Polaris

 

By Chuck Robison

 

“Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

                                                          — Immanuel Kant

One of the most important discoveries in our long history concerns the Pole Star.

Many thousands of years ago, after perhaps hundreds of years of observation and analysis, a small group of men in a field somewhere concluded that there was one star that never moved.  They knew this to be correct for they had kept an oral record of all the observations for all that time.  They knew two things to be true.

First, there was one star that was always in the same place, while the other stars rotated around this one star.  Second, this star could always be found by locating its neighboring stars, usually thought of as the Big Dipper.  This star was the northern most point of all the stars that rotated around it.

The predictability of this star’s location and the sameness of its light resulted in it being known as the light that never fails.

The Universe had provided us with a natural and universal compass in the heavens.  All sorts of adventurers and explorers have used it to find their way over land or sea and they still do.

That, by itself, qualifies this as being one of the great discoveries of all mankind.

However, just as above, so below.  We have also found that each of us carries our own moral pole star in our hearts.  It is there to keep us from becoming lost in life’s journey.

It is that still small voice that quietly seeks to guide us back on the path of peace and love, which is what we are in our most basic and also most sacred sense.

We experience this power sometimes more than others.  Right now, our world is going through a moment of Global Confusion and a kind of species-wide nervous breakdown.  We see it everywhere.  In America, we are being forced to confront the reality that a minority within our country has set in place a process that is destroying our country as we have known it.

Currently there seems to be no will to change this dangerous course, nor any vision to replace it.  So, we will have to ride it out.  It may take a long, long time to bring America to a level of greatness we all took for granted just twelve months ago.  Or we may never again experience our once highly regarded place in the world.  And it does not matter that our mortal enemy of the past 75 years, The Russian Communists, have helped corrupt us into this downward spiral.

The problems that our moral compass now addresses have always been with us and are more urgent now than ever.  We are being divided by forces that want us to be against our neighbors and our fellow citizens of this land and of this world.

In this storm of Global Confusion, the temptation is to go off-course and take sides against each other and then attack each other.  When we use force against each other, we deny the fact that there is only One Power in the Universe.  And it is this Power, which is God in us, that will ultimately resolve this situation.

Here is the message of our inner moral compass:  That compass, like the one in the sky, is there to show us the way to a safe journey.  It is there to help us rise above the rough seas and treacherous trails that one encounters when we forget who we are.  We are all One.  One species, One creation, One Universe, One Power and One God over all.

Pay attention: In the times ahead, each of us will need our moral compass to survive.  Take this seriously.