Each one of us is capable of the most amazing feats of courage, endurance, heroism and sacrifice, as well, unfortunately, as the worst excesses of greed, selfishness, depravity and cruelty – this is the miracle of being human.
‘Be humble for you are made of earth.
Be noble for you are made of stars.’
(Serbian Proverb)
The Bigger Picture
A common activity for young children all over the planet, who are just beginning to explore the wider dimensions of their world, is to send a letter to a friend or pen pal, addressing it as follows:
My friend Jane Fitzgerald,
16 Paradise Street,
London,
England,
Europe,
The World,
The Milky Way,
The Universe.
These children are beginning to sense, as the Spiritually Intelligent do, that the universe is their home, and that they live in a series of bigger and bigger neighbourhoods.
It is the universe’s vastness that creates a sense of excitement, wonder and awe, and which raises all kinds of spiritual questions about the meaning of our existence, and our individual place and significance in that universe.
‘Every now and then,
Take a good look at something
Not made with hands;
A mountain, a star,
The curve of a stream.
There will come to you
Wisdom and patience,
And above all, the assurance
That you are not alone in the world.’
(Sidney Lovett)
And this universe is vast:
Imagine how many atoms (the building blocks of all matter) there must be in the Universe, when just one grain of sand from many of the hundreds of thousands of beaches on our small planet contains millions of atoms.
Spiritually Intelligent people actively cultivate an awareness of the magnificence of every living thing and the vast and gigantic beauty of the universe. This awareness has been furthered dramatically by the invention of telescopes and space probes and, of course, manned space flights. Thanks to these instruments, exquisitely beautiful pictures of planets, stars, galaxies and inter-galactic clouds where stars are born, trillions of miles above us, have been beamed directly into our televisions and living rooms. This dawning Spiritual awareness is beautifully encapsulated in the story of astronaut Edgar Mitchell.
I met Edgar Mitchell in 1973, a couple of years after he had flown to and around the moon on the Apollo 14 mission. His experiences had radically changed his life, and he had established an institute for the study of humanity and the environment. He told the following story:
The Astronaut’s Story
The training at NASA for the flight to and around the moon was very, very, thorough. The astronauts had simulated every stage of the flight in terms of duration and daily activities – they had literally ‘gone to the moon and back’ while on Earth!
Indeed the training had been so thorough that Mitchell reported virtually no emotions of fear or exaltation when they took off, because it felt so familiar and ‘normal’.
This familiarity continued all the way to the moon, everything running smoothly, on schedule and, as far as the crew were concerned, almost robot-like. They arrived and began to prepare for their journey to the ‘dark side of the moon’.
This, like everything else, had been rehearsed. The trip was to take only an hour or so. The significant thing about being on the dark side of the moon was that for the first time on the journey, the sight of the earth would be totally blocked from view, and no radio or television waves could either penetrate or go round the moon. The astronauts would be totally excommunicated from Earth!
Mitchell said that the first five minutes on the dark side were fine, but after that the simulation training began to peel away, and concern, a touch of fear, and his imagination began to kick in. He began to think more and more about Earth – about his wife and children, his home, his neighbourhood, his friends and the places they met, and the changing colours of the seasons.
As his imagination expanded, time began to stretch, as it does when you are waiting for someone you love who is late. But this was not just one person Mitchell was waiting for. This was everyone and every thing that he loved. He began to wonder whether there were some strange time-warp effects on the dark side of the moon, and whether he and the others were trapped in an eternal night. Mitchell reported that the minutes began to feel like days; the time behind the moon was becoming eternity.
After what seemed like aeons, they came out the other side.
And there, at last, was the Earth!
But the Earth was not as Mitchell had imagined. In his mind it had been the giant planet on which the universe of his home and family existed. What he saw now was a tiny blue planet floating in the vast inky blackness of space. Surrounding it was a fragile, wafer-thin covering of white – our entire atmosphere. Mitchell felt that he could literally reach out with his hand and flick the Earth, like a tiny pearl, into oblivion.
That moment, and that sudden realization of the fragility of our local home in the vastness of our big home, caused a paradigm shift in Edgar Mitchell. When he returned to Earth he felt far more compassion and concern for his fellow living beings, and decided to devote the rest of his life to helping protect this delicate, unique and beautiful planet.
A love of and respect for Nature is very characteristic of the Spiritually Intelligent. The tribal peoples we so often admire for their Spiritual Intelligence, such as the Native Americans and the Aborigines of Australia, are renowned for their deep concern for the conservation of the environment, for their respect and love for animals and other living things, and for their reverence for and awe of the Universe. This springs from an affiliation to and with the earth, and a feeling of responsibility to act as its guardians.
Nurture Yourself in Nature
Spiritual inspirations often make themselves known through music and poetry, and musicians and poets often see nature as their muse.
Byron, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage wrote:
‘There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar …’
Similarly the visionary poet, artist and mystic William Blake wrote:
‘When thou seeest an eagle, thou seeest a portion of Genius. Lift up thy head!’
And when