The Om Unity Community

Regardless of a person’s faith, or lack there of, each one of us has a story that explains how we have arrived at exactly this point in history.  This is our creation myth and it influences how we perceive the present moments and actions.  It is referred to as a “Myth” because, these stories are not as accurate as we perceive them to be.  Only when we can better understand the events that led up to the current moment, can we create a more clear picture of the possibilities that lie before us.

Daniel Quinn, author of such notable books as Ishmael and The Story of B, equates our current position in history as a man attempting to fly his bicycle off of an extremely high cliff.  The man jumps off the cliff on his bicycle, and as he plummets down towards the ground in a free-fall. Believing he is flying, about half way to impact he says, “So far, so good.”

One of the most significant points that Daniel makes, is that all of our human history, as we know it, is broken into two parts; History, and what we call “Pre-history”.  History is what we refer to as written or recorded history, which includes the last ten thousand years or so (post the neolithic agricultural revolution, and Pre-history, which extends hundreds of thousands of years before that.  We tend to give very little weight, even disregard the events that have happened during the pre-historic period, even though the duration of these events was exponentially longer than the period which we call History.

It doesn’t take an exceptionally intelligent individual to realize that our current way of life and belief in the possibility of unlimited growth is flawed.

Please check out Daniel Quinn’s books at Ishmael.org, and purchase them at your local bookstore, or buy them used from Half.com.  I would recommend Ishmael for anyone grade-school aged or older, and The Story of B for anyone high-school aged or older.  They are both incredibly powerful reads that have left me, and virtually everyone I have shared them with, changed in a positive way.

I would like to thank Louis Silverstein for sharing this author with me.  Louis is a Professor at Chicago’s Columbia College.

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Posted on 03/25/2009 10:22 am