Reaching heaven on earth

 This week’s winner

Manila, Philippines -  Madelline Romero works for an NGO that “gives energy” through renewable energy sources to remote rural areas in the country.

The universe is one vast energy field. You as human, being part of the universe, are an energy field yourself. Conflict occurs when individuals struggle to steal energy from one another. You get the feeling of high when you are in love because you receive so much energy from the other person, but feeding off each other’s energy alone soon makes the relationship degenerate into the usual power struggle, because cut off from the energy in the universe you can never attain real, sustainable happiness. I will never be able to think of energy the same way again.

James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy, the book that spoke to me of energy in those terms, was given by a friend shortly after the beginning of the new year. I looked like someone who would appreciate the book, he said.

A week after I’d read the book, I went to a filmmaking workshop. The facilitator came in an hour late and started talking about how lucky our batch was – seven being an auspicious number – and about 2012 marking the change of age to Aquarius, and of a global shift to a different – higher – level of consciousness. For about half an hour – and many times more after that during the 4-weekend workshop – he talked about creative spaces and how an exchange of energy was happening right at that very moment between us and him and among ourselves, that each of us gave off energy out to the universe, and that we could receive energy from the universe, too, if we only opened ourselves up to it.

Was it mere coincidence that a friend gave the book to me, and a week later I met people who said exactly the same thing?

I would think not if I were to be convinced by Redfield. There are no coincidences, says the Celestine Prophecy. Chance encounters often have a deeper meaning, and what we call chance events often occur at just the right moment, and bring forth just the right individuals to suddenly send our lives in a new and important direction. Only thing is, more often than not, we are not aware. We are too busy to give seemingly trivial incidents a second thought and too preoccupied to look for meaning in what could be so quickly dismissed as coincidence.

Redfield gives an interesting historical interpretation of this preoccupation. Understanding our modern-day preoccupation brings us back to the Middle Ages when the Church and its uncontested direct line to God defined the purpose of our lives. But scientific discoveries later made us doubt our place in the center of God’s universe, thus, mankind’s purpose on the planet. While we were trying to regain that sense of certainty on the purpose and meaning of life on Earth, we focused on conquering the Earth and using its resources to better our situation, until “we totally lost ourselves in creating a secular security, an economic security to replace the spiritual one we had lost. Working to establish a more comfortable lifestyle of survival has grown to feel complete in and of itself as a reason to live, and we’ve gradually, methodically forgotten our original question...We’ve forgotten that we still don’t know what we’re surviving for.”

We’ve forgotten that we live to evolve our soul so that we can connect to that sense of endless wonder and mystery in this world, “find relationship to one higher source, to a perception of God within,” of which all religions speak.

In this world of super highways, automatons and living in the fast lane, how does one create and sustain one’s connection to the energy in the universe which actually creates that buoyant and uplifting feeling inside, which we commonly identify as love, happiness?

Redfield offers that the first step is to slow down and be aware. Notice your surroundings and allow yourself to be awed by the beauty of the Earth, for it is only through a heightened perception of and sensitivity to beauty can the feeling of love emanate. Be aware of the events in your life and of the people coming into your life, and stay alert for deeper meanings in what appear to be “coincidences.” And, more important, be aware of your own energy and recognize the power of this energy to impact all matters around you.

“Watch your PEE,” the film instructor had said in the filmmaking workshop. He was talking about one’s personal energy emission which affects everything around us. And that had got me thinking about my interaction with the people around me: Do I give other people more energy or do I drain their energy because of my thoughtless ways.

“The human world is a vast competition for energy and thus for power,” Redfield says. That we do not know how to tap into this bountiful universal source — and instead struggle against one another, hurting each other and destroying our environment in the process — for energy, is the source of conflict. This non-recognition of the universe’s energy is what has made us live not “in harmony with the energy dynamics of the Earth and within the natural energy systems of the planet.”

The Celestine Prophecy speaks of an adventure of one man who suddenly finds himself flying thousands of miles from his home in the United States into the depth of the Amazon jungles in Peru, and ensnared in and prosecuted by a web of political and religious conspiracy blocking the discovery of the last of the nine Insights of the Manuscript.

Eventually found in the location of the ancient Mayan civilization, in the ruins called the Celestine (Heavenly) Temples, the Ninth Insight foretells of a human world transformed by conscious evolution that makes humans engage the universal energy, making them vibrate at a higher level until their physical selves dissolve and they experience what can only be called transcendental — reaching heaven on Earth as it were.

 The adventure ends with the protagonist’s discovery of the Ninth Insight, but he immediately gets seized by opposing authorities. During incarceration a conversation ensues between him and a kindred spirit: “Each person, once they hear the message and realize that the insights are real, must pass on the message to everyone who is ready for it...Each of us must do what we can to get this message out.”

It was no coincidence that out of a thousand possibilities for a gift, my friend chose to give me The Celestine Prophecy. It is no coincidence either that you are reading this article. This is my contribution to getting the message out.