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Monday, May 31, 2021

Memorial Day/Decoration Day

In The United  States of America, today is our annual honoring of those who have died in service to our country. Let me rephrase that. We honor military deaths in service to our country in warfare. Not included are other categories of people who have died in service, such as medical people or police or fire persons  or construction workers or anyone saving lives or building bridges or doing various heroic things. I add them in my heart and am also thankful for their service.

Our military is important, necessary and vital to protect us from those who would do us harm. We are grateful for their service. We are also grateful for all those in other categories who have died in service.

As always there is another way to look at it. Consider this with me: It is only because of our unhealed consciousness that we need the military. If we actually realized and lived spiritual Truth, we would honor one another as sacred. We would no longer attack one another. We would lift each other up. 

We would celebrate both our differences and our Oneness. Just as my eye is different from my toe, yet part of me, there are varieties of people who are all part of humanity.

Consider how life on earth could be, the potential right in front of us, if we healed ourselves. No greed, no power struggles, no egos leading the way anymore. It may seem far-fetched, unlikely even, but in my heart I know it to be possible.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Sanskrit and Jesus

I was thinking this morning about Jesus living only 4 kilometers from the capital of Galilee and all of the exciting travelers passing through there + his dad being a builder would have gone there for work + he would have been exposed to all kinds of thought. I remember the first time I read the Bhagavad  Gita. It seemed to me that Jesus had quoted some of it, or at least some of the ideas in it.

Then I was reading a bit about the Sanskrit word yesterday - satchitananda. Briefly in a simplified overview, Sat is the all pervading Reality. Chit is the knowing, the perceiving. Ananda is the blissful. All lead to being consciously united in God/Brahman.

I suddenly saw all kinds of examples of satchitananda in the New Testament. Flashing in my consciousness were a flood of thoughts - Our Father who art in heaven - the kingdom of heaven is within (Sat) - eyes to see and ears to hear (Chit) - love one another, forgive (Ananda) - all leading to oneness. Many more came to mind in a flash of understanding.

The idea is pointing to the experience of God, of Oneness. How can I explain to you the taste and smell of a certain food you have not seen, smelled or tasted? I can tell you God is here, and you can acknowledge it might be so, but you have to have the knowing, the experience, to truly understand, and that leads to a special inner peace or bliss. Then you can personally experience the glorious knowing in every fiber of your being that God is here, you are a living part of God, all is part of God, all is sacred.

I wish this for you. So it is, Amen.

Monday, May 17, 2021

To Give Up Is Not An Option

Sometimes, I must confess, I feel like giving up on humans. What an unruly bunch we are. Tinged with insanity, malevolence, greed, ego and such, we like lemmings jump off cliffs of common destruction. Voices of compassion and reason are shouted down or attacked with a vengeance. There seems to be some sort of perverted attraction to the refusal to learn from history, and even to distort it or rewrite it.

There are sweet pockets throughout history and now - sweet pockets of those living out a higher vision of love and generosity and peace, a recognition of a Higher Power and of respect and responsibility to It. So I must not give up.

I pray daily for guidance and inspiration as to how we can shift the consciousness of many away from the destruction we seem as a species to seek out, over and over and over again. How do we get people to sincerely seek out a higher path?

Divine Presence, Breath of my breath, open my eyes and mind and heart to You. Guide me, guide humanity, to You, away from destruction, away from dark paths, into Your Light and Love. Awaken us to the call to do and be more, more loving, more attuned to "our higher angels," more stewards of this sacred gift of life on earth. Oh dear Presence, I am thankful, as I realize You hear my prayer, hear the longing in my heart, hear the groaning of humanity. I listen.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

From Time to Time Humanity Goes Nuts

Just look at our collective history, and you will see rising and falling of times of apparent insanity speckled periodically with glorious clarity. This is seen in religion, government, families - well everywhere we find people.

Sometimes the insanity is extreme - in my lifetime I've seen Nazis, communists, McCarthyism, prejudice and all manner of hatred. I've also seen pockets of light, of good people standing up, making a difference, modeling moral behavior and refusing to turn to the dark side.

Right now there is a rise in a peculiar kind of nuttyness. It's hysterical, and it's anti-science, pro-pseudo science, anti-spirituality, loosely allied with fact and untethered from truth. People telling the truth are called names and attacked, fired from jobs, suspended from school, ridiculed and spurned.

In these dangerous times, it seems to me, we need to decide where we stand. Will pressure lead us to succumb to the nuttiness in the air? Or will we refuse to turn to the dark side? It is a vitally important decision. Will these times be a dip into darkness, or will this be a time of inspiration, courage and hope? How will our descendants see us - nutty or shining lights? What kind of civilization shall we stand for?


Sunday, May 9, 2021

Mind/Spirit - Body

This morning the thought popped into my mind - I wonder how loosely our Mind/Spirit is tethered to our body???

In sleep, some part of us goes to fantastical places while our bodies stay put at the place we left them when we entered the realm of sleep. In meditation, prayer, hypnosis, concentration, musing and such, we go somewhere without our bodies. Engrossed in a book or film, we can be so enthralled that we are mostly unaware of our bodies.

Pain, of course, brings us back into our body awareness, but with some practices, we can also go away from pain.

Near death experiences tell us of a soul's journey going to another dimension, leaving our bodies here on earth. Intuitive flashes lead us to know something beyond where we stand.

It occurred to me, that a great deal of our earthly life involves Mind/Spirit adventures that are only loosely tied to our bodies. We need bodies to reside on earth, but we seem to be able to spend quite a lot of time oblivious to them.

Working from our Mind/Spirit, it has long been suggested, and mainly proven, that we can improve the life experienced by our earthly selves. Positivity brings something far different to us than negativity. Love radiating from a soul level magnetizes us to a different level of life experience than daggers of judgemental anger.

The challenge seems to be to integrate what we know from our forays away from our bodies with our earthly life experience. If we could realize how fantastic it all is and cherish the full spectrum of our lives, our day to day existence would be lifted beyond to actually awaken to KNOW the Spark of the Divine lives here in each of us.

I salute the Divine in you.

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Balzac and Today

This morning I found some challenging ideas in Balzac, the brilliant thinker from France who lived 1799-1850. He divided people into three basic groups.

The creature with simple consciousness only is a straw floating on a tide, it moves freely with every influence. The self-conscious man is a needle pivoted by its centre—fixed in one point but revolving freely on that. The man with Cosmic Consciousness is the same needle magnetized. It is still fixed by its centre, but besides that it points steadily to the north—it has found something real and permanent outside of itself toward which it cannot but steadily look.

The goal is to awaken out of the slumber of simple consciousness, move beyond the imprisonment of self-consciousness, and move into the expansive state of cosmic consciousness. He puts it pointedly:

The "resurrection" is not of the so-called dead, but of the living who are "dead" in the sense of never having entered upon true life.

It seems unlikely that one could leap from simple consciousness directly to the cosmic awareness, so the middle step is necessary. Few known people, however, seem to shift into the cosmic awareness. Those we know of are scattered throughout history. It is possible, and I think likely, that there are more than is known, quiet folks who were lights in their areas, villages or tribes but left no written record. 

It is also possible that in this very moment of history there are those who have been "resurrected" out of limited life to have touched the Light and Know beyond usual knowledge, know God. Some may be reticent to share for various reasons. If you are such a person, I urge you to share. The people of the world need Hope and Light and the path to their own "resurrection." 

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Walking What?

In the words of St. Francis,, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

Oh how this quote sets ablaze something in me. It speaks to my long held understanding of how important, even urgent, it is to be congruent - to walk and be and model what we believe - to not say one thing while being another. 

Gandhi was reported to have said something like - if you want to know what I believe, watch how I walk my life. What an amazing place this world would be, if we mustered up the courage to live this congruently, this honestly.

I know I've written about this before, so excuse me if I'm being repetitive. Francis' words this morning hit my heart so deeply that I had to share his understanding of being one's teaching, of one's teaching actually being how we show up in life.

So, lets ask ourselves, "What am I teaching those who see me walk my life?  What did I teach yesterday? What shall I teach today?