Companion To History (Condensed)

Sometimes the Universe brings opportunities to us to assist in navigating our spiritual journey. Other times it brings us to where we need to be in order to assist others in pursuing their journey. Sometimes, it is both at once – a shared experience. As I look back on the various twists and turns in my life, there have been many instances of both types of such interactions between the Universe and me. One particular track has been a pattern of key travels, and finding myself at the right place at the right moment in the right unique circumstance. The following is a personal example of multiple such special moments.

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Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev gathered for a first summit meeting in Geneva, Switzerland on November 19-20, 1985. As an IT manager for Bank of Boston, I was scheduled to meet in Geneva with its European branches. I arrived in Geneva on the 20^th, with tight security visible everywhere I went. I had never seen or experienced such images back in America. But the summit was successful, laying the foundation for future dialog and strategic arms reductions. My understanding of a larger world beyond America was beginning to be irrevocably changed.

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Jean-Claude Duvalier became the dictator of Haiti – the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere – after his dictator father died in 1971. On February 7, 1986, following growing street demonstrations by the people, Duvalier fled the country. I arrived in Port-au-Prince a few weeks after the overthrow (another bank trip). I saw the extreme poverty of the citizenry, young men with military rifles patrolling the streets, but also the jubilation of people celebrating their new freedom. I felt lucky to share in that moment of national joy.

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In 1997, I scheduled a personal genealogy trip through the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. I arrived London/Heathrow Airport in the evening of August 31. Going to bed early, I woke up around 2am, and turned on the TV. The first reports of Princess Diana’s car wreck and death were just coming in live. Thus would begin a week of all-consuming national mourning over her death that served as the backdrop for my entire trip. On the day of Diana’s state funeral, I was in the far northwestern corner of Scotland, alone in my car, parked on a high bluff overlooking the sea, listening to the service on the radio. I was glad I could be there to “participate” in person. These times and events began a substantive reevaluation of the British monarchy that continues to this day.

Continuing on, I arrived in Belfast on September 9, 1997. Northern Ireland has a long history of violent conflict between the Catholic and Protestant populations. “The Troubles” had claimed many lives over a recent twenty-year period. I visited the Stormont government building where peace talks were being held intermittently. Sitting for hours on the lawn, I silently wished success to all parties involved. My itinerary across Northern Ireland brought me into visible contact with the many signs and structures of this conflict. On October 7, 1997 a renewed effort began to negotiate a multi-party peace accord. The result was the “Good Friday Agreement” on April 10, 1998, that created a new shared governance structure that continues to this day.

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As a young teen, I watched a 1930s movie titled “Lost Horizons.” A man crashed in the Himalayas, and made his way to a fictitious hidden civilization called Shangri-La, a land of perfect peace and communal harmony, modeled after the very real land of Tibet. In my 50’s I vowed to see Tibet for myself. I booked a solo trip to go to China (Beijing, Xi’an), and then Tibet in September-October 1999. I hired personal guides for the China portion, and was scheduled to join an international bus tour group upon arrival in Lhasa. Getting off the plane in Beijing, my guide informed me that the city was closed for a week to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. The next day they put me on a plane to Xi’an, and then Chengdu, thereby advancing the Tibet portion, doing Beijing at the end. So much for my carefully made itinerary planning.

In my travel journal that I subsequently wrote, I described in detail the daily events of this China/Tibet trip. I was traveling all alone in two countries and cultures uniquely new to my entire life experience – and no one back home knew where I was. I followed a series of local guides, continual coincidences, and Universe-interventions that redesigned all original plans. It simply required me to trust things to work out as the Universe intended for me. By (thankfully) missing the bus tour, instead I was given a driver and a guide to show me around. Being free of the bus crowd, I had the unique opportunity to see and hear Tibet on a 1-1 “people” level. Similarly, the same people contact occurred when I returned for the China leg. I enjoyed celebrating China’s founding anniversary. I saw that same China in the process of destroying an honored Tibetan culture and religion. I followed where I was led.

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The weekend of June 30-July 1, 2001, I attended a Buddhist conference in New York City. The event was held at a hotel/conference center situated in the Twin Towers Plaza. I stayed in a hotel room that looked directly into the plaza and into one of the Towers.  2½ months later, on September 11, 2001, terrorists destroyed the entire complex. “9-11” entered our lexicon, representing world-wide terror, to be avenged and defeated. But I had a first reaction that, in America, “9-1-1” represented our emergency call number and a plea for help. We never responded to that possible perspective of “help.” Thus began decades of involvement and war in the Middle East. Was a different opportunity perhaps lost? I don’t know.

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The modern version of Lebanon is a country of widely diverse cultural/religious factions, requiring significant efforts to hold it together. But in 1975-1990, civil war broke out. Afterwards, Lebanon began re-governing itself as an independent country, but with neighboring Syria pulling the strings in background. I was scheduled to do consulting work at a Beirut university in February 2005. On February 14, 2005, a former prime minister was assassinated in a car bombing; Syria’s secret service was blamed.  The people took to the streets in protest Syria’s involvement; it was a very tense time. My colleagues and I were given the option to postpone our visit; instead, we opted to fly in as scheduled. Thus was I at another significant moment of historical change, working side-by-side with wonderful Lebanese people, while being exposed to yet another distinctly different culture that exists in a significant place and time in world history. Syria left Lebanon in April 2005; I made a number of trips back over the next several years. The country has faced many tough times in the intervening years.

***** In Conclusion …

A one-time event is an experience.  Two similar events are a possible coincidence. Three or more similar structural events are a pattern. It is in seeing the recurring patterns that have shaped our lives that makes possible some of our most meaningful spiritual insights. I do not fully know why I found myself at these particular locales at those particular times. But I know they were important to my life path. Important for me to expand my horizons. I know these experiences were brought to me not only by my own doing, but with the assistance of the spiritual Universe. Which required me to step out of “control mode,” and work with the Universe by being a trusting partner and willing follower. Did I bring some tangible effect on others, on my “hosts?” I honestly do not know. We rarely know the domino effects that our actions create for others. Perhaps it was merely to be present. To simply bare witness to a significant moment. My reward was to know these people, locales and cultures on a personal level that remains with me to this day. Maybe that was a mutual gift enough.

Learn from the pattern. The pattern is a window into the Universe. The Universe as Teacher.

©   2022   Randy Bell             https://OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

 (NOTE: For a free .pdf copy of the original expanded essay from which this posting is drawn, send an email request to OurSpiritualWay@hotmail.com)

Some Things I Have Learned - Excerpt

 In my book “The Divine Intention For Our Human Life” (ISBN# 978-0-9895428-6-9), the perspective is offered that the Purpose of our human life is to Learn. Learn as much as can be possible within one lifetime about all that makes up this miracle of Creation within which we exist … So it is worthwhile to periodically stop in the chaos and frenzy of our everyday life, look back on what we have seen, what we have experienced, and then examine more fully What We Have Learned on a broader, more general perspective … To that end, the following narrative identifies some of the Lessons I have been fortunate to learn over my current lifetime …

I – A Lifetime Journey

#1. Each of us walks a path that defines the spiritual journey of our life. Over time, we move from one stepping stone to the next, a series of adventures and milestones that constitute our life adventures. It is a path unique to each if us, though we likely encounter many companions along the way who appropriately fade in and out of our shared travels.

#2. Most of the stepping stones we walk seem to be haphazardly arranged, a series of disconnected, accidental, unexpected turns. Yet in fact the next stone in our sequence is the cumulative result of the many stones we walked before … If we take the time to map out the links and circumstances that have facilitated our journey to date, that map will reveal a far more connected and purposeful life than we might have assumed.

II – The Structures Of Human Life

#5. Every physical form that is, also exists in different variations within that form … This multitude of forms and their variations is purposefully meant to continually illustrate to us the vastness of all Creation, while demonstrating that life takes many forms, each acceptable in its own right …

#7. Conflict is an inherent part of life … Conflict challenges us to look beyond easy answers, but rather to look deeper into the source and impact of a given conflict, and then to reach deeper into our creativity and accumulated knowledge for how to resolve that conflict … This is to deepen our knowledge, notwithstanding the personal pain we may experience.

#8. We are formed by the union of a mother and a father. The result is that we are created both “male” and “female.” Each of us manifests our dual female/male characteristics in varying ways … Yet the male/female separation is simply for functional reasons, typically to facilitate some of how we will function in this lifetime, some of the roles we will play, and some of our life Lessons to be learned …

#9. We cannot change what has already happened. We can only learn from it, build upon it in our future actions. There is no backtracking, no undoing, no wiping the slate clean. There is only starting over from a new place, newly informed. We are best served by cutting our attachments to our past, but only after its Lessons have been learned.

12. We are given a full range of emotions to experience in our learning, arriving in sets of matched opposites. Love/hate … happiness/sadness; success/failure … joy/sorrow; confidence/fear … etc. Each partner in the match works together with the other so that we know both the context and depth of each, by which we ultimately come to appreciate the unity of the match itself.

III – The Search For Truths

#13. There is much for us to learn as human beings, over a vast subject matter we call “Life.” In one lifetime, we can only know and absorb a limited portion of all there is in Creation. Our “knowledge” … should be continually humbled by respecting how much we do not know.

#14. True wisdom is knowledge (facts) gained by observation, which generates thoughts (opinions) which are tested by experience, which are truly understood by reflection, which then becomes the basis for new observations. It is a never-ending, repeating cycle.

#16. A Truth is unending. The more we learn, more doors open for us as we revisit our Lessons and learn them even more deeply. We pursue Truth to learn “The Truth,” but our learning is never satisfied with a false completion. We would like to see Truth as a singular “final” outcome, but such outcomes are only temporary milestones of Wisdom. The pursuit of Truths continues.

IV – The Decisions We Make

#21. Our decisions often seem random and disconnected with each other. But if we trace them back, we are very likely to find a connected thread that ties them together. One decision leads to an action, which leads to another decision needing to be made, which leads to another action, which leads to another decision to be made, which … Our life is not lived in a straight line, but proceeds instead in a series of starts and stops, constantly changing direction.

#24. Decisions have an expiration date. A decision at a past point in time is not necessarily still an appropriate decision for today … We need to learn when to “cut bait” on a decision that once served us well, but no longer does so; when to let go of a prior decision and its resulting actions so that we can move on to our next awaiting adventure …

#27. Our resistance to Change is often overcome more easily when the topic becomes personal and directly relevant to us. When seeking change in others, sometimes we have to help the topic become personal and directly relevant to them in order to help motivate those individuals to join in the Change effort.

V – Living Our Life

#29. Our inherent inclination is to Love, but we are predominately driven in our actions by our Fears … Our fears come from the mental and physical pain we experience … in interacting with the overwhelming vastness and seeming superiority of all Creation.

#30. … Each human life reflects the sum total of one’s experiences, thoughts, opinions, interactions, and decisions, made over time, occurring within a particular geographical and community / cultural setting(s), synthesized in a mix unique to that individual.

#32. Our greatest opportunities in life usually lie outside of our current view. We can only see them when we open up to their possibility.

#35. I cannot save the world. I cannot “correct” all that I perceive is wrong in this world. Nor can I ease all of the pain and suffering I see in this world. But I can make a difference in some small part of the world, in some manner that is available to me … I should try.

VI - Relationships

#37. Treat others as you would want your son or daughter to be treated. Ill-treatments run on a circular track back to its perpetrator.

#39. …Very little of whatever success we have in our life is due solely and entirely on our singular efforts. … The “self-made man/woman” should be applauded for his/her accomplishments, but there are many fingerprints on their trophy.

#40. Every human being deserves our best thoughts, our compassion for what they are going through, whether or not their circumstances are visible to us. But their personal struggles do not give them permission to act in unilateral ways to the inappropriate detriment of others.

#42. Forgiving a person who has wronged us can be hard, but it is warranted for our own peace. Ultimately, their ill-considered actions toward us are best consigned to our past, lest we remain a prisoner locked within their deeds.

#44. Do what you say you will do. Keep your word. Be reliable. Those traits define character, and are foundational for successful human relationships.

#47. A well-stated message, to the right person, at the right moment, in a right context, free of any expectations, is often the best-said message.

#49. We cannot substitute our life and journey into another’s life. Each person must follow their own unique journey.

#51. To get, one must give. To be heard, one must listen.

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Some of the many Lessons learned. Yet so much still not fully understood. So many Lessons still to be learned from experiences had and to be had. The process continues.

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
— Pema Chödrön, Buddhist Teacher

©   2022   Randy Bell                         https://OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com