2013-12-06; 7:37am, Friday.  Dark still with light dawning, colder still and clear maybe.


Diary:  Thoughts on the passing of Nelson Mandela.

~~The best tribute we can make to Mandela is to try and understand the process he went through and learn from it.~~

Yesterday’s news was Nelson Mandela’s passing from his body into the realm beyond this our bio-physical platform, as I call it at times.  Mandela dug up great treasure for all of humankind as he worked and slaved away in that chalk quarry on Robben Island.  As an aside, robben is the Dutch word for seals.
	What the regime of the time - Apart-heid - meant as punishment, Nelson converted into a new way forward for the two kinds of people that were held apart by this ‘apart-ness’ policy.  And in so doing, escape the infernos of revenge and retribution that loomed on the horizon.  He tried both the peaceful and the violent before he was condemned for the latter and sentenced for those twenty seven years of digging, which he used so well.

That quarry became his cauldron or better yet smithy, confining and so forcing him to forge the emotions of resentment and anger into a sword of discernment.  It is with this power tool that he recast the raw emotions of hurt and pain into a drive that reached beyond to the anchor point of reconciliation.  
	This did not eliminate all violence, but it prevented the potential calamity of racial revenge, which was recognised by many, but which no one knew how to avoid.  

Credit must also go to F.W. DeClerk, who was likewise convinced, but who gets little recognition.  DeClerk represented the white segregationist government of the time.  I think he gets little credit from the Western press, because it does not fit their perceptions.  Namely, that the whites too in our world have an obligation to seek out that compromise.  It is not just the coloured human beings who must produce this kind of saviour from our primitive emotions, whites too have to re-examine their treasured assumptions, give up advantages and honour differing values.
	
Canada prides itself in having supported Mandela’s cause, but this was self serving in part.  We have a strong mining industry in this country, as does South Africa, so there was benefit for Canada to support the boycott.  England was against, because its companies were heavily invested in the gold and mineral industries.  Canada’s gold mining industry is now the largest and present the world over.
	A second observation is that Mandela visited Libya’s late Cornell Gadaffi before anyone else!  In early 1990-ties this choice raised many eyebrows.  Nelson’s answer when asked was: “Gadaffi supported us when no one else would.”  Gadaffi would, because his overall cause was ‘Africa for the Africans’, as Libya’s support for the AU-peace force shows, among other such measures.

So, Nelson Mandela knew what side his bread was buttered on, playing the balances of vested interest and power to his advantage. No doubt his education as lawyer helped him formulate a compromise that rested on such a balance of interests and powers for his own country.
	All together it is an example much worthy of keeping in mind and serves counter example to those choosing the easier paths of retribution, vengeance and the ‘teaching of lessons’, that is chosen so often. 
<8:33am.
	



Writings:  Spirituality must not be aimless.

~~Bringing slowly into focus the aim for a modern spirituality that is defined, ethical, practical and relates to our past achievements as humanity.~~

A thought on spirituality.  It goes together with emotion and motivation.  Motivation is based on the receiving of anticipated rewards.  To be inspired is different in that the drive for acting comes from a held conviction about some future possibility.  This is the projection of what is thought to be achievable as an idea and ideal.  This is like striving for the fulfilment of an aspiration not yet well defined, but symbolic in nature.  

Such an inspiring ideal informs the actions of the person who holds it.  This is the way spirituality works and takes effect and has affect.  So, spirituality has this component of an ideal that one  strives to bring about.  Such an ideal must be subject to the scrutiny of ethics, morals,  good behaviour and values.  The ideal must be examined in other words, but it can also be threatening to established powers, which that does not mean it should meet with disapproval.

Action is taken when one is inspired to accomplish something, when one is inspired by an ideal.  Such an ideal can be adopted when judged to be worth the effort and realisable with the available resources.  Moving from ideal to goal, we should also examine the necessity of the goal in the sense as to what the outcome will be.
	In my own thinking this morning I formulated that within the realm of humanity we are involved in a process of explorations and discoveries of what is humanly possible and what is not.  In existence as such, we humans are possibly unique, but not the only ones engaged in such discovery processes.  There is a saying in cosmology, ‘If there is one, there are many’.  This is applies to heavenly bodies - planets, comets, asteroids and others -  but may very well apply to conscious beings as well.

To sort of gather these ideas up in a basket, my spirituality must have a purpose to which I strive and I define that as the exploring of the possible within to realm of being human.  Towards this ideal I want to put my efforts and strivings.  In choosing this orientation I disengage from earlier notions that humans should try to escape from their own existence through some kind of process transfiguring ourselves from unworthy to sublime. 
	Rather it is our very humanness that makes us worthy, but we have to come to realise this and make it our aim, be means of which we enable ourselves to come into our own, aware of our own nature and conscious of our responsibility and history.
<9:48am~