The Snake That Swallowed Itself

Did you hear the one about the snake that started swallowing its own tail…and ended up eating itself? Probably not, because it hasn’t been written yet. But it’s a tale of something that is actually happening all around you. You are the snake, the serpent – or at least a part of it.
It seems that its tail, its back-end, appeared to it as a juicy mouse or something to eat. Maybe a real mouse was there beside the tail, and the snake misdirected its bite. The big thing is that it got itself without realizing it; and the stranger thing is that it just kept swallowing itself. I don’t know if the snake was that dumb, or if it was just too proud to admit it had made a mistake. At any rate it just kept swallowing, still anxious and gluttonous to get its juicy reward. At this point I’d say it’s just about up to the back of its own head – one more bite and the snake disappears!

What is this wild image all about? or is it really that wild? I see it as our society, as our world today. It is gradually, but quickly, swallowing and devouring itself. It is being pulled along by an a voracious appetite – for MORE! Call it greed! Call it Ignorance! Call it Consumerism – because we’re pretty well consuming all life and all the life-giving things around us. We need air – but we’re consuming it and filling it with carbon poison. We need water – but we’re using it wildly to clean our dirty energy sources, especially tar sands oil; we’re polluting it with every kind of waste material – with poop and chemicals.

We need food, but we’re probably destroying it with our brilliant new money-making technologies. We make meat-producing animals grow faster with anti-biotics; we overuse them so much that we can no longer fight off dangerous diseases which will kill us. We need fish, but we now catch them so fast and efficiently that we’re running out of them in the oceans. We need bees to pollinate our crops, but we’re killing them all with our pesticides. (used to protect the crops, but of course also to make more money!) We’re inventing new ways of dealing with seeds of life; we’re making them THE WAY OF LIFE – but we don’t know their long term effects, or if they will become the way of death.

We need sunlight and heat in a proper balance, in order to live on this planet. We refuse to take steps necessary to moderate the dangers of over-exposure. Why? Because we’re so anxious to get to the prize – MORE MONEY! We’re even willing to kill in order to obtain this prize. How else do we explain the constant state of war in the world? Most people just want enough to live on, and survive. A few others (at the top) want it ALL! Get control of everyone, of everything – either by means of legislation, or if that doesn’t work, by force. And their success so far makes this outlook more appealing to the rest of us.

So, create the biggest army…(but make sure the soldiers don’t know what they’re really fighting for.) Make more nuclear bombs than THEY have – whoever “they” may be. We can now destroy the earth a thousand times over. Money….Control….Power…we (reallly “I”) must become the real “gods”. The anti-dote for all this is respect for one another, and for all of creation. That is the foundation of true freedom – for all.

I believe the story of creation in Genesis, the story of the snake and our first parents. But it didn’t happen way back then; it’s happening NOW! TODAY! And the snake is here, swallowing itself…you know why? Because the snake is YOU….and ME.

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