Economic Recovery—Why Recovery of Sight Is Core to Economic Recovery ala Jubilee
Economic Recovery—Why Recovery of Sight Is Core to Economic Recovery ala Jubilee - JEM Blog - Jubilee Economics Ministries | The Common Good Podcast jubilee-economics Google Web Fonts End Heading
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The words are right there in a key Jubilee passage (Luke 4:17-20): “recovery of sight to the blind.” But why is recovery of sight part of the Jubilee model of economics, social design, and spirituality? Here’s a clue: throughout the scriptures of all religions “seeing” is a favorite metaphor for living with greater consciousness than the ego-consciousness that shapes civilization. Seeing empowers us to live with divine consciousness, Spirit consciousness. To bring “recovery of sight to the blind” is to bring economic recovery beyond anything business news talks about.
When a socio-spiritual-economic model other than an Earth-size model like Jubilee rules the day, the necessity of functioning with some degree of success in that model gradually blinds our vision to viable and better alternatives. We no longer see clearly that Nature is not capitalist or socialist. Our inner eye of wisdom blurs to the economy by which Nature foments a vibrant and participatory, democratic community of life.
The following words from Taoism and Indigenous spirituality stand alongside the words of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, whom Jesus was quoting, to illustrate how all spiritualities urge us to live with “seeing,” with the greater Spirit-consciousness for which we are evolved:
To know the eternal is called enlightenment. Not to know the eternal is to act blindly to result in disaster. He who knows the eternal is all-embracing. Being all-embracing, he is impartial. Being impartial, he is kingly [universal]. Being kingly, he is one with Nature. Being one with nature, he is in accord with Tao. Being in accord with Tao, he is everlasting. And is free from danger throughout his lifetime. — Taoism. Tao Te Ching 16
I am blind and do not see the things of this world; but when the light comes from above, it enlightens my heart and I can see, for the Eye of my heart sees everything; and through this vision I can help my people. The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him. If the heart is not pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen. — Black Elk, Sioux Tradition
The global economy today is blinded by quarterly reports and nano-second transactions on stock markets around the globe. It is shaped by ego-consciousness. The ego, ever interested in itself and in “mine,” wants instant profits so sorely that it does not see farther into the distance where the results of the profits it seeks kills people, species, community, and the planet. When we recover sight, we see the longer term consequences of such profit-making. We see that an economy is for wellbeing and fostering interdependent living of all Earth’s life forms, not a game of gambling for the biggest and quickest profits. This larger, divine or Spirit consciousness requires recovery of sight—the healing of our economic and ecological blindness.
Economic recovery as measured by stock markets, job reports, and consumer confidence can be called “recovery” only through blurred, near-sighted vision. The economic recovery we need is the recovery of an economy that helps us live Earth-size lives and generate OneEarth structures able to foster living societies of interrelating species.
So it was that in the midst of the Roman Empire’s economy—one of the largest that civilization had so far come to know—Jesus called for a recovery of sight. He showed that a new kind of thinking and a much larger consciousness was within our reach. He began to live a Jubilee economy instead of the Roman growth economy that required debts and concentrations of wealth and power. Jesus knew the economic recovery Earth needs. He believed that all of us are capable of living it; that doing so depends on our shift out of ego-consciousness into the Spirit-consciousness that gives us sight to see how living an Earth-size economy is an economic recovery that brings life into balance for all creatures. It’s so much more than the recovery of the housing market or the jobs market or the stock market. Those recoveries speak to our blindness; the recovery of Earth-size living speaks to the recovery of our sight.
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