And what do we project?
It has become a trend to encourage positive thinking, like: we can achieve anything we want – we are what we think … yes … but … trouble is, we need to first accept were we actually stand in the physical world. Without analysing and accepting ‘what is’ the magic cannot take root.
Example: Russell Brand writes in the Guardian, 11th August, ‘Big Brother isn’t watching you … dismissing rioters as mindless is futile rhetoric. However unacceptable the UK riots, we need to ask why they are happening.’
I quote one sentence I can totally relate to:
… ‘If we don’t want our young people to tear apart our communities then don’t let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together …’’
In recent years the following happened in my immediate surrounding: A spiritual community centre which offered inspiration and healing to hundreds of people and which I supported and worked from half my lifetime was sold. I witnessed schools selling their football fields, a great number of small shops folding up, three post offices dismantled within a radius of 10 miles, local people mortgaging their houses to buy their own community centre or their only village shop, funding cuts to charities, bus services, train-travel becoming unaffordable … and so on.
Places in my environment where people can meet, relate, share, collaborate, reciprocate services and practice values are disappearing faster than I can blink. So this is happening, and seen in this light, the scum (as the young rioters are called) are actually making a collective statement, a statement that is immature, unsavoury and mainly unconscious, but which the government cannot afford to ignore. Because it highlights a truth:
We are living in fantasy land.
Even gods don’t have the power humans have, to act as the bridge between the physical and the spiritual worlds. Why? Because we are psychological beings, we can potentially create the future from where we stand congruently, by accepting and engaging with what is.
Sadly, when fear of losing face clouds reason, any analysis of self and society, of what is really needed, becomes biased – and what is attracted across the bridge of the psyche is more fantasy.
Listening is vital, to self and others. What are the real needs I have, you have, young people have, our planet has – today? A variety of perspectives will allow the bridge to be swept clean of fantasy – and allow insight, inspiration and synchronicity across from the spiritual sphere.
If our projections into the future, personally and collectively, are grounded and embodied in actual situations, then real imagination can unfold.
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Incidentally, the bridge features in my novel.
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The image here was taken in Cambodia by Yeshen Venema. I supplied the clouds, taken in Rhonda, Spain.
Course of Mirrors 
Beautiful photograph and meaningful, thoughtful and inspiring words – Thanks you
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I love the photo too. It was used in a lovely poetry pamphlet collated by prisoners … to create poems out of themselves and see them printed is always an incredible boost for those who participate.
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Part of the problem for young people in the UK is that they see no future for themselves. As you say, so many facilities are disappearing, such as libraries, youth centres, and so on.
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Yes, and what volunteers (usually) initiate in such places. Life-changing projects for the young and old, involvement, teamwork, friendships … self-discovery …new meaning … activities of immense value that should be subsidised in some way as a first priority (including small shops), especially since traditional family structures are changing. It’s families of mind and heart that need places to be enterprising and make things happen.
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