Back in May 2010, at the time of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökul, the Icelandic volcano, I wrote a five-part blog, Lid Blown on What's Brewing Below, on how collectively *we* have managed to make the planet angrier with our mindless progress and its corollary - a penchant for taking as much as we can of whatever, matched by a limited ability to give much of anything to anyone... unconditionally.
As a result, collectively, regardless of which part of the world we happen to be living in, nature a.k.a. the Cosmos is making us accountable. It is forcing us to reap collective karma that needs to be amended collectively.
Back in May, while the BP spill was still spreading its oily ugliness across Florida's coastline and into the Mississippi delta, I concluded one of my articles with this thought: The forces of nature along with personal as well as separate/collective karma are going about the business of teaching us, mankind, essential lessons in spiritual survival with a single-mindedness similar to one who, stranded on an island, must break open coconuts with bare hands to get to the sweet milk within.
By that I meant that nature is stirring and shaking our psyche by finally reacting up close and personal with us who live in so-called civilised parts of the world as opposed to those it has challenged for decades - those who live in harsh lands and remote areas of Third World countries. Separately and together, it would be best if we managed to rethink our thinking in regards to *science*, *progress* and *lifestyle* because the viability of personal options are narrowing, as we speak.
According to a snip on Wikipedia, in April 2010, Ólafur Grímsson, the Icelandic President warned about a second much larger volcano: 'The time for Katla to erupt is coming close...we [Iceland] have prepared...it is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption.'" [1]
Right. And then what? I asked myself.
On the 7th of November 2010, on a lovely sunny Sunday somewhere in Australia, I read that international flights have been suspended to and from Indonesia and that Air Asia has cancelled 11 of its own because the activity of Mount Merapi, a volcano, a few hundred kilometres out of Jakarta, in Indonesia.
Today, a week later, I see that villages and all that makes them - from huts to buildings, to statues, to the common place palm trees and roads in between - are *ghosted* by layers of sticky, thick, grey ash. 206 people have so far died. 400.000 more have fled their homes and the clean-up cost is counted in billions of dollars.
The ancient ones considered volcanic ash the messenger heralding the awakening of the earth-shaking, fire-spitting dragon - the eruption of lava. Indonesia has had an uneasy past and, to this day, corruption is rampant and costly. Again, it might well be that for the local government, as well as for the world around, an eruption of molten lava there should be interpreted as yet another of nature's gesture to cleanse, not just the immediate area, a mere dot on the world map, but to burn out the spread of the pandemic virus identified as GaD, short for Greed and Deceit.
No one can ever know why it has so far been the Indonesians' collective [inherited] karma to bear the brunt of these acts of god/nature but, knowing that disasters are not only aimed at the ones, victims and survivors who are directly affected, it certainly would not hurt if all government officials, big billionaires, little millionaires, business folks as well as us, little people, currently suffering from the GaD syndrome managed to wake up long enough to address our priorities and redress our M.O. while we still can.
Sadly, it is also in Indonesia that, in 2006, a giant wave killed more than 130,000 people - only two years after another ocean quake triggered off the coast. That monster wave, referred to as the Boxing Day tsunami, plucked 230,000 people off the coast line of fourteen neighboring countries.
News headlines make it clear that, as rolling waves born out of nowhere suddenly ride hard the horizon line to slam against jetties and destroy livelihood, flood our streets and occasionally take lives, the answer to "And then what?" has already come to us in multiple ways.
Last month, also in Indonesia, on Mentawai island, a legendary destination for surfers, more than 400 people died including many children when the approaching giant wave failed to trigger alert warnings.
Interestingly, back in May 4 2010 - freak waves batter la Promenade des Anglais, in Nice, France - my hometown. The reality of a sea storm on the famed Riviera is even more 'odd' when we know that on the littoral, the Mediterranean sea, unlike the Atlantic, is normally quite still.
Only days before the official opening of the tourist season, this natural disaster spelt economic doom for the season. The cost of repair, mostly of the sea front restaurants between Nice and Cannes, was estimated to be between 3 and 8 millions of Euros.
Most of us do nod in agreement that everything happens for a reason, but we usually fail to search for *the reason*. Contextualizing natural events, these so-called Acts of God, helps make meaning out of events that are occurring more frequently and with more intensity than in the past.
Saying that these disasters are due to global warming or to the El Nino effect only addresses the symptoms not the primary cause. It's no different than saying that cancer is caused by the genetic mutation of cells while the real question is the one that precedes why have cells mutated in any one particular human being?
Also in May 2010: in Poland, village residents found themselves flooded by the Visla river. Their Prime Minister reassured them that financial aid was on its way and that they would be able to rebuild their lives.
Again, I remembered thinking, And then what?
As an aside, what I found symbolically interesting is that the Vista's swell reached all the way to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site. About time! Its flood finally cleansed the horrid energy that undoubtedly still lingered, as energy does, so many years after the last prisoner walked out of the gates.
The death camp 'artefacts' were moved to higher grounds, which in itself suggests the symbolisms of Elevation and Purification. Why dismiss the notion that this *act of god* - one that did not take any lives - could be the hint that generally speaking, we all need to forgive, forget and move on?
The thing to keep in mind it that the greater the flood regardless of where it happens, the greater the need for us, individuals, to wash off ourselves in the present moment the deeply engrained scenarios from the past that have long dropped out of real-time, the ubiquitous suspicion of others' motives, the dark emotions and the murky fears of the future that, too, only exist in our mind. It's either that or risk being flooded by them, swept away and left to drown in them - literally as well as figuratively.
Since, it has been confirmed that 20 million people have been affected by the devastating monsoonal floods that began drowning Pakistan in July. One side-result of the catastrophe is that 99 cases of cholera have been detected since, and another is that there have been more than 3,000 cases of Dengue fever leading to 29 deaths, and counting.
In June 2010, came the string of nimble-footed, beautiful and massive supercell storms that hit Dakota.
In the face of more frequent natural and man-made disasters pockmarking our landscape, heart-in-mouth won't do. Heart-on-sleeve won't do.
Heart and soul would fare much better.
Early in October, this year, still in 2010, too soon on the heels of the BP spill, Hungary found itself besieged by toxic red sludge of comparable amplitude. The waters of the famed *Blue Danube* have since become poisonous.
"According to the current evaluation, company management could not have noticed the signs of the natural catastrophe nor done anything to prevent it even while carefully respecting technological procedures," said a statement issued by the company, Hungarian Aluminium Production and Trade Company. [2]
The residents of Kolontar, the area nearest the leaking reservoir, are due to return to their homes any day now. Apparently, a protective wall erected for that purpose will keep them safe from further leakage. Within the context of this article written for a readership interested in understanding day-to-day matters from a spiritual perspective, I think it is safe to say that this so-called protective wall symbolizes the hard wall that is around the heart of the industrial hunger we, as a consumerist society, keep feeding.
One month before, in September, a massive earthquake shook the city of Christchurch in *little* New Zealand. The city sustained NZ$ 4 billion worth of damage - a massive amount for any country of its size - but, again, the fortuitous lack of casualties points to the fact that nature knows well that the purse strings around our collective heart are knotted so tightly that the purse has to be slashed open.
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1. msnbc.msn.com/id/37371442/ns/world_news-europe
2. telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/hungary
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