On one level, the causes of the flooding are quite straightforward, and both the citizenry and the government played a role. For the government, poor urban planning and lack of political will to implement large-scale infrastructure development (e.g. the Sucat spillway that has been proposed since 1975) to address the causes of flooding have left us at the mercy of Mother Nature. Among the citizenry, careless disregard for the disposal of waste, building houses beside creeks and other environmentally unfriendly practices have helped magnify the effects of poor government planning and management.
Some people would describe the crazy weather as "apocalyptic" but actually, almost 40 years ago there was even worse rainfall in what was called the Great Flood of 1972 when for more than 2 weeks in September non-stop torrential rains submerged most of central Luzon and caused hundreds of deaths. In the absence of hard data such as level of rainfall then compared to now it's hard to make an assessment, but based merely on description it seemed the level of rainfall in 1972 was worse than it was the past week. However, it didn't seem to cause the same level of destruction and disruption that we see now. I'm sure the events of Ondoy will be forever etched into my memory, so it's remarkable that my parents hardly remember the great flood of 1972. But it probably helped that Metro Manila and a lot of Luzon was not as urbanized then, so the scale of destruction and impact on people was not as big as the recent flooding. So you could say that the recent flooding was more an "apocalypse" of our own making.
How would an esoteric scholar look at these recent events and, the way 2012 has been hyped up, the promise of more of the same to come?
An esoteric law states that "As above, so below; as below, so above." Meaning, everything is interconnected, so that what we may experience is merely a reflection of what is inside and vice versa. As described earlier, some of what we've experienced are pretty straightforward cause and effect scenarios. Throw trash in the waterways, expect flooding. However, there are other esoteric views about this.
In the book The 72 Names of God, there is interesting description for the 29th Name :
All destruction - including even natural disasters - occurs for one reason: humanity's hatred toward our fellow beings.
Kabbalah teaches that tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and disease are born from the collective hatred that burns in our hearts. In truth, there is no such thing as a natural disaster, despite what our insurance policies say. Human behavior and the human heart are the sole determining factors as to what occurs in our environment and what transpires between nations.
Here's what the ancient Kabbalists had to say on this matter: If a person witnesses any form of hatred - on his own street or anywhere in the world - it means this person still has some measure of hatred lingering in his own soul.
If we harbor even the slightest bit of hatred or animosity for another person - for any reason whatsoever, valid or invalid, whether we're aware of it or whether we're in self-denial - we still bring destruction to the world.
By cleansing the hatred in our own hearts, we can remedy all the world's problems at once at the level of their root cause.
The passage above reminds me of what Yoda said in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menance: "Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." For all that we may smile at this movie quote, it still has a ring of truth to it.
But really, a lot of us have become familiar with the Law of Attraction which states that thought combined with desire results in manifestation. Of course no one consciously wishes for the destruction of the world, although a lot may wish for the destruction of their fellow men. But that seed thought combined with the destructive emotion of hate and anger has psychic weight. We exert a force upon our environment. Unexpressed this force may be for most of us, but we still scatter that unseen force around us, just waiting for the chance to explode. It's like throwing gasoline into a forest, an inferno just waiting for a joker with a carelessly thrown cigarette butt to start a wildfire.
Be that as it may, we are living at a time when all previous choices are coming to confront us. Naturally, the question is what we can do about it aside from the usual "take better care of Mother Nature." This brings me to a quote attributed to Master Choa Kok Sui from the All Gratitude page. The title of the article is The Secret of Real Survival, which I will share here (with some emphasis added) because it is very relevant for us:
I have been asked, in my lecture tours two main questions: "What is happening with the world?" I answered this one simply: "Many bad things are happening and they are beyond the control of men, beyond the manipulation of human mind and human hands."
The second is more personal: "How do I survive?" This is a very good question and I would like to give you a little note that I have from the Teachings of the Teacher.
Our life is a world of impermanence. We cling to impermanent things: wealth, money, gold, power and human recognition, desires of many forms. They all come and go.
The Inner World of the Higher Beings is filled with Permanence: Fruits of the Spirit, Unconditional Love, the Permanence of Spiritual Joy and Blissful Existence, Immortality of Human Consciousness, the Infinity of the Love of God to humanity, the unrelenting Service of the Avatars and the Higher Souls to mankind.
So the answer to our real survival is in the search of the Permanence; for in finding that, we become deathless for there is a thing called Immortality of Consciousness.
All things that are impermanent have to go. This is the Law of Nature. Inescapable. Immutable. Relentless.
The Permanent will live and life will go on for Nature will sustain the Beings, Consciousness and Vehicles of the Permanent.
How do we apply these Principles in relation to our personal survival?
a) Develop the higher consciousness of the Spirit for such will show the future reality of things and forthcoming events, for higher realization is partly seeing and sensing the inner world and includes skillful handling of situations in the world of men.
b) Work on developing the Higher Bodies for Nature will spare the rare and useful for its higher evolution. Men kill the rare and the useful but Nature sustains and gathers the best in its forms: Survival of the best and the fittest.
c) Etherically speaking: Develop the Golden Body, for a golden man is rare and is spiritually useful. We have to go one step higher than the chakras for all men have chakras but rare is the one who has the Golden Body.
I think Master Choa's words are quite clear on what type of changes we need to institute so I will just end by saying that after all is said and done, our ultimate fate is not determined by the government, other people, or even by the exemplars that we look up to. The key is always within us, because it's what we choose that matters. Somehow, someway, our choices will weave themselves into the effects that we will see reflected in our outside perceptions.
In that sense, Nature didn't weep. We did. But there is always hope, for what is important are the choices we make from this moment on. It may seem to be the most simplistic answer in the world, but if you follow it through it is also the most empowering one.
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