WHEN HUMANS FORGET

Last night,  I was listening to an old Joni Mitchell song, Woodstock. Suddenly these lyrics reached out and grabbed my attention:

“We are stardust.

We are golden.

And we’ve got to get ourselves

back to the garden.”

I immediately thought of a section in my book Eyes Open, Looking for the Twelve – Blueprint for a New World entitled Love. I share it with you now:

“There have been many stories and theories about the last days of Atlantis, first mentioned by Plato in his Atlantis Dialogues written around 360 BC. Plato spoke of an ancient city that existed in approximately 9,600 BC, whose inhabitants were said to be blessed with abundance in every way, materially certainly, as well as in technological and scientific accomplishments and mastery. And with all this, they were particularly blessed with a divine nature and wisdom that guided them in every aspect of daily living, including interaction with each other and their environment.

“ As long as the Atlanteans continued to honor the “divine nature” within themselves and each other, the abundance of blessings in their lives continued to grow and increase. It was when the “divine portion” of their nature began to be neglected that the perceived utopia of Atlantis began to go off track and lose its way. Many at the time who were immersed in the idea of abundance, however, were blind to the fact that their civilization was heading down a road toward extinction.  The theories that speak of Atlantis’s final days include scenarios of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Whatever the facts, the truth of the metaphor that comes when the divine nature within humans is negated still stands.  When humans begin to forget to love and nurture each other and their environment, they begin to lose their way. And then, regardless of the sophistication of technological development and the intoxication that can comes from acquiring abundance, if love (in all its many faces) is not fundamental to the foundation of a civilization, then its downfall is inevitable.

“ To reiterate a thought shared earlier [in my book]: Failure to garden the heart leads to an ultimate chaos from which only demise is the result. An added perspective is to consider the heart of a civilization… To garden the heart means to come from love at all times. Simple but not always easy…”

I think Joni was right. Given the present state of our world, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. We are stardust. We are golden.” Some have just forgotten. It’s time to remember.