Lent 2020 - Day 29
For Teresa (who foresaw this post)
Most religions go in for prophesy - soothsaying, consulting the oracle. Claimed knowledge of what will happen is often used as an instrument for maintaining control over the faithful.
Last Saturday morning, I dreamt of earthquakes, and tweeted about the dream on Twitter. 24 hours later, it transpired that an earthquake struck Croatia.
However, I do feel that precognition is one of the paranormal senses that we have, albeit in most of us it's extremely weak - too weak to even recognise (to quote from The Overload by Talking Heads). But it's there, and as we evolve spiritually, so our awareness of what's outside the here-and-now will steadily grow. We have become rationalists over the past three centuries; our default position is to seek to explain away anomalous experiences with established science.
Precognition is notoriously impossible to pin down (I'd argue because it's a quantum event requiring the presence of an external conscious observer); attempts at proving/disproving it are futile. Read too much into prophesy, take it too literally, and you will go astray - as followers of so many doomsday cults have discovered to their cost. Prophesy is claiming foreknowledge of events to come, prophets claim they see the future. The Old Testament contains the prophecies of 33 prophets.
The central tenets of Christianity are based on Jewish prophesy; that the Messiah shall be born in David's city, that the Messiah shall ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, that He shall be put to death unjustly and shall rise again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom shall have not end. As the Scriptures have foretold. Eschatology - the end of things - is present in the Old and the New Testament, ending with the Book of Revelations.
My big prophesies? That humankind will survive and evolve for millions of years to come, disseminating across the galaxy, growing in wisdom, curiosity, awareness and psychic powers, becoming kinder and gentler along the way, losing that primitive anger and ego, rising above base biology. Homo sapiens will evolve into a higher being, more angelic in behaviour, more infantile in appearance. At some point, biologically, H. sapiens will become a new, genetically separate species.
We will will it. Along the way there will be tribulations, one step back for each two steps forward, but each setback will be dealt with in a more efficient way due to improved science and processes. And each tribulation will only happen when folk memory of the previous one is erased by time, when complacency creeps in. The eternal thread that is your consciousness will see the universe unfold, it will not witness it as 'you', only in the form of intimations of having lived before flashing back; these will get stronger, more tangible, with each successive incarnation.
When will the world end? Wikipedia has listed all the dates that various religions and cults have claimed will be the end of the world. None mention a global flu pandemic in 2020.
However, the Ancients Mayans, who predicted that the world would end on 12 December 2012 were about as right as I was about an earthquake in Turkey and Japan - I think they got it very slightly right.
This time two years ago:
New bus stop for Karczunkowska
This time three years ago:
"Jeziorki bogged down in railway mud"
This time four years ago:
Ideas, and how they take hold
This time five years ago:
Russian eyes peering down on Jeziorki
This time 12 years ago:
The fate of urban wetlands?
When will the world end? Wikipedia has listed all the dates that various religions and cults have claimed will be the end of the world. None mention a global flu pandemic in 2020.
However, the Ancients Mayans, who predicted that the world would end on 12 December 2012 were about as right as I was about an earthquake in Turkey and Japan - I think they got it very slightly right.
This time two years ago:
New bus stop for Karczunkowska
This time three years ago:
"Jeziorki bogged down in railway mud"
This time four years ago:
Ideas, and how they take hold
This time five years ago:
Russian eyes peering down on Jeziorki
This time 12 years ago:
The fate of urban wetlands?
Thank you for your dedication! So is the pandemic a tribulation that has been ushered in by our global complacency? Yes, I can see that. Will our present knowledge of science/technology/medicine advance us to a higher level world-wide post-pandemic? Impossible to know at this early time. Certainly, we will see a new global ‘landscape’. Environmentally, definitely better. Economically, a disaster - most likely not a recession, but a depression. Resilient people In mind and finances will be fine, the already marginalized millions will suffer greatly..
ReplyDeleteI agree with British actor/comedian, Ricky Gervais - not a big fan of humanity🙂. Perhaps, the world after this blight, will have learned a few important things. Or not. You’re more of an optimist than I. Hope your prophesies come true!
@ Teresa
ReplyDeleteThe saddest thing about not having our parents around any more is the inability to ask them about how they coped with day-to-day issues while enduring the horrors of war; I am glad that I made the most of the last four years of my father's life to glean as much wisdom from him as I could. His mixture of acceptance of fate and fortitude in its face was exemplary.
My mother spoke frequently of her family’s incarceration during the war and how it impacted her as a young adolescent. She understood that life could change on a dime - and not for the better. She often commented, that she barely knew her parents. She never did so in a self-serving, histrionic way, but more in dispassionate and wistful manner. She never asked ‘why me?’ in the face of all the tragedy she endured.
ReplyDeleteI had an extremely close mother-daughter relationship. We had many, many conversations about her life before I was born. I think of my Mum often, especially during this Godforsaken time. I carry many of her lessons of fortitude, wisdom, humility, compassion, empathy and endurance in troubled times. I wish I could tell her now, how much her conversations meant to me.
@ Teresa
ReplyDeleteYou were fortunate to have had that close relationship with your mother. I didn't - and the effect of that was distancing me from my father, right up to her death. I made every effort to make up for lost time during the four years between my parents' deaths. I'd phone him every evening for 20-30 minutes, visit him each month, and most importantly, bring him over to Warsaw for the Uprising commemorations each year. And the lessons you learned were very similar to the ones I learned. I miss him greatly.
I think many families have their share of troubled family-of-origin dynamics. Putting up my hand here. Close relationship with my mother, not so much with my father. A difficult relationship on many levels. Yet, yet, when I think about him now, 20 years after his death, I did inherit some of his better qualities (I think!). So, as much as I wasn’t willing to give him a pass, years ago, I see him now, through a more benevolent lens. His harder edges have been softened somewhat. Perhaps, that will happen to you as well, as you ponder your relationship with your Mum.
ReplyDeleteHope you and family are faring well, in this difficult time. We are all healthy, taking one day at a time. Grateful to have a lovely home, a few dollars in the bank, food in the fridge, good communication with children.
@ Teresa
ReplyDeleteAll well so far - Gratitude! One day at a time... Same things at this end - home, zlotys, fridge, children in close contact.
Maybe my mother's more recent passing (less than five years) is not yet long enough for me to have a better view of her (my children do, however).
Try to think of your Mum as a product of her traumatically interrupted childhood. A young girl, barely into adolescence, whose lovely life was profoundly fractured during the war - never to recover. Mental health experts say the loss of a parent at an early age can be a harbinger of poor mental health as an adult in the form of chronic anxiety and depression. I am pretty sure my mother had an undiagnosed general anxiety disorder her entire adult life. That is not surprising. We did talk about my mum’s episodic anxious states often. Interestingly, even my father gave her a wide berth when her anxieties got the best of her. I have perhaps epigenetically inherited some of her anxious tendencies, as have my two boys.
ReplyDeletePeople are not as resilient as we think. Traumatized people are damaged people.