We Are Aware

We Are Aware

We are aware that all the generations of our ancestors and all the future generations 

are present within us. We are aware of the expectations that our ancestors, our children, 

and their children have of us. We are aware that our joy, peace, freedom and harmony are the joy, peace, freedom and harmony of our ancestors, our children and their children.

We are aware that the very understanding of this is the foundation of love.

We are aware that blaming and arguing never help us and only create a wider gap between us, that  only understanding, trust, and love can help us to change and grow.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Cited in Prayers for Healing

While this multi-generational awareness is welcomed, I fear for our contemporary society when it seems as if the only thing that compel our actions is aimed myopically at the present tense…Either in the next news cycle, the next quarterly profit reports, or centered on strategies that create conflict over secular power that threaten not only our sense of personal peace, but the roots and ideals of a democracy or a republic like our nation has been built on….

I admire the Buddhist outlook that can take such a long view… I think it is rooted in seeing history and consciousness from that uniquely Eastern perspective that allows time to be understood as spirals that both return and proceed in or along the path of consciousness…

The West, I fear, is stuck on time being linear and always moving forward wearing blinders on

 its past mistakes and misgivings, only to repeat them by some rugged yet uninformed individualism; an outlook that permits a person or a group within the culture to start over again without learning, or benefitting from a healthy and honest retrospective on what has or has not worked for the betterment of humanity or for the larger society no matter what it has accomplished for a select privileged few.

A thought about perspectives… This quote brings to heart and mind an essential truth: we are a part of everyone we have met… Whether it is through genes that were an essential part of our past patterns of humanness or that will be adapted and selected to design and guide our future development, the holistic view includes the awareness that our past can determine our present and our present can shape our future! So it is contingent and vital for our awareness of the consequences of our choices and actions to become shapely into view and stay within the realm of our consciousness in our everyday actions.

A last thought on generations… If it is possible or available to you in some responsible way, an inquiry into your genealogy could unlock some hidden answers about attitudes and behaviors you have inherited… Patterns, and unfortunately, prejudices are passed along unconsciously through reinforcing modeling and repetition. This awful truth reminds me of a statement by fr. Richard Rohr on addictions when he observed that “anything that is not transformed is transmitted”… down into the future of self and society…