Owning land was a foreign concept to the Australian Aboriginals and many other native cultures around the world. Those people saw, and in some cases still see, themselves as caretakers of a land more primary than themselves. To them it was inconceivable for a human being to own land, or to own anything, really.Practically and spiritually these more original, nomadic, cultures were far freer than we who became land-trapped through fear and separation.
With ownership came a more serious aggression, as well as deepening segregation, intolerance and an insensitivity to the cycles and equalities of life. Ownership became viewed not as an aberration anymore but a form of status, a sign of superiority over life.
This new culture of "owners" became destroyers, of which the world today bares ample witness.
In reality, land ownership, or ownership of anything, is a mirage within our minds. The economy of ownership is a false one, for nothing can ever be owned by a human, or by any other being, and especially not the earth. Today when one single, tiny, person can presume on his own to possess 30,000 square miles of land the fantasy, one could say, has become insane.
If we are really up to the responsibility of ownership we'd hold the land as a sacred privilege rather than our right. What makes us live the way we do?
The buying and
selling of land is tantamount to the trade in human slaves. That this is hard for us to feel doesn't make it not so. Real estate agents have become the approved slave traders. The Earth is stolen, bought, sold and abused like chattel. The buyers, sellers and realtors are often treated like chattel as well.We are fully a society of "owners", and "the owned", and this won't change in a hurry. But we can become owners who are sensitive and respectful to the land, as well as to one another.
The lands we live on are sacred. So the buying and selling of land should be a sacred process.
Hidden within the title, "Real Estate Agent", there is a reference to the higher purposes of this position within society.
We need our good real estate agents to begin serving the inherently "Real E(nlightened)state" in themselves, in the traded lands, and in the buyers and sellers they work with, and for.
We should expect these real estate agents to be priests and protectors of the lands they serve, the very lands who serve them. Regardless of differing religions, or ideologies, we should all be as priests and servants of the "real state", and of the earth who is our home and who gives us life. She knows how to bring us together as a culture and equalize our differences, if we allow her...
Stuart
