Season of Nonviolence

JANUARY 30^TH marked the beginning of the Season for Nonviolence, the national 64-day campaign dedicated to demonstrating that non-violence is a powerful way to heal, transform, and empower our lives and our communities. 

Inspired by the memorial anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, the Season calls each of us to activism, but it is a call that invites us to act from the center of consciousness that knows it genesis as the divine spark of heaven inside each individual. 

It is through our consciousness that we show up as greater expressions of life.  It is an awakened consciousness that is able to see the perfection, the Divine reality, in each situation in spite of the conditions. 

The state of perfect simplicity or the independence of solitude in the midst of the crowd is the state of inner peace, heaven within, the Kingdom.  It is the source of our awakening.  This awakening pushes forward, expressing through each individual’s action. 

Too often, taking action has been associated with an angry energy  that is the opposite of the change it desires to create.  When actions come from the consciousness of peace, of awakened doing, it captures the power of transformation.  It would be wonderful if a group of beings or persons should arrive on earth that was for something and against nothing.  This would be the summum bonum (highest expression) of human organization.

I invite each of you to contemplate where you are called to action.

How can you show up as an agent of change in your world, centered in the spirit of nonviolence and awakened purpose, so that our light shines and makes a difference? 

In that spirit of action or that call to consciousness of peace, together we will create “a world that works for everyone.”

How To Plant Your Garden

First, you Come to the garden alone, While the dew is still on the roses....

FOR THE GARDEN OF YOUR DAILY LIVING,

PLANT THREE ROWS OF PEAS:
1. Peace of mind
2. Peace of heart
3. Peace of soul

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:
1. Squash gossip
2. Squash indifference
3. Squash grumbling
4. Squash selfishness

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:
1. Lettuce be faithful
2. Lettuce be kind
3. Lettuce be patient
4. Lettuce really love one another

NO GARDEN IS WITHOUT TURNIPS:
1. Turnip for meetings
2. Turnip for service
3. Turnip to help one another

TO CONCLUDE OUR GARDEN WE MUST HAVE THYME:
1. Thyme for each other
2.. Thyme for family
3. Thyme for friends
4. Thyme for GOD!

WATER FREELY WITH PATIENCE AND CULTIVATE WITH LOVE.. THERE IS MUCH FRUIT IN YOUR GARDEN BECAUSE YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.

Love and the Golden Rule

Love is the principle at the foundation of each of the world’s great traditions.  It is expressed as the Golden Rule and is the chord of truth that vibrates within each soul.  Here are some quotes from the great traditions or religions that express the principle of love.

Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.  BUDDHA

What is hateful to you; do not to your fellow man.  That is the entire law; all the rest is commentary.  JUDAISM

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  CHRISTIANITY

Blessed is he who blesses his brother.  BAHA’I

No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.  ISLAM

Do not wrong or hate your neighbor.  For it is not he who you wrong, but yourself.  NATIVE AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY

Don’t create enmity with anyone as God is within everyone.  SIKHISM

Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.  TAOISM

Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God.  SHINTO

The Dali Lama sums up this wisdom of the ages in a simple statement:

“My religion is kindness”

Heaven is at Hand

It is not a matter of when you reach heaven; it is a matter of when the Kingdom of Heaven reaches you.

Sam Davis

Throughout the ages, all the mystics have taught the same thing.  The 'kingdom of heaven is at hand' and is here now, but this kingdom must be recognized.  The recognition is a mental act. 

Immortality is here now.  We are as immortal and spiritual as we will ever be, and we need to recognize that now.  We can make heaven on earth.  We have learned all we need to from pain and suffering.  So we can put our burdens down.  Ernest Holmes wrote, “Somewhere the walls of experience must be broken down.  We must learn that we can transcend our previous experiences; that beyond the finite is the infinite.”

There is a beautiful fable about a blacksmith who worked hard all his life.  Each time the Angel of Death comes for him, he asks for more time to help his friends and neighbors.  Finally, he is ready, and when the angel appears he says, “I am ready to go live in the kingdom of heaven.”  The angel laughs and responds, “Where do you think you have been all these years?”

We touch heaven when we make elegant choices, options that tend toward honor, courage, and truth. When we make such choices, we bring the Divine into the presence of the universe and heaven is all around.

Heaven is not a place we go to, but a place we grow to when we help the ones we love and love the ones we help.