Change

A view from the ground – The journal from Jon

No View From The Ground thoughts for weeks, and then inspiration for 2 blogs came to me in quite quick succession (although, as my assistant – aka Viv – seems somewhat distracted with her incredible shamanic journeys and energy connecting it has taken me a bit of time to publish this. I am left to self publish, so any typos should be considered as organic wordage.

I wrote this the day after the ‘Action Speaks Louder Than Words’ blog. I was so strongly moved writing that blog, and I subsequently spent a lot of time afterwards thinking about the lesser privileged and what we need to do.

Someone recently published a You Tube video on our Facebook group, Connecting The Light Energies – 144,000, called ‘Change For A Dollar’. The strap line was “Is he asking for Change, or is he asking for CHANGE?” It follows a man as he affects multiple peoples’ lives with just one dollar, proving that it doesn’t take much to be the change in someone’s life.

I would urge that everyone reading this blog invests just 10 minutes of their valuable time to watch this video, and here’s the link –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DXL9vIUbWg.

I found this video profound, humbling, moving, but overall, inspiring. In my last blog, I focused on what we need to do to help the homeless / the less privileged. I also referred to an earlier blog – ‘1 5 10. Make It Count’ – which talked about how we can do things in stages – a 1 per cent shift, which can create a 5 percent move, leading to a 10 percent improvement – and so on. So, thinking about the Change For A Dollar video, if 1 dollar could start the change effect, and then that moves to 5 dollars, and 10 dollars, and 100 dollars etc. What an incredible impact we could all have.

I had a quick look at the various dictionary definitions of change, and the one that really hit me was ‘to make or become different’. Obviously, there are loads and they do include such things as ‘small coins in your pocket’.

Over the last few weeks, I keep coming back to the fact that we as individuals must change, to be the change, that makes the change. Does that make sense? Sorry, to use an expression use a lot, ‘I’m off on one’. But the starting point must be to change ourselves. Clearly, Viv and I have talked and written a lot about the change that we have been through but I really feel that this ongoing process has accelerated as we entered 2015.

Viv and I are going through a journey together, but we are also travelling our own individual journey, in that Viv is ‘working’ at a different / higher level to me. I remain on the ground, I like it here because it enables me to see things that I can then share with Viv and aide the work that she is doing. It has also enabled me to introduce some wonderful people to Viv, and in turn they have become good friends, all travelling their own journey of change.

Away from what we do for ourselves, using the Change For A Dollar video as the platform, we must also look at the change we can make to help other people. One dollar / pound sterling / euro or what ever your currency is, could change someone’s life. I am not sure which part of the video hit me the hardest, probably when the main character gave a young lady on the street some money, which she used to telephone her mum to say she wanted to return home.

I know this was just a fictional piece, but it featured real life issues which we see and ignore every day. I don’t mean cover our eyes up as we walk passed someone on the street, but I would ask do we, as fellow human beings, do as much as we could. How many of us have small change just kicking around at home, at work, in the car etc? As I sit here typing this, I know in my work office I have a tray full of bits of change and we have something similar at home. Clearly, this is MONEY and we are not using it. Yet, there are people out on the street now who could use it to get a warm drink (several warm drinks) or get some basic food or make a phone call to reconnect with loved ones.

This is the starting point – and from there we move on to bigger ticket change. But, unless we start at the dollar level, we can not hope to grow to something bigger.

Here’s a thought, and this is something I am going to practice from now. When we do our weekly food shop, how many of us see something in the Deli section of the store and thing ‘oh, that looks nice, I think I’ll get that because it would be a nice treat’. We get home, we put it in the fridge and ……………………… forget about it. A week later, we look in the fridge to see what we need to buy and, there sitting in the back right hand corner is that nice treat. Passed its ‘eat by date’, and it goes in the bin. Is it just me? I doubt it.

In reality, my main guilt here relates to cheese. I’ll see something like cheddar with pomegranate and kiwi (or something like that), and think it would be nice for a weekend lunch. But, it goes to the back of our (small) fridge until the green is not just the kiwi. It might have cost me £2. So, from now, when I see something like that, I will not buy it and I will put that money aside so that we can use it when we see someone on the street who needs it. Try it. You will be uplifted – and, if you would have actually eaten that cheese, you’ll be able to feel like you have just released some weight through not having it.

I think we all just need to sit up, look at ourselves, look at our lives, and look at what we could CHANGE to provide some change to make a change for others. The change is there for the making, and the time is now for action to speak louder than words – to use the title from my last blog.

I would like to close with a quote from Barack Obama, that really makes sense – “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

I truly hope that you can take something positive from this blog. It is just my View From The Ground, written from the heart. Please share it and let’s gather a movement so that we can bring homelessness, hunger, sadness, and isolation to an end – forever. I can be contacted on Facebook, via http://www.spiritualunite.com or direct through my email address – jonlduke@sky.com if you have an opinion or want to share your story about what you are doing to support the lesser privileged.

I hope those who read the View From The Ground blogs regularly, notice I have not mentioned our books, These Wings Can Fly and Awaken Your Inner Hero, or that they are available via the Amazon website.

Take care. Live life to the full, and love every day likes it’s your first.

Jon