"Nothing, and I mean nothing, can destroy the love with which
the universe was created and by which it is powered."
Ann: Richard, I can’t seem to get over the Senate capitulation to Trump and get on with my own life. Can you help me?
Richard Burton: I will certainly try, love. It is disheartening, is it not, when we see our leaders walking off a cliff with absolutely no awareness of the fall that they - and the rest of us - are in for? I can hear you thinking that you are not so concerned for these folks but for you, your family, your grandchildren, your friends, and all of the people who will have to live with the consequences of the craven, shortsighted and self-serving commitment of the imposters calling themselves Republicans to their own misbegotten behaviour to preserve, their money and their power to the exclusion of all else.
A: Yeah, exactly, couldn’t have said it better myself.
RB: Of course not. But I digress.
I too, living through the Second World War as I did and serving briefly therein, felt the impotence of seeing one society try to destroy another out of sheer self-aggrandizement. And then with the atom bomb making its entrance on the scene, I felt with deep conviction that sooner or later some descendant of the Nazi assassins would get their hands on it and delight in blowing us all to smithereens.
A: And how did you handle that?
RB: By trying to grab as much for myself as possible in the most entertaining ways I could devise, thinking, I suppose, to at least distract myself from the reality of the human condition, nay, the human heart. I could never cleave to any sort of religion or faith after that though I was raised with the church deep in my bones. I subscribed to that old saw, “If God is great, he isn’t good, and if God is good, he isn’t great.”
The thing that I and apparently yourself and many of your peers cannot grasp – and how could you with the limited information and perspective available – is that nothing, and I mean nothing, can destroy the love with which the universe was created and by which it is powered.
The earth planet was an experiment designed to allow beings to learn for themselves by trial and sometimes disastrous error to recreate God's creation as he intended it. I hate to tell you this, but your current nightmare , i.e. Trump and his sycophants, are part of the process designed to show us the futility of avarice and cruelty and to push us into restricting our own baser impulses while allowing our creative natures to expand the light of the universal consciousness.
A: Sounds good, Richard, in theory but not so much when living in the middle of it.
RB: “Ay, there’s the rub,” as the Bard said. It is for this reason that we must keep to our spiritual disciplines – I know you don’t think you have any – and I must admit yours are somewhat offbeat – but the essence of spiritual discipline is to return to spirit over and over again until we begin to see that we have no other home. You are in the middle of this process, still kicking and screaming a bit when pushed out of your comfort zone, but now you are, have you noticed, running toward spirit not away.
Witness your presence here and the question you posed. In the past you would have turned to a novel aided by some chocolate and red wine, convinced that there was no answer and no help for what appears to be the futility of the human condition. This time you came to me as I have begged you to do for some years now.
It is when we are in trouble that we must turn to and not away from Spirit. You may not get an answer that makes sense to your human consciousness, but you will get the support and comfort of knowing that there are those who see the whole picture and are not dismayed. And as you continue blindly on the path Spirit as asked you to follow, you can begin to accede to Spirit’s guidance with a quieter heart even though you cannot see where you are going or where it will end.
So come back here, love, when the world gets to be too much for you. and bathe in the light that is offered here. Many find consolation in prayer, meditation, caring for others, etc., and these are all helpful. Follow where your heart leads, and don’t be a stranger.
January 31, 2020