spiritual

Lessons from Squirrels

/ Darlene Franklin-Campbell / Leave a comment
We can learn so much from observing animals!

Learning from squirrels.

I am thinking about the little squirrels that live in my yard. Each autumn I watch them store up food for the coming winter. They store food for one year at a time, not ten years at a time. I once heard a minister say that to constantly try to “keep” everything was to have a poverty mentality, some fear that you might need it someday and therefore, it was to say that you don’t believe I Am is enough. But I Am is El Shaddai, more than enough.

Thoughts from the Tao Te Ching:

Putting a value on status will create contentiousness.

If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal.

By not displaying what is desirable, you will

cause the people’s hearts to remain undisturbed. The sage governs by emptying minds and hearts,

by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.

Practice not doing. . . .

When action is pure and selfless, everything settles into its own perfect place.

Dyer, Wayne W.. Living the Wisdom of the Tao (p. 9). Hay House. Kindle Edition.

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WHAT JESUS HAD TO SAY ABOUT IT:

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

King James Version

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Placing too much value on status really does create contention. When you exalt someone because they are pretty or born wealthy or famous or smart, you immediately stir up strife, especially if you undervalue the people who are there for you every day, making life happen.

Virtue. Restraint. Integrity. 

Those words seem to have fallen out of favor in our mainstream culture, at least here in America. I love my country so don’t take this the wrong way, but we are an abundantly blessed nation, and we are an abundantly WASTEFUL nation. We have sheds, storage units, houses and garages filled with clothes we never wear, purses we never carry, shoes we never walk in, furniture we never sit on, dishes we never eat out of, toys our kids never play with and books we never read.

LIVE abundantly, not hoard abundantly.

I believe in abundance. I believe we are meant to have all that we need and want in this life, but abundance is not equivalent to waste. There’s a story in the New Testament where Jesus talks about a man who had immense wealth and instead of using his excess for good, he just decided to build more barns to house all his belongings, then he died and took nothing with him. The whole point in having belongings is LIVE abundantly, not hoard abundantly. Live is an action word.

The first shall be last.

I notice that the Tao Te Ching talks about not showing off one’s stuff and not pushing to get ahead. This goes so against the way our society has been set up through the years. We’re taught to work hard and push our way to the top, but what if the top is really the bottom? Jesus talked about how when a person comes in and seeks to have the seat of honor that he will be removed and the seat given to another. What if trying to be “first” became unimportant to us?

I teach and inevitably every time the kids line up to go anywhere there’s that one kid (sometimes more) that will run and push to be first. I always send that kid to the back of the line, pick some child who simply lined up and put that one at the head of the line and then I’ll say, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” The kid who pushed and tried to be first will always say, “What does that mean?” I simply smile and say, “You think about it and figure that out.” Maybe, the answer is found in the idea that he who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted. So, whatever we do, if it comes from a place of pure selflessness, it is God’s way and that therefore, it will work out just as it should.

You Harvest what you Plant

/ Darlene Franklin-Campbell / 2 Comments
Photo by Du01b0u01a1ng Nhu00e2n on Pexels.com

You can never harvest beans by planting tomatoes. At least that’s been my experience. Every time I plant beans I get beans, unless the groundhogs get them first. When I plant corn, I get corn, tomato seeds yield tomatoes, squash seeds give me squash and so on. No matter what kind of seed I put in the ground, that’s exactly the kind of plant that comes up. That seems to be a law of the natural universe. It’s also a law of the spiritual universe. You harvest what you plant.

If you saw a person planting pumpkins and expecting carrots you’d probably think they were a little wonky in the head! Yet, we do it all the time in the spirit realm.

Consider the following:

When I was in college I complained to my beloved Art professor one day that I had no friends. She replied, “He who hath friends must show himself friendly.” I realized it was true. I developed a little philosophy based off my discoveries through the exercise of showing myself friendly.

With one statement that professor taught me a bit about the Law of Reaping and Sowing, also known in some circles as the Law of Attraction. If you see yourself as being lonely then you will be lonely but if you become friendly, you will have friends. If you want everyone to think you’re interesting, then show interest in them.

You can’t sow complaints and reap joy. You can’t sow lies and reap truth. You can’t sow hatred and reap love. You can’t sow drama and reap peace.

In the Book of Hebrews, the Apostle Paul says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not see.” He goes on to say, “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Hebrews 11:1 & 3 (NIV) In Romans, he said that God had called the things which were not as if though they were.

The truth is that it’s a little more than just saying something. It’s having a joyous feeling, an excitement, when you say it. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t fixate on it. Speak into life, be thankful, then go about your business doing other stuff and in time, it will come to pass and you will get to rejoice a second time! In the same way, if we have a negative feeling when we speak a thing, we can literally call unpleasant things into our lives by our words and the spiritual vibration or expectation that accompanies those words.

Here’s another way to look at it. Truth or reality is based on the credence or mental acceptance of what one perceives; this mental acceptance is the essence, confidence and assurance, the absolute foundation, that brings into tangible manifestations objects and events that are expected into fruition. In other words, if we believe it and rejoice as if though we already have it then it will manifest in our lives. We don’t have to know the specifics, just that it’s as good as done.

If you sow seeds of earnest expectation with a thankful heart then you will reap crops that are only limited by your imagination.

No More Expendables

/ Darlene Franklin-Campbell / 2 Comments
Pexels

ARTICLE BY DARLENE FRANKLIN-CAMPBELL

TRUTH IS CONTROVERSIAL AT TIMES

This post is a little different than my usual stuff.

It may be controversial, but these are historical happenings, all prior to the events of the last two years.

I believe that to truly be spiritual we must see the divinity in others. If we fail to see others as divine sparks from the Glory Realm, we are spiritually asleep.

When we are spiritually asleep, we can do horrible acts, all the while believing we are doing good. I think of the fictitious character, Captain Nemo, from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He believed he was doing “good.” Hitler didn’t see himself as the bad guy. The most hideous acts are often committed by people who see themselves as “good.”

EXPENDABLES FROM LONG AGO

At one time, the Irish were the expendables and Irish daughters were sold to slave traders to breed with African males who were also considered expendable.

In the 1700s, “Gypsies” were so expendable in Scotland that you could be executed just for being Romani.

Chinese were “expendables” when the American railroads were being built and the list goes on and on and on. It even extends into modern America.

AND NOW?

Ask yourself, “Would individual men and women in powerful positions ever endanger the lives and livelihoods of those they are supposed to represent and care for to achieve personal gain, power, or status?” And ask yourself, “Could and would scientists and doctors ever falsify experimental results in exchange for large amounts of funding and personal gain to such an extent that people may lose their lives or suffer irreparable harm?” Now, ask yourself, “Could I ever become the target?”

Let’s look at a few historical events to answer those questions.

SMALLPOX AND NATIVE AMERICANS

*According to Elizabeth Ann Finn’s article in the Journal of American History, volume 86, the United States military and government officials knowingly spread Smallpox to Native Americans on several occasions.

MUSTARD GAS EXPERIMENTS

*On June 22, 2015, NPR published an article highlighting how the American military experimented on its own soldiers, via mustard gas. The experiment targeted men by race, testing them to see what effects mustard gas would have on Black skin.

STERILIZING THE POOR

*In the 1960s the United States Government declared war on poverty. As a result, the number of people on welfare increased substantially during the 1960s and 1970s. A part of that war was deliberate genocide against “low-income minorities” in the form of forced sterilizations. The powers that be were handing out money with one hand, while secretly cutting down the population of those most likely to receive it with on the other.

Anyone who thinks that the scientific and medical communities are immune to the plague of greed is unaware that there are humans at the top of these communities and humans are the only species susceptible to being infected with greed.

INMATES

*Between 1907 and 1939 over 30,000 people in 29 states (U.S.A.) were sterilized against their will while incarcerated or in mental institutions, especially if they were foreigners or if they were non-Caucasian. About half of these incidents took place in California.

STERILIZING BLACKS, ASIANS AND MEXICANS

*Fast forward, between 2006 & 2010 California prisons approved the sterilizations of around 150 female inmates. This time Asians and Mexicans were targeted.

At one point in the study, medical students at some hospitals were allowed to perform “appendectomies” as a part of their training. During these appendectomies, they performed complete hysterectomies on Black women, with a significant portion of the patients being under 18.

EXPERIMENTS ON AMERICAN MINORITIES

*In the1960s and 1970s physicians could increase their income by performing hysterectomies and tubal ligations. After birth control pills came out, they continued these procedures because they made more money doing them than they did prescribing “the pill.” Some of them reasoned Indigenous American women, Black women, Hispanic women, and Asian women did not have the capacity to use birth control pills effectively, so “forced sterilization” was for their own good and their own protection and the protection of the American way of life.

POLITICAL AGENDAS

*In the 1970s, the Black Panthers movement and the American Indian Movement came to the forefront of events and news coverage. These groups were perceived as threats by people with the power to hand out forced sterilizations, so certain health services performed supposed appendectomies which became hysterectomies. Still, others wanted to get experience in obstetrics and gynecology, and they needed human lab rats. The U.S. government covered the expenses. And some medical professionals believed they were helping these families become more financially secure with fewer children. So, for “their own good,” they were sterilized without consent and sometimes without knowledge until after the fact.

NATIVE AMERICANS WERE MAIN TARGETS

Although Latin American women, African American women and some Asian-American women were targeted and did suffer from this wrong, it was the Indigenous American women who bore the biggest brunt, because their low visibility in society at the time, smaller numbers and lax laws regarding the treatment of Native Americans allowed bureaucratic policies that made them easy targets.

Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, Choctaw & Cherokee, discovered, in 1974, that one in four Native American women between the ages of 15-44 had been sterilized without consent, leaving her to believe that full-blooded Natives were being singled-out for sterilization in an effort to diminish their numbers. Genocide. And indeed, between 1973 and 1976, The U.S. Indian Health Service forced the sterilization of at least 3,406 Native American women.

EXPERIMENTS DONE ON CHILDREN

In the 1950s children at the Willowbrook State School in New York became the guinea pigs for the development of a hepatitis vaccine.

Unethical experiments in THIS country have been done on the elderly, on the poor, on Blacks, on Asians, on Mexicans, on women, on men, on children, on the mentally disabled, and on perfectly healthy people of every race and religion to make them sick. They were done in the distant past as well as in the recent past.

IT STILL GOES ON

And the incidents go on—and on. I haven’t even touched on the things U.S. funded laboratories have done in other countries or the things that other countries have done to their own people as well.

Some might argue that these experiments led to breakthrough discoveries, but do the ends justify the means if it’s YOUR beloved brother being bombarded with mustard gas? If it’s YOUR teenage, incarcerated daughter being forced into sterilization? If it’s YOUR little niece who goes in for an appendectomy and comes out unable to bear children? When does the line become too blurred? What about the “Do no harm” thing? What about the sworn to “uphold, truth and justice” thing?

FOLLOW THE MONEY

If you want to get to the heart of any corruption, any genocide. Follow the money, because greed (the unbridled lust for power and influence) is an equal-opportunity offender. It can corrupt any gender or any race, at any level, but when it corrupts at the highest levels, it can do the most damage to the most people, sometimes while pushing an agenda of, “This is for your own good. This is for the betterment of society. This is for your protection.”

SOURCE LINKS:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/06/12/willowbrook-scandal-hepatitis-experiments-hideous-truths-of-testing-vaccines-on-humans/?sh=636e4f11279c

Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst

Hunger: both a cause and a consequence of genocide

https://www.amazon.com/Bury-My-Heart-Wounded-Knee/dp/0805086846