities through a material experience. Whether we are aware or not – our soul seeks this growth – and it is the inherit nature of our soul to do so. Sort of like the absolute nature of fire is to burn – it has no choice.

At the same time – all spiritual qualities or elements have their equal and opposite representation in the material world. Sometimes we become confused – and seek these spiritual attributes through their material counterpart. A pithy example would be to seek the spiritual quality of love through promiscuity. Or to seek communion and meditative state though mind altering elements rather than prayer and meditation. The rub of the situation is our soul will seek this growth – whether we are mindful of it or not – so if we are unaware of our own inherit nature for some kind of growth - we will often screw up and seek the wrong experiences.

And Change?

The Jubilee in Vegas sort of reminds me of a bizarro Christian Jubilee. One is the celebration of sin – the other is about God’s forgiveness and pardon for sin. How does this relate to the concept of change which is at the heart of this ongoing discussion? It seems that if one is seeking to alter the most basic building block of change – the human heart – it would be helpful to look into our own lives to discover where our soul is seeking growth in the wrong place. Are we sifting through dust as a shortcut? The way we orient ourselves – spiritual or material – can effect the way we interact with the world around us. And as we interact with the world – we change it. True and lasting change can never be mandated, managed, ordered or administered. It is difficult and messy because it happens slowly – one soul at a time.

Light and Darkness

“Were it not for the cold, how would the heat of Thy words prevail, O Expounder of the worlds?  Were it not for calamity, how would the sun of Thy patience shine, O Light of the worlds?

Thank you Sholeh for the thoughtful questions you raised about maintaining optimism in pessimistic times. It got me thinking about the subject of “Light and Darkness”.

It seems with all forward motion, there is always resistance, and often wherever there is light, there is shadow.

So it is natural in times when the forces of progress are at work for there to also be forces of resistance.

This is one more dimension to this “mental framework” we are trying to test and evolve through this online dialogue.

If we can see many of the depressing events that occur around us as a reaction to the forces of integration that are in fact operating in the world, it should help us to maintain optimism.

This still doesn’t mean any of this will ever be easy. I think about what it took to form the League of Nations and the United Nations — both basically a collective reaction to the two worst wars in human history. And we still haven’t come anywhere near a functioning system of reasonably united world! Gulp.

But then again, if we all collectively threw in the towel, we would still be living in caves, so something must be working somewhere to have gotten us this far, and we can only trust we will ultimately keep going in the right direction

 

 

 

 

What is Elemental Change?

We live in a unique period of history. Change is happening everywhere. The rate of change is accelerating.

If we want to be instruments for positive change, where should we concentrate our efforts? Which movements are ephemeral and which are important? Which forces represent undercurrents and which are nothing but flippant waves on the surface of a turbulent age?

This blog is a forum to examine these questions.

The starting hypothesis – which could change – is that answering these questions about the world around us requires first examining the world within us: our perceptions, our beliefs, our assumptions about reality. Ghandi said we should “be the change we wish to see in the world” and Abdu’l-Baha said “the reality of man is his thought.”

This isn’t a call to stop moving. On the contrary, we should redouble our efforts to make the world a better place, only with a feedback loop. A period for reflection. Are we being deliberate in our action? What are we truly advocating? Why?

This blog will strive to stimulate thinking about these questions.

Thanks for visiting.