The Force of Love: Making a Difference in the World

THE famous meditation of John Donne, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” highlights two Theosophical principles:

First, the affirmation that there is no isolation, that nature and all mankind are interconnected — and second, our karmic responsibility.

“It’s one thing to fashion a particular work of art, sculpture, painting, a worthy accomplishment,” Thoreau wrote, “but much greater is the creation of one’s life.” He believed that:

to exemplify the highest potential imagined, it is the highest of loving artistic accomplishments.

A compassionate Nature activist, Julia Butterfly Hill is a living example of Theosophy pure and simple. She took the decisive action taught in The Voice of the Silence — sacrificing  her comfort and well-being to “help Nature and work on with her.”

“Help Nature and Work On With Her”

H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, Fragment 1:

“Desire nothing. Chafe not at Karma, nor at Nature’s changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.

Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance.

“And she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chambers, lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure virgin bosom. Unsullied by the hand of matter she shows her treasures only to the eye of Spirit — the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is no veil in all her kingdoms.”

Julia Butterfly Hill

It must have been a profound inner sense of the sacred that roused Julia to action as she climbed 18 stories up those long ropes, to begin a permanent encampment in the endangered redwood trees.

She doesn’t follow any organized religion but says she believes very strongly in the spirituality of the universe.

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Julia Today

Helena Blavatsky took her beliefs about One Life, of interconnectedness of the Whole, to an similar grand level. An acknowledgement of the spiritual consciousness of the Earth. It was the evidence, she wrote in The Secret Doctrine (1:111) of the intelligent purposefulness in Nature and the Cosmos:

There is a plan in the mind of nature, down to the glow-worm and simple daisy.

A Simple Daisy

Theosophy teaches that all life forms are sacred, and that the essence of Deity is everywhere and embedded in every form. Too often the sacred life forms around us are harmed by human greed, waste and carelessness, and the damage (like climate change) subsequently ignored or justified for commercial gain.

The Protean Spirit Substance

“Fohat is the personified electric vital power, the transcendental binding Unity of all Cosmic Energies, on the unseen as on the manifested planes, the action of which resembles — on an immense scale — that of a living Force created by WILL, in those phenomena where the seemingly subjective acts on the seemingly objective and propels it to action.

“Fohat is not only the living Symbol and Container of that Force, but is looked upon by the Occultists as an Entity — the forces he acts upon being cosmic, human and terrestrial, and exercising their influence on all those planes respectively.

Bacterial Electrical Wiring

“On the earthly plane his influence is felt in the magnetic and active force generated by the strong desire of the magnetizer. On the Cosmic, it is present in the constructive power that carries out, in the formation of things — from the planetary system down to the glow-worm and simple daisy —

the plan in the mind of nature, or in the Divine Thought, with regard to the development and growth of that special thing.

“He is, metaphysically, the objectivised thought of the gods; the ‘Word made flesh,’ on a lower scale, and the messenger of Cosmic and human ideations: the active force in Universal Life. In his secondary aspect, Fohat is the Solar Energy, the electric vital fluid, and the preserving fourth principle, the animal Soul of Nature, so to say, or —Electricity.”

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 1:111-112
• Also read: Fohat the Great Transformer

 

BREAKING NEWS:

Detection of electrical signaling between tomato plants raises interesting questions

Tomato Plants

The soil beneath our feet is alive with electrical signals being sent from one plant to another, according to research in which a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering participated.

The Silence of Love

In his collection of essays on spiritual life, the rebel Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, poetically describes the intimate relationship between “human” and “nature:”

Thomas Merton

“Those who love their own noise,” he said, “are impatient of everything else.”

They constantly defile the silence of the forests and the mountains and the sea. They bore through silent nature in every direction with their machines.

“There are some men for whom a tree has no reality until they think of cutting it down,” he wrote, “men who never look at anything until they decide to abuse it and who never even notice what they do not want to destroy. These men can hardly know the silence of love.”

Dateline: Julia

Engage Network

Working to create a world where people are part of strong and vibrant communities, have a personal sense of purpose, and are having fun while making a difference — The Engage Network “operates through small purpose-driven groups of people taking action together in their communities.”

“The Engage Network also plans to link these small groups and support groups in creating more groups. This is much like the way a starfish works in nature.

The Starfish Poem

“If a starfish loses its arm, it often grows a new one. In some breeds of starfish, the lost leg even grows a whole new starfish!”

It is a decentralized system where everyone shares power.

“We want you to know that people in the What’s Your Tree Program are a part of this larger network of people who have a dream of a better world based in environmental and social justice, peace and sustainability.”

Find out more: The Engage Network

Click on book to purchase:

The Legacy of Luna

About Julia:

You, yes you,
make the difference

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Theosophy‘s Deity

“Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree, building, or mountain,” wrote H. P. Blavatsky, “it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of the invisible Cosmos—in, over, and around every invisible atom, and divisible molecule—

… for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative potentiality.

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Julia’s History

“In 1996 she suffered nearly fatal injuries in an auto accident. During nearly a year of medical treatment and recovery, she had time to reassess her purpose in life. Two weeks after being released by her doctors, she headed west on a journey of self-discovery. She had no particular destination, but

her first sight of the redwoods overwhelmed her with awe.

“Twenty-five-year-old Julia Butterfly Hill never planned to become what some have called her–the Rosa Parks of the environmental movement.”

Redwood Forest

“When I entered the great majestic cathedral of the redwood forest for the first time,” she said, “my spirit knew it had found what it was searching for.

I dropped to my knees and began to cry because I was so overwhelmed by the wisdom, energy, and spirituality housed in this holiest of temples.

“When she first climbed into Luna, she had no way of knowing the harrowing weather conditions and the attacks on her and her cause. She had no idea of the loneliness she would face or that her feet wouldn’t touch ground for more than two years. She couldn’t predict the pain of being an eyewitness to the attempted destruction of one of the last ancient redwood forests in the world, nor could she anticipate the immeasurable strength she would gain or the life lessons she would learn from Luna.”

The Tree Sit

“Luna is an ancient redwood. She has been living in Humboldt County of northern California for more than 1000 years, towers 200 feet above the earth and has a circumference of 40 feet. In 1997 Julia Butterfly Hill began her historic two year tree-sit atop Luna to prevent the felling of this magnificent tree, and to bring international attention to the importance of protecting and restoring natural resources. Julia stayed aloft until Pacific Lumber Company agreed to protect Luna with a conservation easement.”

The Tree Sit: Julia in Luna

Click BELOW for:

Julia’s Weblog

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The pilgrim who would cool his weary limbs in running waters, yet dares not plunge for terror of the stream, risks to succumb from heat. Inaction based on selfish fear can bear but evil fruit.

•  H. P. Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence, Fragment 2

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Julia in Luna