Where is Love?

I, like most humans on this Planet Earth are told that we are under lockdown, house arrest for our protection.  It is being done to protect us from the deadly virus.  I have to admit, in some ways staying home is pretty easy for me.  I have lived alone for 35 years and for most of those years, I have worked alone out of my home.  Being alone is easy for me.  I like my own company and being alone I have been granted the opportunity to study a variety of subjects.  I do periodically however love being around people.  I love giving and receiving love.  I love hugs.  I love the human touch.  I love conversations over food.  Now with this current pandemic, and rules of social distancing I am forced to change my ways.

Let me back up a bit.  Years ago, I realized that if I did not make time to go out for a walk in the afternoon, I would miss out on people.  So, living in downtown Ottawa, Canada, I decided that every day at a particular hour I would go for a walk to the river.   The walk would bring me through the city centre and down along the river below Canada’s Parliament buildings.  I realized a long time ago a smile always opened doors to conversations.  Since, I have a happy disposition and I talk to everyone, I have met a lot of people.   They are my community.

Time for poetry...The Root of All Evil

The Root of All Evil

The root of all evil is not money.

It is not anger.

Nor is it greed.

The root of all evil has a far greater seed.

It is the manufactured fear which has led us to believe,

safety and security have now taken leave.

Living in fear is how life must be.

Magnified, manipulated, and used to control

by forces who aren’t working for the good of the whole.

Insidious creatures that lurk through the night,

greatly afraid of the loving light,

as it will melt the illusion that might is right.

They rule by fear,

with elaborate smoke and mirrors,

and take great cheer

in saying, ‘Love isn’t here.

Here, there is just fear!’

Oh, the unaware they do think it’s so,

and do fall prey to more government controls.

For the creatures that rule the night,

enjoy making fear their only plight.

For within the darkness fear can grab hold,

and play with the minds of men we’ve been told.

A tangled web of deceit,

synthetic lies which are really cheap,

done in an attempt to hide the truth really deep.

But no matter what they do.

The truth will always ring true.

For the root of all this evil is absolutely clear.

It is built upon the fallacy,

that on Mother Earth we must live in fear.

Copyright:  Beverly Blanchard 2013

True Fear or Manufactured in your Mind?

In order to understand fear, you must first understand the difference between true fear and manufactured fear.  Let me give you a personal example.  I experienced true fear last year.  It hit out of the blue.  I had just come from an event at the local Indigenous Friendship Centre and it was a cool spring day.  I had my route home laid out in my head.  Stop at the art store in the mall, catch the bus to the University, walk to the grocery store and head home.  Then it hit.  Bam! The realization that I was being run over by a car that was backing up from a stop sign in a mall parking lot.

Hit from behind, I went down to the ground and ended up underneath the car.  Everything seems to move really slow when the adrenalin rushes through your body.  It’s like your mind starts recording in clips.  I remember seeing the muffler and the undercarriage of the car and thinking ‘this isn’t right’.  Then there was the realization that there were wheels coming toward my head.  In the next instance the car stopped, went forward and once I saw the sky I bolted straight up.

It must have looked like I had risen from the dead as witnesses told me later that I was extremely lucky I wasn’t hurt.  I was extremely lucky because it was these people that came to my aid otherwise, I would have been a speed-bump in thing called life.

The adrenalin doesn’t stop rushing through your body when the event ends.  You are basically in shock and your body/mind/emotions goes into process mode.  Even though someone offered me a ride, I was determined to continue my path home.   I needed to process what had happened.  While under that car I was consumed with the fear of my survival.  The whole experience may have been a minute but it felt like an eternity.  Dying and dying like this was not part of my story.  I had a mission to fulfill and I wasn’t finished fulfilling it.  But, this experience did enter my reality and it taught me something.  In one moment, I am fighting for my life and the next moment, I am realizing I am safe.  I am in one piece and I am alive.

Law of Death and Decay

No one likes to talk about death.  Mention the word and most people tune out. It is strange that this five-letter word can completely shut down a conversation and sending people running in all directions.  I read somewhere that Karl Gustav Jung once mentioned the word “death” in a conversation with Sigmund Freud, and Freud literally collapsed to the ground when he heard the word.  I was somewhat amused, here was a man whose works have shaped our society and he couldn’t handle the word “death”.   The thing is there are a lot of people that can’t handle the word or the process.  Unfortunately, our society is becoming more and more stuck on perpetuating the desire to stick around in this dimension forever.

Death in this physical world is part of life.  The moment you come down that birth canal, you start dying.  Your cells die off.  New cells grow, and as time goes on you hit that stage where the skin starts sagging and you start slowing down.  It is the way nature works and as much as we humans think we are above nature, we are not.  In this dimension everything grows, it waxes and wanes, and then it dies.  No one gets off this Planet Earth in physical form, and lives forever.  The end post of your life is death with taxes paid throughout the journey.

Death in this reality is all around us and it is part of the process.  The seasons come and they go.   The flowers blossom and bloom, and then wither and die.  The trees with a longer life span repeat a pattern of life and death as it transitions through the seasons.  All around us the melody of death, decay and rebirth plays out, yet, we want to deny its existence because we associate death with finality, the end.  We neglect to recognize that the spirit evolves and it is just the physical body or apparatus that gets left behind. 

Thanks to the propaganda machine we are programmed to believe that growing old is bad.  We don’t see life as the opportunity for growth and development.  An opportunity to make choices in the direction of your life and to improve your consciousness.  Love or fear?  Recently, I listened to a few technology billionaires talk about immortality and how they are working to live forever.  I fell over laughing when one of them stated he wanted immortality to see just how many more billions he could make.  Really, is that your goal?  Have all these technological advancements really improved the world?  When the body gives out do you honestly think that you can download the inner spirit?  That which animates you?  Or what happens if one line of code is incorrect?  You might end up trapped in a horror show which is worse than this reality.

The desire to live forever and avoid death is further exemplified by those searching for the fountain of youth.  Those that believe ‘the more I change the outer, the younger and more beautiful I shall become’.  So, they use fillers, cosmetic surgery, adrenochrome, blood transfusions and whatever trend the celebrities are supporting.  The problem is the hungry ghost within is never satisfied with the outside.  It is never good enough.  Yet, to go inside and vanquish that hungry ghost would prove to be too painful.  The questions one might ask if they are continually focused on the outside are:  If I died tomorrow would it matter?  What matters?

We come into this world programmed to die at some point in time.  None of us know when and we don’t exactly know how it shall happen but it shall happen.  Just like taxes!  Once you accept that death is a natural process of this life on this Planet Earth, you might start to live a life where each day is a gift and an opportunity to make the world a better place while you are here.  Your contributions everyday do not have to be elaborate gestures.  It can be as simple as a smile.  Start the day asking, how may I be of service to love today?  Follow where that leads you.  It is important that while you walk on this Planet Earth, you walk with kindness.  Wherever the sole of your foot lands, let it land with kindness.  Do this and there is no fear with death because appreciating each moment means a life of no regrets and higher level of consciousness.  In the end, all your worldly belongings are meaningless because your death is a transition to a world based on your consciousness.  If you were a liar in this world; you shall enter the world of liars in the next.

Wishing you a day of many pleasant surprises.

Life’s Unending Exam

We come into this world and like it or not, we are instantly enrolled in the school of life where each day, each moment in time, we are required to complete a variety of exams to get to the next level.  At the start of this journey, many of us believed that all learning was confined to a classroom and once we graduated from this institution, we were finished with school.  No more teachers, no more books, no more lessons…Wrong!  It was only when we got into ‘real world’ that many of us soon discovered that the teachers morphed into bosses, colleagues and relatives.  Sometimes it was even people you don’t know or situations you could never have foreseen.  The formal classroom just became life and what you learned in the educational system may have helped with your career but it certainly didn’t prepare you for navigating through life’s trials and tribulations.  

The Identity Game Limits Your Growth

Once again, we come into this world a blank slate and the first thing we are given is a name and we are told who we are based on our family’s lot in life.  If our parents accepted this reality, they reiterated that reality to you.  As you moved outside the boundaries of your household, your friends, schools, religions, community, the world told you who are. But, who are you?

Down through the ages, it has been the question many have pondered.  “Who am I?”  Some have found the answer and others have backed a ready-made definition of who society told them they were.  They bought into the identity game.  Their existence on this planet earth was based on a limited category.  Why figure out who you are when society gives you ready-made answers and you can blindly accept the definition because then you think you belong.  You are finally part of a group.  The hitch is the group is plagued with polarities.  Not everyone in the group is working towards the good of whole and those who scream the loudest are usually at the lower end of the energy spectrum.

The Word Jungle

In this world, the use of words has become discretionary.

You cannot rely on the dictionary,

for it seems words are a lot of mumbo jumbo.

It now requires you to be a sleuth like Colombo.

Seems conversing has become like a rumble in the jungle.

Words, I am afraid are in an utter bungle.

They just don’t have the same old meaning,

and depending on the user it can be downright deceiving.

For sometimes words are manipulated.

Then there is the manner in which they are translated.

If the word and the action do not seem to comply,

somewhere there could be a little white lie.

Look at the words, destiny and fate.

They now are words used to abdicate.

No need to find your path home.

Plead you are suffering from some syndrome.

Someone else is responsible for your actions,

life is the result of the stars’ reactions.

The word love has been casually cast around.

You wonder if it can actually be found.

It has become the opposite of what it was supposed to be.

Love is just no longer free.

It comes with strings and expectation.

Love today even comes with litigation.

The meaning of success has been flipped.

The whole of mankind seems to be pistol-whipped.

You are judged by what you possess.

That has become the meaning of success.

It doesn’t matter about your true being.

It is all about your material well-being.

Free will has become a product of the ego.

It is now marketed as our amigo.

Yet, following it will bring you great misery.

There is no magic in its wizardry.

It will take you away from the original source.

Lead you down a dangerous course.

Words are tossed bogusly around every day.

Be careful about what you hear, think and say.

The power of words has been known throughout history.

Abracadabra, Alakazam and Hocus Pocus are the keys to the mystery.

For each of them simply state,

with my word I create.

--Beverly Blanchard

Originally published in:

Into the Waves - Poems and Other Writings (2012)

By: www.Petrabooks.ca