You See It As A Good Era…

SUN., JULY 6, 1997, 6:25 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yesterday I heard your comments to yourself, acknowledging that this “era” in which you have lived has been a good one. You realize that if it is an era marked by your earth life it isn’t over yet, but, with retirement coming soon, the major portion is “behind you”. Do I agree with your judgment?

Well, first, with the wars that have occurred during the years of your present life, I must affirm that, for many humans, it has not been a good time. Now is a time of relative peace, but there has been much open struggle in this century, with much destruction and pain, of various sorts.

Yet it also is an era in which the human population of this small planet has grown beyond anything the earth has experienced, and there is much wealth. This is not equally distributed by any means, but better than in some earlier eras. Life expectancy has increased, though it is still within the 3 score and 10, plus another 10, that the psalmist recorded as My standard many years ago.

Your life situation has certainly been a good one. You have not been rich, but you have been above average in means, and your needs have been provided for more than adequately. You have been no great “star”, but you have achieved well beyond the average, for it has been an era in which this was possible. As you mused, you were small as an athlete, but it was an era, when you were young, in which one of your size could succeed. What you accomplished would be less likely now.

When you realize that the check you just received for this past month’s “work” was greater, in take-home, than what you earned, gross, for your first faculty year at Stanford… and nearly 3 times your first yearly earnings at Punahou… what do you conclude? What do I conclude? How about… in each portion of your era your life was good, and “well financed”, though you always have had some low level of worry about money. I have chided you about this, but you haven’t been quite able to eliminate this “burr” and feel as well off as you are.

More importantly, however, this has been an era in which there has been a resurgence of the acknowledgment that spirit is an essential dimension of human health, individually and in community. This perception is not yet dominant, but it is much more evident than when you began your career. I have guided you to be one who helps in this resurgence, and you have contributed rather well. Some of your colleagues have been more “productive” than you have been, but I still accept what you have done and how you have been, as a spiritual person, during this later part of your career.

You struggle some with how far you should move into what seems to be the next era, the one of electronic communication. You are not “computer literate”, and you ponder, at times, whether this is part of “your era”… or just the opening fringe of the next one, of which you shall not be an active part. I’ll tell you that I am satisfied with your pen and paper response to My Teachings to you. Yet I won’t tell you how you should be in relation to this dawning era…

… except… I do want you to focus more on spirit and how it is a significant part of life, even with the obvious dominance of technology and materialism around you. I want you to re-read some of what you have read earlier and then contemplate how this era, measured by this life of yours, should close out, and what you can take with you, in spiritual growth, as you move on.