Spring 2021 True Natural Health Magazine
By Flavia Ursino Coleman
The clues are bountiful and all around. The universe whispers quietly to the soul; the pathway of life adorned with a trail of evidence of a deeply personal mission yearning for fulfilment during this life’s timeframe while dwelling upon this place called Earth. Those restless stirrings often ask, “What am I here for?”.
I cannot begin to tell you the number of times I have been asked this question over the decades as a spiritual advisor
As human beings we are both tangible humans and abstract beings. Both seeking expression upon our canvas of life as part of the collective consciousness, framed by birth and death. Our abstract world governed by our conscious and subconscious thoughts and feelings in the engine-room of our co-created universe, shared with all unseen thoughts and feelings of other beings.
TASK
One night some thirty years ago, I was handed a video tape to watch. I had just stepped off a platform where I had been addressing a room of people on spirituality. Back in that day I did not believe that evil truly existed. I simply elected to believe that people were at times just downright mean to one another.
The video was called, ‘Hidden Crimes by Suppress’, a documentary based on undercover footage which exposed some of the most unimaginable torture unleashed upon defenceless animals for biomedical research ̶ and supposedly for the advancement of human health.
The following months I tossed and turned into the wee hours, my mind constantly invaded by images of the brutality conducted away from the prying eyes of the general public. “Not on my watch” I kept repeating over and over. It had come to be one of my life’s defining moments. Almost overnight I had become an animal rights activist.
I’d come to understand that our soul’s mission is to ‘change the things that we cannot accept’.
I have since been invited to, and have spoken on, countless public platforms on how to recognise our soul’s calling and how to respond. The acronym I use is TASK – Teach, Act, Spirituality, Karma.
TEACH
Teaching and learning, storytelling, imparting knowledge and searching for answers throughout our evolutionary history have all been essential not only for building, shaping and holding together families, communities and societies, but necessary for the very survival of our own species and countless other species as well.
Perhaps it’s fair to say that for each of us there is information that compels us to dive deeper into its explorations. When passing on this knowledge we come alive and our spirits sour.
I know many individuals so driven to exploring and sharing the truth that they have gone to extreme lengths for their undercover work so as to film and record the suffering and the screams of the voiceless animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. So horrific were these places that many people still suffer post-traumatic stress decades later.
All too often whistle-blowers are shunned by societies where learning is based on memorising and repeating contemporary dogma in order to pass exams and for realising future ambitions. Individuals are taught what to think rather than how to think. Critical thinking and analysis are often met with scorn and hostility by institutions whom the public has been conditioned into revering.
There have been times throughout history which have been marred by the withholding of essential information by those seeking power and authority. From earlier times with the burning of books through to modern day censorship which many consider to be heavy handed, individuals who risk all to seek and expose deceit are often publicly shamed, fined, imprisoned or eliminated.
While ignorance may be bliss, knowledge is power, and right now the planet is crying out for powerful, knowledgeable people in order to take our world to higher evolutionary consciousness.
In the words of Brendan Kennelly in the Biblical book of Judas “If you want to serve the age, betray it”. It falls to each of us to remember that silence is consent and that perhaps the ‘pen is indeed mightier than the sword!’
ACT
Passion and integrity have characterised many powerful and inspirational figures who have shaped history as we know it. Names such as Rosa Parks ̶ the mother of the freedom movement; Martin Luther King ̶ civil rights leader; Nelson Mandela ̶ anti-apartheid leader; Captain Paul Watson of ‘Sea Shepherd’ ̶ vegan marine conservationist, just to name a few.
While knowledge may be powerful, that and five dollars alone will at best buy one a glass of mineral water. For any lasting impact knowledge must be couples with action., Sometimes massive action!
If a man has not integrity then what has he?
SPIRITUALITY
The core of our being is constantly directed by the invisible hand of our conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Played out, both are created and co-created with ourselves and others. Its effects are experienced generationally and intergenerationally.
In order to illustrate the power of unseen forces, imagine for just one moment your world void of emotion, inspiration, imagination, perception and reflection. These are just a few of the invisible forces which drive our lives. They create from the unseen to the seen, or the abstract to the tangible.
Spiritual practices such as prayer, affirmations and reflection have been used by many people to help guide themselves and humanity towards a world of non-selective compassion for all beings, human and non-human alike. There are many who believe that in prayer we speak to a higher power, while in meditation we simply listen.
And what if God is love ̶ just love? What would love do in any given circumstance? Surely love is not capable of hatred and harm to any living being? Affirmations in particular ̶ or, in other words, prayers commencing with a gratitude of ‘thank you’ for a desired outcome ̶ have been attested by many people to have enormous power in effecting events into positive manifestation.
KARMA
‘Karma’ simply means cause and effect. It is the sum total outcome of teaching, action and spirituality. What we sow, we reap. When we accept exploitation, cruelty and enslavement, be it to women, children, workers or our non-human cousins anywhere, we accept it everywhere. It is encrypted into our individual and collective pool of the subconscious and shows up as our consequences.
We each drink from the same pool of joy and also the same pool of suffering.
OUR TASK
For our life’s purposes to be fulfilled, we are each given individual strengths, gifts and dreams. For many of us, those early memories still linger with yearnings for expression. Each of us has talents and abilities to bring to the table. An individual may be a great listener or storyteller, inspired writer or scholar, have a grand voice or a gentle whisper to soothe a child. We may have wonderful abilities to prepare and serve food or a desire to feed the hungry. We may have enormous insights or are deeply intuitive. We may have strong, powerful bodies than can build and lift or we may be light bodied that can move swiftly in a crisis.
We all have the right skill-set to match our desires to change the things we cannot accept or wish to see manifest into a world of higher evolutionary consciousness.
ONE DAY THAT FINAL CURTAIN WILL FALL
And when our time comes and we fade into the night to return to the place from where we came, we will have left naught of ourselves but memories and the legacies of our impacts.
From beyond, we may hear the murmurs of those we have left behind. We may hear the unanswered questions. Where were you when children went thirsty and hungry? Where were you as war raged, tearing nations apart? Where were you as women and children were trafficked into slavery? Where were you when men were torn from their families so as to work in unimaginable conditions? Where were you as our oceans became acidified? Where were you as Mother Earth cried for her children as her life-giving forests were stripped? Where were you as our non-human animal cousins were brutalised at the hands of the slaughter man?
Or we might simply hear the quiet echoes of gratitude in the words, ‘Thank you’, for leaving behind the legacy of footsteps towards a new Earth.
And if we live well, we will indeed lay claim to the greatest of our life’s mission … “In loving memory’
