Imagine awakening in a world without greed, only love

Deer in aspen meadow
Photographer: Terry Perryman, all rights reserved
Used with permission

For the next few days, perhaps longer, I ask you to take a journey with me, a journey that helps us  imagine a world, our world, as it might be if only love motivated us, if there were no greed, if there were no broken hearts attempting to compensate for childhood lack and cruelty. It's a bit of a stretch, I know. Very likely, each of us suffers today from cruelties present and past. I do know what it is I ask of you. Still, I ask.

Begin

You know the old adage. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Will you take it with me?

Here's how we begin. Get comfortable in your body, take a few long, slow breaths as you read this, let your mind find calm. Open to the possibility, just the possibility, of a life, a world, so full of love there can be only harmony.

We start easy, imagining what it would be like to waken every morning in such a world. If there were no greed, there would be no need for alarm clocks. We would waken when our bodies were ready. We would have time to stretch luxuriously, like a cat, lengthening our muscles and limbs languidly, gently, feeling the goodness of our bodies, their wholeness, their beauty.

We would have time to place our hands, warm with healing energy, over spots needing a bit of extra attention and love, perhaps a stiff shoulder, a crick in the neck, and always lying a few minutes over the heart chakra. We would smile with pleasure at the extraordinary heat flowing between our heart and our hands, spreading throughout our bodies.

Like Rose in Wake, the first Village of Ordinary post, we might enjoy the company of a feline companion, waking and stretching with us, or perhaps we would reach down and find the hand of our partner and bask in the quiet joy of waking beside our lover each day.

In a world without greed, we need hurry only because we are anxious to greet the dawn, eager to run into the morning air, feel the breeze on our face, dispatch our chores and get on with the work we love, work for which we receive no pay, work that is its own reward, that gives us intense pleasure.

But first, perhaps we'd sit with a cup of tea, wrap our hands around a mug the artisan, our neighbor, made just for us, knowing our habits, our favorite colors, the little things that surprise and delight us. The mug would fit perfectly in our hands, a treasure we enjoy every single morning with gratitude and love.

We might cut ourselves a slice of yesterday's bread, baked fresh in our neighborhood bakery, butter it with sweet creamery butter we ourselves churned, butter that came from a cow whose name and temperament we know well, whose flanks we have laid our cheek against as we milked her.

This is one way we might start our day in a world so filled with love we can barely imagine it.

Share your vision

If we lived in such a world, how would you waken each morning? I encourage you to vision it with me, either here in the comments, or better still, on your own blog, wherever you create. Share your vision with the rest of the world. If you do so, please post a link here, so the rest of us can read your vision, partake of it too.

What we visualize we can make real.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.

Imagine the world without anger, without greed

Shops in Ireland
(Note bicycle under lamp post)
Image courtesy karpati

Can you vision a world free of hatred, anger, and greed? What would your day be like if you were to walk down the street this morning and there were no such thing as greed or anger? Can you take a moment to indulge the fantasy? Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and imagine the difference in your neighborhood. What would change right there, on your block?

On my block, there would be no homeless men and women packing up their cardboard and blankets and shuffling away before the shopkeepers found them sleeping in their doorways. That's the first thing I would notice, in the early hours of the morning.

Later, shops and stores would bustle with friendly voices and faces. Clerks would be well compensated for their work. They would have no worries about a toothache sending zinging shots of pain through their head if they sipped their hot coffee on the wrong side of the mouth.

Bicycle racks would line the parking spots outside shops and apartments, and the bicycles would not be locked. There, see that man parking his bike? He gets off, removes his helmet, hooks the strap over the handlebar, helps his two-year-old daughter from the child safety seat, lays her helmet in her seat, and walks into the grocery store, cloth bag in one hand, daughter's in the other. He doesn't even look back to check the bike. No need! Not one soul on the face of the earth would think of taking it.

Inside the store, the man and his daughter visit with the green grocer and learn what the farmers are bringing in this week. He adds just enough kale, turnips and cauliflower to his bag to make the soup he plans for today's supper. He picks up a handful of sweet Valencia oranges, brought in only this morning from a neighbor's tree. He stops and chats with the butcher while she slices a thick slab of ham from the side the local pig farm delivered yesterday. He'll use the small round bone and some of the ham to flavor the soup. His wife will use the rest of the ham in a quiche she wants to take to their neighbors, who have been under the weather with a flu bug.

On the way out, the man tells the manager that he'll bring a clean, repaired awning tomorrow to replace the soiled one over the front of the store.

This dad, you see, is a sail and awning maker. When the neighborhood awnings begin to show signs of tears and wear, he replaces them with cleaned, repaired awnings. When they become too worn to be repaired, he provides new ones. Fisherman and recreational sailors in the area come to him for refurbished and, when necessary, new sails as well. The awning maker especially enjoys creating new designs to decorate his canvases. He has a knack for understanding just what will please his customers and bring surprise and joy to their faces.

Money never changes hands. There is no such thing as a bank account. Each person's work is valued. Each person does the work he or she loves. Because everyone does fulfilling work they enjoy, people are happy. Because their basic needs are always met, because they have time and energy to nourish their creative, spiritual and relationship needs, they are healthy emotionally and physically. Because children are brought into a loving world full of happy people, conflict is rare. Like the Ladakhi, when conflict does arise, people shrug it off easily, Chi choen--What's the point? Life is too precious to waste in conflict.

That's one vision for today. One idea of what the world might look like if there were no greed and no anger.

So, back to my original question. If there were no greed and no anger, what would be different in your life, your neighborhood?

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.