Consideration

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

We live in a populous world.  In cities of large to medium size, we are often bumping into one another, crashing at time like the movie Crash depicted.  Were those bumps gentle and warm, perhaps there would be less anger and violence. As it stands today, they are often far from that. This combined with the mentality of personal space and quest for new lands, has had a negative impact on our small planet.

This awareness got me to thinking about consideration.  In the era that I was raised, consideration was taught to us every day.  Manners were instilled in us to always be aware of our behavior and treatment of others.  If we visited family or friends houses for an overnight to more, we were lectured on eating what was in front of us and being respectful to our hosts.  We did not leave our ‘stuff’ all around their home.  Expectation was always trumped by thoughtfulness and consideration of others.  Entitlement, Mon dieu, hardly!!

When we look at the definition of consideration, it is about kindness, and thoughtful regard for others.  The word comes from Latin for “contemplate.”  Hidden in the word is “sid”, the Latin root for “star.” Originally it meant to examine things carefully as if you were staring at the sky in the night contemplating its mystery.

One of the reasons that I became attracted to earth-based spirituality (shamanism) was that consideration was given to all life forms.  There was a deeply inculcated philosophy of honoring Mother Earth and giving thought to all things on the manifest earth.  When one walked “a good red road,” that person was being thoughtful and considerate.

So what happened and why are we observing so little consideration of our fellow beings on the planet today?  I believe this may be, in part, why some people want a return to the 50’s–a perceived time of innocence and order.  That is certainly understandable, given that the 60’s brought in the proverbial “throw the baby out with the bath water” time of upheaval.  What might have happened instead of dissolving cultural milieus, would have been the incorporation of some of the good aspects of the old in concert with the new.

Where does that leave us today?  Capable of changing things, as always.  If each of us commits to upleveling our consideration quotient from this day forward, we’ve a much better chance of creating a peaceful, compassionate, loving world.  If we make simple choices, in all areas of our impact on the manifest world and its energies, we will indeed be co-creators of an evolution for good.  As the Hopi prophesies stated, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, so time to get up, show up, and wisen up.  Like the unfolding Lotus, let us each see our own consciousness opening layer by layer to the awareness of how our actions impact others.

"If we were to make a conscious and frequent effort of treating others with consideration, the effects on us and our society as a whole would be amazing."  Henry Charles Link.