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BANGLADESH and the GROWTH OF RELATIONSHIP
Today, we bear witness to the effect of the decisions we are making and have made, both as individuals and on a collective level as businesses and governments. For the event in Dhaka is not just a physical event. It is that, but it is also an energetic, emotional, and moral event, a ‘purification event’ on a global level.
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There is a dynamic, interactive relationship between world events and individual and collective consciousness. The pattern is twofold, namely, that events shape our consciousness, and also that our consciousness shapes events. Thus it is with the Dhaka, Bangladesh factory collapse. We, the consuming public in the U.S. and elsewhere, and corporations that own the factories in Dhaka and establish the working conditions, health standards, and payment to employees, perpetuate the conditions that we have seen in Dhaka and elsewhere. We perpetuate these conditions sometimes through our indifference – our non-recognition of relationship and responsibility as we make our purchases in daily life, and we perpetuate them by adhering to the root cause of such indifference – our non-recognition of relationship with others whom we do not personally see or know.
Today, we bear witness to the effect of the decisions we are making and have made, both as individuals and on a collective level as businesses and governments. For the event in Dhaka is not just a physical event. It is that, but it is also an energetic, emotional, and moral event, a ‘purification event’ on a global level. Such an event brings to our attention attitudes and motivations in need of healing. In this case and for most western economies, such attitudes have allowed vast corporations to place the desire for profit before the motive of relationship, respect, and love. The reflection of this ordering of priorities now returns to us as we witness the tragedy of Dhaka.
Yet we must ask, what is the consciousness of relationship?
At its root it is based in the supremacy within the individual of the heart’s love, out of which grows respect, responsibility, and a willingness to abandon indifference, replacing it with identification with others as if they were oneself. Where the consciousness of relationship grows, so, too do attitudes of responsibility for the lives of others, both physically and emotionally, for one does not treat indifferently those who are part of one’s intimate reality.
The event in Dhaka may be considered a ‘seed-event’ as many are today – an event that arises from a global consciousness that is becoming infused with greater spiritual light. We do not know how far this event will alter global consciousness in the present moment, or to what degree our consuming and manufacturing patterns will be changed into a willingness to discontinue the exploitation of overseas cheap labor and the under-valuing of human life. These decisions, both individual and collective, are based on a consciousness shift, now in process, that is far from complete. Such a shift gives supreme value to the understandings of the heart and to one’s relationship with the rest of life that must awaken further within all.
Yet, ultimately, such a shift will inevitably lead to new regulatory practices and working conditions on a global level, for such must be the case when we hold others as ourselves. Today, we witness the call to this emerging conscience, and it is this call from the Heart of Life that, as it emerges, compels us to see others differently.
This is the gift of the Dhaka tragedy – that it offers this awakening of conscience and the undoing of attitudes which separate us from others and from our own hearts. Yet, despite its gift, it remains a tragedy of large proportions. May the consciousness of relationship come to all, and especially to those who are in positions of power or influence, and may the values of love replace the values of indifference so that the world may live as one at last.
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