What Light?

Karen Berg, a friend in Facebook, wrote a article about "Amid Disaster, the Light That Binds"...

The purpose of life, as I understand it from the wisdom I study and teach, is that each and everyone of us has within us the Light of God -- no matter our religion, our race, our nationality, our political affiliations, our belief system, our manner of worship. Our responsibility in this incarnation is get to the place in our consciousness where we see and respect that Light and give the person housing it the dignity and space he/she deserves to live freely.If each incident is a word in the language of the world, what would the world be saying?

It seems from minute to minute there is some new disaster making the headlines. We're just recovering from one world-altering, paradigm-shifting event and another follows: Revolutions, earthquakes, tsunamis, animals dying en mass. We listen to the analysts who offer speculations and predictions on what led to these disasters and what future disasters will be caused by these events, but how can we understand what is really happening?

Kabbalists say you can know the seed of something by examining the fruit it bears as it grows. The fruit of an apple tree is the effect of an apple seed. If we stand back and look at the fruits of the recent events, what we uncover is our humanity. After all, isn't it in the wake of catastrophic devastation, when the earth shudders and rips off our masks, that we remember who we really are and see our underlying similarities?

My answer:

Karen thank you for asking about comments, a I think you are a very open mind person, and I am just sending my impression (from Brasil)... You start with the premise that "something special is in progress", some particular phenomena is in progress in our planet at this time. But is this premise true? We live in a period of extreme "calm" in terms of natural catastrophes. If you evaluate through many ways, and based for example on the analysis of the ice at the south pole; you will see that our history was populated with real large catasclismic events. We had the Ice ages, asteroid impacts, not counting the huge effects of the formation of the Earth and the Moon The cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs, among other phenomena widely documented. 

If we analyze the issue from the historical vantage point, we will also realize that the fight for power, is decreasing in violence, and amply documented over the past 10,000 years. No longer, we are not burning witches, crucifing people. Justice ask for evidences, and the times of barbarism, are being substituted by best practices of coexistence, gradually and in an ongoing process. What about the barbarian invasions, the exodus of the Jews, the World Wars. Nuclear bombs, arms race. The commands and excesses of all empires, the Sumerians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians. Christianization and the genocides in Latin Spanish, Portuguese. In fact, we are improving and expanding the practice of living, and encouraging ethical behavior. At least, much more successfully than in the past. It is not true that we live in a period, "particularly" problematic. Not analyzing the last 10,000 years. 

We can think freely, you and me, and talk in this forum. Actually what you're considering as "a sign of the times", is merely a matter of global communication. We would not know about the Nankin Genocid, in 1937, where Japanese imperial forces raped and murdered more than 500,000 people in the city of Nankin in China. We would not know about this, with such magnitude, speed and detail as we see today. The first major earthquake has been widely documented in history, was the Lisbon earthquake. In 1755, More than 100,000 people lost their lives, and this earhquake reached grade 9 on the Richter scale. The tsunami that followed caused a wave 20 feet high. By simply observing our landscape, we can imagine how many mega catásfrofes ravaged our planet. Biological events, unprecedented in our time, also devasting life in our planet, as the Black Death (bubonic plague), killing the third part of the population in Europe, in the XIV century. Killing more than 75 million people... 

Before considering plausible, analyze the strange phenomena of our time, we must examine if we are really living such a moment. I think that consider esoteric questions before go thorough a advanced investigation, based on natural processes and scientific methods, causes misinform and moves attention from the real knowledgement to the easy appeal of the supernatural. That is my point of view, respectfully and sincerelly...

Carlos Leger Sherman Palmer