Jul 20
27
(4) IN THE BEGINNING
“This moment, right now, is the first moment of the rest of eternity, the plans I made yesterday, last week or last year simply don’t apply, but if I know where to point the question, “What now?” A whole new beginning will be laid out for me, am I ready to ask the question?” – Brad Cullen (from the 3rd chapter of “In the Beginning”)
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” – Marcus Aurelius
The above quote is an opinion and interpreted into English, from what the old boy said in Latin almost 2,000 years ago. I happen to believe it, as quoted, and therefore it guides my life.
Apply the quote, if you will, to the present plethora of opinions about the current crisis …everything you hear from the media and experts alike, is OPINION, everything you see and experience related to it is perspective, not the truth.
As an aside, the unfortunate thing about quoting Marcus Aurelius is that he has been labeled by others as a stoic. I say, “A stoic as defined by whom?” That’s like labeling me a Christian – I reject the label because the term means too many different things to too many different people to convey any real meaning or truth to anyone. I believe the same thing applies to stoic.
Why is it important to drag that into the conversation? Because what you think about both stoicism and Christianity is opinion and not a fact and has no bearing on anything. The labels get us off the track of pursuing as much truth as is possible for us to digest.
Okay, we’ve had our break, I’ve had a whole new beginning laid out for me, because I asked the question, WHAT NOW, but more importantly I knew to WHOM to direct the question and that’s what forced the issue.
If you don’t believe in a WHOM that is beyond your ability to understand or explain, but that you trust anyway, then you might as well stop reading because you’ll get nothing out of this. I don’t say this because I think I’m smarter than you are, you may be far smarter than I, but I believe I AM connected to universal-creativity (a verb NOT a noun) and so the answers I get are guidance not intellectual understanding and the answers are far beyond my intellectual capacity to express.
IN THE BEGINNING, is to be the title of the sequel to Leapfrog, if you’ve been following the series so far, you already know that.
Let’s have a little review and thereby we can start from here without having to backtrack. I wrote what I thought was the beginning of the sequel six years ago – and never wanted to go beyond the climactic chapter which pointed to a vague, yet exciting future for the six characters, Jeff and Roberta Barrett, Walt and Jan Hashimoto, Jeanne Stockwell and Brad Cullen.
The startling revelation I received while writing this series was that what I had written and thought was the beginning of the sequel to Leapfrog which, in the way it is written, is a continuation of sorts, but only if we insist upon looking at it that way, was the ending of the novel, leaving the new beginning for the six characters to the imagination of each individual reader.
If you can correlate that, perhaps, to the current situation, you can see how your imagination could be used to provide a new beginning NOW rather than allowing COVID-19 dictate your future.
Jul 20
20
Finding the Real You
WE PAUSE FOR THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE
(we’ll return to the series after this)
You are more fully yourself when you are NOT thinking. This is a deep truth not realized because we are taught that our conscious awareness and ability to think is an almost “God-like” quality that sets humans apart and above all other forms of life.
While I’m not arguing with the premise that human awareness sets us apart, it is not always for our better good, nor is it always indicative of a “higher nature.”
“Pay attention,” we’re told almost from the time that our parents, teachers or other guardians realized we were becoming consciously aware and needed to be trained in whatever way they thought was important.
Jesus was quoted as saying, that it was impossible to enter into the “kingdom of God” unless you approached it as a little child.
If that is true and if “as a little child” means before our minds became cluttered and clogged with what others deemed as important, then we may be onto something very important and that may help underline the opening sentence above: “YOU ARE MORE FULLY YOURSELF WHEN YOU ARE NOT THINKING.”
One of the things we might also gather from this is that “adult thinking,” does not equate with spirituality or finding your true purpose; if that is true, then education whether religious or secular, by itself, is not the supreme answer to a better life as so many might lead us to believe.
Education empowered by knowing how to return to the mind you had when you were a little child could be an answer.
There are ways to make the discovery, if you’re interested, write brad@bcanevis.org
Jul 20
17
(3) IN THE BEGINNING
I had just returned to the U.S. in August of 2001 – having been invited by the president of a small manufacturing company in Las Vegas, Nevada, to take on a market expansion project on a consulting basis.
The offer had been attractive and my writing assignment with the Lake Victoria Free Trade Zone in east/central Africa was winding down. The photograph of “an early Brad Cullen Small Group Meeting” in the introduction and chapter (1) was during that period …and until this little journey down memory lane I had forgotten the connection.
The little groups, I’d started in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, during that previous year had taken on beautiful lives of their own. So while I’d miss the people, they were fairly well spread out and I probably wouldn’t see any of them again, during this lifetime, anyway. I was ready to come home.
I’d been recommended to the manufacturer by a former client, a company that I’d successfully helped to expand from a relatively small distributor of hydraulic and lubricating systems in the Pacific Northwest to doing business in much of the U.S. southwest, including Southern California, Phoenix/Tucson, D/FW and west Texas.
The manufacturer in Las Vegas had become a large customer of my former client and the two company heads had become friends and the former client made the recommendation. The president of the company in Las Vegas tracked me down by phone while I was in Mombasa, Kenya and made the initial inquiry, as to my possible interest, and we finally negotiated a contract by email.
He had set me up in a small office with phone and access to the company computer system just down a hallway from the reception area. I’d arrived in early August of 2001 and things were moving along, actually well ahead of what either of us had anticipated when we had struck a deal.
It was all going smoothly; little did I know what was rushing at me on several fronts that would bring about endings and new beginnings.
Interestingly the name of the receptionist just came back to me, Jane. The hallway led to a door that went out onto the floor of the plant and along both sides of the long hallway were a number of other offices including the one occupied by the president.
Jane’s scream to turn on the TV because a jetliner had just crashed into a building in New York, was a general call. I didn’t have a TV in my little closet of an office, so I jumped up and ran up to the reception area …and got the first glimpses of what was to be a day that was the end of the world for about 4,000 people in New York and was certainly the end of one era and a new beginning for the rest of the world.
A totally unexpected disruption, for me, to some well-laid plans for the future; and now, almost twenty years later, here we go again, COVID-19.
Not only is COVID-19 bringing death and destruction to many human lives and certainly far more than 9/11, but also it is far more disruptive to what had been the beginning of a thriving economy and business climate.
What will this bring to each of us, to which we will much later look back and refer to it as “In the Beginning?”
Instead of hand-wringing, we can look at it differently, because that’s all it takes to see opportunity in the midst of every tragedy, a different point of view.
We don’t have to be insensitive to the suffering and pain the tragedy is causing, but neither does it have to be our singular focus.
This moment, right now, is the first moment of the rest of eternity, the plans I made yesterday, last week or last year simply don’t apply, but if I know where to point the question, “What now?” A whole new beginning will be laid out for me, am I ready to ask the question?
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