| Make a difference -- hug
someone you love and tell them how you feel From the editor | by Tim Miejan The state of the outer world -- as you see it, from your eyes -- is a reflection of your inner world. It's what you see and how you react to it, perhaps with compassion, perhaps with judgment, that speaks volumes about who you are and where you are on the infinite path that your soul leads you on, lifetime after lifetime, here on Earth or somewhere else. Are you preoccupied with what is happening out there? Are you a news junkie, sports junkie, soap opera junkie, movie junkie or political junkie? Does your job take up almost every waking minute? Your hobby? The television? Some drama happening somewhere, between people you know or don't know, and you can't wait to find out what's going to happen next? Does money, either your lack of it or your pursuit of it, keep you preoccupied to the point that you think about it all the time? Are you living check-to-check and wonder when it's all going to end? Perhaps you have enough money and can't wait to remodel the house or install that new deck on the back of the house, or buy that new boat because fishing season's here -- and not a minute too soon. If only you saved that ad for new gear that you saw in the Sunday paper. Wait, perhaps it's in the recycling bin. No, the trash was picked up on Wednesday. Hopefully it'll be in the paper this weekend. You really need to get new tackle because the weather's already heating up. What about the garage sales? Isn't spontaneous shopping just the best? Can't wait to spend that unexpected tax refund check this year? Have you seen all those commercials trying to lure you into their tax refund sales? Are you taking the bait? Who's fishing for whom? Now, five months into the new year, and your resolution to spend more time with yourself -- in meditation, in quiet repose, allowing the world to go spinning around without you as you go inside and spend some quality time with your soul -- is nowhere to be seen. Oh, you did put in that half hour on January 1 and perhaps another 15 minutes on January 6. Where did the time go? There's just too much to do. And then there was the war. And the search for kidnapped young women. And 9-11 Congressional Hearings. And the presidential primaries and caucuses. And the ads by Bush and Kerry, officially approved by the candidates. And more war. More deaths. More insurgency. More steadfastness by our commander-in-chief. And the bombings in Spain. And the unspeakable atrocities in Fallujah. How in the world can you meditate and be peaceful and calm when the world's going to hell? The morning paper tells you how bad things are and how they're only getting worse. The evening news talls you how bad things are and how they're only getting worse. The local news at 10 tells you how bad things are and how they're only getting worse. Murder after murder, you see them day in and day out. Gang warfare. Accidental killings. Suicide bombers. Snipers. School shootings. Anniversaries of school shootings, with never-seen-before footage. All the bloodshed you could possibly look at, except for the slain American servicemen and women, who are not seen as they come home and are laid to rest with the sound of taps resonating in the trees overhead. An estimated 720 Americans have died as of April 25, and more than 4,000 American men and women have been wounded, since the war to bring Democracy to the Islamic nation of Iraq began. Between 8,900 and 10,700 Iraqi civilians have died, according to www.iraqbodycount.net. American military leaders refuse to speculate on the number of Iraqi soldiers who have been killed. As of six months ago, the London-based affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War indicated that between 20,000 and 50,000 Iraqi nationals have died since the start of war. And the end is nowhere in sight. So the questions that arise are, what are you going to do? How are you going to respond? Death is the worse news the media can throw at you. Massive casualties or loss of life is even worse than that. And they continue to barrage us with it, day in and day out. Bad news sells. We want to know the truth. Well, the truth is, an average of 146,000 people die on the planet every day. Every now and then, one of those people is someone we know. And then the truth about our own mortality hits home. We have to face the fact that we are not going to get to keep waking up and watching more murders and deaths on the television set every day. One of these days, we're going to die. And on that special day, when your soul leaves your body, you just might find out that there was more to life than doing things. You just might think about how you were being as a human. How did you interact with your family and friends when you had the chance to do that in your body? When you had the opportunity to love your fellow human, did you? Or did you scold your son or put down your daughter or ignore your wife or ignore your husband? You just might wonder why, when you had a chance to hug each member of your family at least 10 times a day, why you only did so once a month, if that. And you just might ask yourself how much good you could have been doing in your community in the hours upon hours that you spent channel surfing for more drama. Sure, blame the media for numbing our minds to the exquisite good that exists in our daily life, but in actuality, the media is a highly effective tool that tests your ability to move beyond the daily heapings of lower vibrations that you soak into your body by habit. You weren't able to go inside and hook up regularly into the God connection that dwells within you. You didn't pass the test. But maybe the estimated 234,940 beings who are born into bodies today, and every day, will be able to. Perhaps they will remember that it's not how much you do that counts in this world, but how much you love. Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE Newspaper. Contact him at (651) 578-8969, toll-free 1 (888) 776-5687 or e-mail him at editor@edgenews.com Copyright © 2004 Tim Miejan |
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May 2004 |
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