A Neck of Red

I am the son of a West Texas cotton farmer. My father didn’t continue farming beyond my seventh birthday, but lasting impressions of the flat plains of deep west Texas decorated with endless rows of cotton and the simple wisdoms of the people remain with me. I am an urban person today, sitting in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth urban sprawl one night removed from my 55^th birthday.

I am told I was delivered in the middle of a blinding sand storm in a tiny farm house in the summer of 1951 amid the absolute nightmare of a wind driven hell, sand pounding against the walls. I am immersed now in the disquieting task of having to think about how long it has been since that night.

I have a lasting memory of a cotton farming grandfather in overalls. And yes he truly had a red neck. He also had a red face, and when he removed his straw hat at the end of a day of plowing, his forehead was a brilliant white. The location of his hat had created a vivid demarcation of skin color across his face, a lower face of red brown color and a forehead of pale white. It didn’t seem to be an issue for anyone, only a stern sign post of a life spent working the fields in hot and unforgiving dusty tractor toil during a Texas summer.

My grandfather told me about the things he knew the most about. We would talk on his porch, the endless rows of cotton stretching out in front of us for what appeared to be an eternity in my small imagination. He told me the earth gives back what is given to it. He would tell me how important the seeds were, and that the quality of the seed and their proper planting were vital to the yield. He would spit tobacco at a nearby can, sometimes with aiming success but just as often not, and then pick up cotton seeds and show me how to distinguish the strong from the weak. In his mind I was destined to be a two-tone faced cotton farmer as well.

Its deep night in Texas in 2006 and I sit here paralleling that long ago conversation with a personal spiritual conviction. If we imagine that our mind is like the soil and every thought we hold and every direction and result we imagine for ourselves is the seed, then it may appear to us to be a remarkable parallel to my grandfather’s lessons. The mind you see has no more choice than the west Texas soil than to return to us what we ask it to germinate. This is spiritual law for me. Just as the soil receives seed and begins to work upon the germination of the physical manifestation inherent in the seed, so mind responds in the same fashion. It has no choice as it is only on rent to our soul and labors as it is instructed, never asking questions in attempts to sort out our ‘soul thinking’ for us. It does as it is told. And so it is our soul that must give instruction to the mind.

The quality of the seed is what matters. We can plant negativity and yes, negativity will be our crop. The converse reality is self-apparent.

If our life condition is not controlled by our thoughts, the natural question that follows is what then is in control? Some will immediately argue that our condition is controlled by circumstance only. However is it not logical to believe that circumstances are an effect? I think so. Every thing we see and experience is an effect, including what we refer to as circumstances. If this premise is accepted we can conclude that all circumstance has a cause. This is the easiest way I have of explaining what I believe. All things we see and experience have a cause generated by mind and no circumstance can hold causal power. I believe all cause springs from the fertile ground of mind, and what we believe we bring to pass as effect. This also intellectually dismisses concepts of evil and the existence of the anti-God figure we refer to as satan. The guilt inducing evangelist will spoil for a fight with me on this one since dismissing the presence of satan simultaneously dismisses their convenient tool of assigning guilt to those they wish to hold control and power over. They will forever lose this argument with my logical mind. We can choose evil to plant or we can choose the good. This is the challenge granted by the Creator in giving us free will. We are one with the mind of God. We can choose the opposite, but it is our own choosing and not the work of a satan. If it were so, every evil could be gently dismissed and every law and rule ever written cast aside. Why do we choose not to do this? It is because we all inherently understand the power of choice. And yet we simultaneously grant harbor to thoughts of an existent satanic force. This confusion can be easily jettisoned by understanding no satan exists, it is only our free will running in an opposite direction of the power of good.

Does this mean that a bad effect that has befallen you was consciously thought out? Perhaps, but it’s likely not the actual case. It is possible that the negative thoughts have slipped past the filter and the mind has operated on the wayward negative seed planted. Mind has no power of discernment. It only operates as it is told. The soul discerns, not the mind. If this were not true, when we die the brain would ascend rather than the soul. A forensic tech can assure you that dead bodies retain their brain, it is merely a processing tool no longer needed.

This is a large and daunting challenge in my life. Yet, having seen the effect of my causal positive thinking I trudge on with the work. I guess this is akin to plowing fields all day and the echo of my grandfather’s words that a “farmer’s work is never complete.”

Postscript

I will be gone for a week. I’m racing in a track meet against the best in the world. I am pleased to the point of pride to believe that my work ethic allows me the right to say I belong beside them. I need now to go plant seeds of success; my version of a 55^th birthday present.

Stay well and safe while I am gone. God’s Peace and positive seeds to each one of you.