Three Foci For Learning

MON., JAN. 26, 1992, 6:07 AM
FARM, STUDY

The semester commenced last week, but this shall be the first full week of classes. You have three of them, the expected ones for this winter–spring term. They are three favorite offerings, each one with a unique opportunity for introducing spirit as a relevant factor. Hear Me, o son, as I offer guidance in how best to do this.

This evening will be the opening session of International Health, and in this the emphasis should be on the various ways in which spirit is considered a part of health and healing. In less developed cultures the usual blend is spirit and various plant products for restoration and maintenance of health. You have one total session on the spiritual, but be sure and meld it into the mental and social as well. Emphasize its importance in developing a multi-cultural view of health… My roles as God, in various perceptions of Who I Am, and what I do. Also emphasize perceptions of other spirits, including those dead ancestors, that affect life, for good and for ill.

Note that it seemed, in Western either/or thinking, that in order to fully embrace science as the way of knowing it is necessary to deny the existence of a spirit factor in human life. Emphasize that it is possible for these two ways of thinking to exist compatibly. Science need not deny spirituality, and spirit is foolish when it denies the value of science, when it is used appropriately.

Along with the multicultural comes the ecological perspective for tonight’s class. Emphasize again, and also in your environment class, the combination of factors in the earth’s air, water, and land, that make human life possible. Tell of the pragmatic spirit, that underlies science, that has made humans adaptable to many climes and circumstances. And yet human life, My greatest creation, is becoming like a plague. Human numbers continue to increase, many with lifestyles that are harmful to the earth’s ecosystems.

So here is where the three courses interface and overlap. Actions in one part of the earth affect other portions. This is one earth, but, because of many competing cultures, it is not one world. Babies and children are universally valued, but when most of these do grow up to be adults and have children the planet is threatened. In ecological perspective births finally equate with deaths. Every person who comes into being dies, after some varying amount of life. Some embryos have a very short life. A few humans have lived over a hundred years. Death is not anti-spiritual. It is simply a return to a non-incarnated form, and there is no overcrowding in the various spirit “worlds.”

Thus, death is an important part of life. Yesterday you killed three small animals for future food. The dogs and chickens benefitted from certain parts, and the remains will go back into the earth, to enrich it. Harvesting organs from humans is a civilized, scientific way of allowing death to be part of the life cycle. The death of one makes possible the continuing life or better health of another or others.

Death also “feeds upon itself.” Human activity is causing the death… and even extinction… of plant and animal life, in forests and in the oceans. This shall affect the food chain, and, eventually, humans shall die, because of activities unrelated, apparently, to them. The battle is essentially a spiritual one, for it requires strong spirits in persons and in cultures to sacrificially change activities so that future generations may live. Your culture has been the most ridiculous in this respect, developing nuclear weapons with which to “defend” yourself from “enemies,” weapons which you know will devastate the earth for centuries. Allowing humans to develop nuclear weapons was a risk on My part… a supreme test of spirit. I have helped in the control, for I could not allow circumstances or persons with undeveloped spirits to ruin this earth for generations ahead.