David's Desk is my opportunity to share thoughts and tools for the spiritual journey. These letters are my personal insights and opinions and do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you wish to share this letter with others, please feel free to do so; however the material is ©2010 by David Spangler. If you no longer wish to receive these letters please let us know at info@Lorian.org. Previous issues of "David's Desk" are posted on www.lorian.org.

     Since my last David’s Desk, Haiti has been struck with a devastating earthquake, killing over a hundred thousand people, injuring a great many others, destroying the infrastructure of that country, and leading to a world-wide outpouring of compassion and help. During this past month, I’ve had numerous emails asking me for my insights or thoughts on this event. What does it mean? Why did it happen? How can we help with subtle activism?

     I did not set out to make Haiti the subject of this David’s Desk. I had another topic in mind. But as I’ve tried to write it, the words simply wouldn’t come in the way I wanted; that other topic simply didn’t fall into place. Instead, I found my mind returning again and again to the earthquake and its repercussions. Although I’m not sure I have anything of import to add to what many wise and caring people have already written and spoken in the past three weeks concerning this tragedy, I know when I’m being prodded to add my two cents worth.

     On the night of January 10th, two days before the earthquake hit Haiti, I had a vivid dream, the kind I associate with travel and working in the non-physical worlds. I was with others, and we walked through a devastated city with bodies lying in the streets, buildings burning, wreckage all around. I had conversations with people who asked me if they would be safe or not or if they were going to die. In some cases, I said they would not be safe if they stayed where they were and in one case I told a woman that yes, her time had come and her body would be killed in whatever the disaster was going to be (I didn’t know in the dream that it would be an earthquake). Some people had gone into a large government building that I knew was the capital of the country; when I went inside, they asked me if they would be safe as long as they stayed in the building. I could see that its walls were thin and fragile and would collapse, and I told them no, they would not be safe. The building would collapse, I said. Then I woke up.

     At the time I had no sense of what the dream meant, though I felt it had precognitive overtones. I knew that when large catastrophes are about to strike an area, preparations are made on the inner to receive the influx of souls whose bodies would be killed, but I had never participated in such preparations before—or if I have, I’ve never remembered it afterward. I had no clue from the dream itself where this city was or when the disaster would happen.

     When I saw the news reports of the earthquake in Haiti, I realized that this was what my dream had been about.

     When a tragedy of this nature occurs somewhere in the world, I use subtle activism to send whatever blessings and help I am able to offer in the form of subtle energies. I rarely ask why something occurred. I don’t have to understand the meaning of an event—assuming it has one in the larger scheme of things—in order to respond with compassion. But in this instance, because of my dream, I felt I wanted to examine this event more closely. Why had I dreamt of it? I had had no such precognitive dream when Katrina struck New Orleans, nor do I normally dream of disasters and tragedies somewhere in the world.

     What struck me about the dream was that it suggested there was the prior knowledge of this event within the subtle worlds. The souls of individuals were being prepared for it. There was the sense that whatever was going to happen was not a random occurrence. The “Powers that Be” on the inner could see it coming and were doing what they could at their end to prepare for it. What I wondered about was the source of this knowledge. Did it arise from the earth as knowledge of an impending earth shift? Did it arise from the collective soul of the Haitian people, and if so, what purpose was being served by so much death and destruction? It certainly was not “God’s punishment” as the evangelist Pat Robertson declared, but was it part of some larger purpose nonetheless?

     I certainly don’t have all the answers. But here are my hypotheses based on what I have been able to discern.

     Humanity’s challenge at this moment in history is to learn to think and act in a planetary way, a way that honors all life. The divisiveness between the different nations, religions, and races needs to be overcome, as well as the separation between modern industrial humanity and the natural world. The love and compassion of which we are all capable seeks to be drawn out and exercised, the way one would exercise a muscle.

     Events like the Haitian earthquake provide an opportunity for this to happen. This is not why they occur; Haiti doesn’t suffer so that the rest of us can learn compassion. But given that Haiti is suffering, it is a chance for the rest of humanity to flex its muscles of caring and empathetic response. It is an opportunity to begin thinking and acting as a single, planetary humanity, recognizing that the suffering of one part of our human family becomes the suffering of all of us.

     There is nothing new about this. Nations have been making humanitarian responses to disasters for decades now. But there is a need to go further, and perhaps an event like the Haitian earthquake can inspire us to do so. Haiti, like the devastation of New Orleans by Katrina in 2005, is an event, and the consequences are visible to all on the nightly news. But there are other kinds of catastrophes going on that also call for a compassionate planetary response. Consider the devastation in individual lives caused by the current global economic meltdown. It’s not as dramatic as Haiti or New Orleans and often not as visible, but for the people affected who have lost their livelihoods, it can be catastrophic in its own way. Or consider the devastation occurring within nature at the moment; we are living in one of the greatest extinction events the world has seen. Where is humanity’s compassion for the natural world?

     Even this is not the whole story. For much of the world, people live in what might be seen as an “invisible Haiti,” struggling for clean water, food, safety, medical care. We take survival for granted in the industrialized world, but in many developing countries, it’s not something one can count on. My mentor John used to say, “Why prophesy and wait for the Apocalypse when there are apocalypses all around you in the world?”

     At some point our compassion and love needs to awaken sufficiently to deal with the injustices and imbalances in the world that drag down the creative energies of humanity and make us far less than we could be. But it may be that events like the Haitian earthquake will sensitize us to the suffering that is always with us so that we can move more fully in that direction.

     When I asked John once about his perception of a possible planetary apocalypse such as many were prophesying back in the Sixties (and are prophesying again now), he said, “There will not be a single, all-encompassing disaster, but rather rolling disasters occurring here and there throughout the world, requiring humanity to change its behavior.” He said that forty years ago, and more than ever, I feel it is true. I fear that what we see with Haiti and saw with New Orleans will become more commonplace, and not just limited to the underdeveloped or developing nations. If so, then it becomes increasingly important that we begin to think and act from a consciousness not only of compassion but of shared community. If the planet is changing, we are all in this together.

     None of this answers the question of why the earthquake struck Haiti, only that a disaster like this may be part of a developing pattern that will require humanity to pull together in common cause in ways we never have before. With respect to Haiti itself, as I said, this was no act of punishment or karma befalling an evil people. But I do think that what happened is in response to two things, Haiti’s history and its potential.

     Haiti was the first independent nation in Latin America and the first black-led republic in the world. As such it held tremendous promise, and that promise lives, I believe, in the collective soul of the Haitian people. But this country has suffered more than most, overlaying it with subtle energies arising from that suffering and acting as a weight upon its collective potential. Whether this was a cause of this event or not, I do not know, but I can see that there is now an opening energetically for something new to be built and for the creative and spiritual potential of the Haitian people to have a chance to express itself anew.

     There are no guarantees, of course, though this is where subtle activism can play a role by using subtle forces to hold open the doorways for these deeper, healthier potentials to manifest. For instance, I can hold the intention in my inner work and prayer that vital energies reach all the rescue workers, heightening their own physical energy and their awareness so they can do their work more effectively. Or the power of compassion and love flooding the subtle energy fields around the disaster can enhance the probability that hidden people will be found and injured people will survive. There is no guarantee that humanity will break through to its own greater planetary potential either. Disasters don’t ensure transformation.

     But at the moment, Haiti does represent not only tragedy and loss but a most worthy outpouring of love, compassion, aid, finances, and a planetary will to help a people who for a long time now have been less helped than oppressed. This is a bright flame in humanity’s candle right now. Perhaps it will let us all see a little more clearly the challenges before us and the Light that is within us to meet those challenges as we reach to become the planetary humanity I believe we can be.