Messengers
Sometimes it's a real struggle to try to manifest 'unconditional love'. Some life circumstances with which we are presented, and to which we feel a challenge to respond, just deeply offend any reasonable definitions of acceptable human behaviour.
That Gandhi could manage to respond to such challenges, or Nelson Mandela, or the wife of the missionary (and his two young sons) deliberately burnt to death in their car in Orissa State in India, or the young Asian girl who watched her family burnt alive by religious fanatics, - that they could respond to such challenges with concepts of forgiveness or a desire to inject love as opposed to hate into life scenarios, are modern, current examples that there is a deeply embedded aspect of lovingness within the 'human potential' that transcends mere 'existence in this life'.
In recent years atrocities on a scale that create horror and repulsion in the hearts of all reasonable people, have been answered with outpourings of love and charitable actions from around the globe. Never in the history of humanity has such rapid communication permitted us to respond so quickly to our innermost feelings and desires to help. 'Natural calamities' have been met with an outpouring of the force of human lovingness that transcends the 'natural force' which was the initiator of the catastrophe.
A whole new reality of humanity has passed it's birth, grown through it's infancy and is now in it's adolescence. It's in that stage of existing where dramatic mood swings occur and role modelling experimentations and expressions are overwhelming the habitual traditions of institutions. It is seen everywhere, sometimes in actions of desperation and rejection (as disillusioned young people prefer death to life, some of them even calling it marytyrdom), other times in manifestations of love,kindness and compassion that clearly show how far humanity has come from some of the negatively interpreted 'religion enshrined concepts' of a 1000 years ago or more.
As the economic indicators in western societies clearly show, the provision of most basic needs (food, housing, education, health welfare), has reached such a standard that populations have been freed from the 'survival mode' and have entered into a state of benign indulgence. But everywhere can be seen in these societies the re-emergence of a core concept of compassion and interdependence that demonstrates that the only growth 'industry' left for the 21st century is that of taking care of each other. Sharing our good fortune and management with our brethren throughout the world.
It is challenging, therefore, to read statements like this:
"We don't get involved in police affairs but we do feel that all "?!¤#¤!?" are obliged to ... keep anyone from doing unjustified damage to other people."
issued by an institution respresenting 70% of the followers of a religion in a modern western country. Granted the statement was contained within a condemnation,finally, of a modern terrorist icon whose activities and comments have almost hijacked a whole religion. At last, a world-wide massively membershipped religious institution has condemned as against it's teachings and the laws of God, such immoral, unethical and anti-humane atrocities by one of it's 'members'. Well, at least a small part of that world-wide institution has done so: in Spain, supported by 3 other countries.
The 'old attitudes and precepts' still infuse the thinking of such institutions, however.
In issuing a fatwa (an Islamic edict) against Osama Bin Laden the Muslim clerics representing 70% of their faith in Spain went on to say:
"Inasmuch as Osama bin Laden and his organization defend terrorism as legal and try to base it on the Quran ... they are committing the crime of 'istihlal' and thus become apostates that should not be considered Muslims or treated as such."
The Arabic term "istihlal" refers to the act of making up one's own laws.
At last the Islamic world is starting to re-assert it's core Koranic values. But the core of the problem of istihlal lies in
a concept that God solves problems the way that mankind solves them and therefore there can be justification for 'damaging' another human being. In the unfortunate words 'unjustified damage to other people' hides a concept that requires an answer: who decides what is justified? The world has seen enough of religio-politico 'justifications' that teach only pain and suffering. Hasn't Osama Bin Laden been using them? Weren't they used in Ireland, in the religious persecutions in England? By the Catholic church in South America? Christians versus Jews, Jews versus Canaanites, Christians versus Muslims, Muslims versus Hindus....and on, and on, and on! History is littered with the skeletons of concepts of 'justification'.
Humanity is beginning to find a better methodology that is free from the barbarity of the 'purely animal reflexes'. Many societies have transcended the 'eye for an eye' justification.
In doing damage to another person we damage the reality of 'The One-ness', we damage an important part of ourselves. Is that not the core 'original' message of all the major religions?
Whatever may be the powers and justifications of religious institutions, or even humanistic institutions, it is not even a faint shadow of the power of Love of that young Asian girl, or of those self-sacrificing Beslan teenagers who rescued others at the cost of their own lives. Amongst us are messengers who surrender all that is precious to them in this life to convey the message. You don't have to look back into history to find such messengers, we are surrounded by them now.
The 'old world' is being shown some insights as to how 'Paradise' really is, huh? Even from the mouths (and actions) of children. Adolescent behaviour often contains the uncompromised expression of ideals that are fundamental human archetypes, thus it is that spiritually mankind is starting to express the highest spiritual archetypal behaviour. Without conditions.
The LAW of unconditional LOVE transcends all other laws. There is no higher expression of 'The One-ness'. The reality of lovingness is the reality of the presence of 'The One-ness'. The upsurge in expressions of lovingness around the world is an indicator of humanity's 'growth into One-ness'.
In every 'metaphor of experience' can be found the 'process of the pathway' if we are willing to look. It's always been there, but now we are passing the merely 'survival mode' of existing and rapid uncensored communication allows us the possibility to see more clearly... if we are willing to look.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Exploring Individuality - Different Drummers
The following is extracted from the book "Please Understand Me" by David Keirsey and reprinted here with permission. If you wish to 'understand more of personality' then you can visit www.keirsey.com
"If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.
Or if my beliefs are different than yours, at elast pause before you set out to correct them.
Or if my emotion seems less or more intent than yours, given the same circumstances,
try not to ask me to feel other than I do.
Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are
willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you.
If you will allow me any of my wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself
up to the possibility that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might
finally appear as right - for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me.
Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or
disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And one day,perhaps, in trying to
understand me, you might come to prize my differences and, far from seeking to change me,
might preserve and even cherish those differences.
I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, your colleague. But whatever
our relation, this I know: You and I are fundamentally different and both of us march to
our own drummer"
Quote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears
a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far
away" Henry David Thoreau.
In the most beautiful garden no flower is identical: the individualised tones and shades of
colour do not fight with each other, but assault the eyes with a magnificence of harmony.
This is the awesome beauty of nature.
This is also the astounding excellence of humanity :) We are not the same, no two
anywhere the same. If we can but accept that, celebrate it, treasure it perhaps then
we have the harmony of the garden.
Paradise is here, we have only to see it and where we feel it is lacking then we have
only to create it afresh.
The following is extracted from the book "Please Understand Me" by David Keirsey and reprinted here with permission. If you wish to 'understand more of personality' then you can visit www.keirsey.com
"If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.
Or if my beliefs are different than yours, at elast pause before you set out to correct them.
Or if my emotion seems less or more intent than yours, given the same circumstances,
try not to ask me to feel other than I do.
Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are
willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you.
If you will allow me any of my wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself
up to the possibility that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might
finally appear as right - for me. To put up with me is the first step to understanding me.
Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or
disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And one day,perhaps, in trying to
understand me, you might come to prize my differences and, far from seeking to change me,
might preserve and even cherish those differences.
I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, your colleague. But whatever
our relation, this I know: You and I are fundamentally different and both of us march to
our own drummer"
Quote: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears
a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far
away" Henry David Thoreau.
In the most beautiful garden no flower is identical: the individualised tones and shades of
colour do not fight with each other, but assault the eyes with a magnificence of harmony.
This is the awesome beauty of nature.
This is also the astounding excellence of humanity :) We are not the same, no two
anywhere the same. If we can but accept that, celebrate it, treasure it perhaps then
we have the harmony of the garden.
Paradise is here, we have only to see it and where we feel it is lacking then we have
only to create it afresh.
Monday, March 07, 2005
The myth of conformity
I cannot speak for everyone, but from most of what I have seen in life it does seem to me that certain assumptions are made, especially in our teenage years, that do not fulfill in later years as we walk through this life. One of these assumptions concerns definitions of 'normality'.
I have met people who seem to glide through life - yet nothing 'touches' them very much. They glide only 'half-living'. I have met people whose sensitivity,compassion and empathea is such that they struggle daily to make 'sense' out of this irrationality of humanity that populates the world. (I have sometimes, more often than I care to think about,felt I was totally crazy,especially when I was younger. I could go into a room and it 'screamed at me' with the memories of events that had happened there - events with which I had neither connection nor prior knowledge. When 'public speaking' often I would be transfixed by just one person in the congregation and the pain inside them assaulted my senses like a steam roller going over me). There are, after all, few Gandhis who have transmuted the pain that surrounds them and penetrates their soul with something resembling constructive action.
I know quite a few who are spiritually gifted and whose gifts were in their earlier life a cause for massive disorientation and discomfort to them. I have read about many who fall into this category. Children and adults. Rich and poor.
This is especially so of very gifted 'spiritual' persons.Their search for some workable definition of 'normality' can often seem like a crazed avalanche of conflicting and tumbling metaphors, or searches through weird or obscure old concepts/doctrines - trying to make something fit their usually childhood indoctrinated belief systems or emotional responses.Their concepts of love are not really theirs - but something taken into themselves in the formative years. In later life, as these concepts break down,fall away, they are left with a vacuum - and yet they know in themselves the irresistible force of lovingness that streams through their being and begs recognition. Such are the Shamans, the healers, the 'spirititual facilitators'. .
You talk of fear and arrogance as though you have the monopoly :) Welcome to the club.Find me someone who is not full of fear and arrogance. Oh yes, there are some - but you will usually find that such as there are have discovered some 'out of this world' methodologyas a means to exist within it or have withdrawn into a cocoon of some form of self-indulgence or escape. Some have bungled the equation .
It depends where you stand what you see, huh?
It depends where you stand, in relation to yourself, what you are willing to see.
If you wish to see the fear and arrogance that are the emotional reactions and fight/flightresponses of the amygdala, then that is all you will see. If you wish to see the spiritual you that is beyond this physical/emotional entity - then that is what you will see. Simply look behind the 'metaphors of experiencing', for hiding behind/within every life experience is a blessing of self-awareness.
You have craved 'societal normality' whilst completely knowing that you were not being true to yourself. I believe you know just how very gifted you are...and would have preferred not to have been 'blessed/cursed' with such gifts. Fighting against 'what is' (that is to say refusing to accept the reality of who you are and the reality of the experiences that come to you as a result of this), is a recipe for a difficult and traumatic life.
In your search for answers I humbly beg of you not to seek answers in the experiences of others, as wonderful as they may have been and are. Your uniqueness, your individual preciousness marginalises the experiences of others.
You have not lived their life, nor they yours, and consequently have not been subjected to the individualised aspects of lovingness that transcend mere coincidence.
The age of the experience of authority (doctrine/ritual/membership/conformity/control) is past...we are now in the age of the authority of experience - your own experience. That is the ruler of your insights. That is the king of your consciousness, that is electricity of enlightenment. Just plug yourself in...to yourself :)
I cannot speak for everyone, but from most of what I have seen in life it does seem to me that certain assumptions are made, especially in our teenage years, that do not fulfill in later years as we walk through this life. One of these assumptions concerns definitions of 'normality'.
I have met people who seem to glide through life - yet nothing 'touches' them very much. They glide only 'half-living'. I have met people whose sensitivity,compassion and empathea is such that they struggle daily to make 'sense' out of this irrationality of humanity that populates the world. (I have sometimes, more often than I care to think about,felt I was totally crazy,especially when I was younger. I could go into a room and it 'screamed at me' with the memories of events that had happened there - events with which I had neither connection nor prior knowledge. When 'public speaking' often I would be transfixed by just one person in the congregation and the pain inside them assaulted my senses like a steam roller going over me). There are, after all, few Gandhis who have transmuted the pain that surrounds them and penetrates their soul with something resembling constructive action.
I know quite a few who are spiritually gifted and whose gifts were in their earlier life a cause for massive disorientation and discomfort to them. I have read about many who fall into this category. Children and adults. Rich and poor.
This is especially so of very gifted 'spiritual' persons.Their search for some workable definition of 'normality' can often seem like a crazed avalanche of conflicting and tumbling metaphors, or searches through weird or obscure old concepts/doctrines - trying to make something fit their usually childhood indoctrinated belief systems or emotional responses.Their concepts of love are not really theirs - but something taken into themselves in the formative years. In later life, as these concepts break down,fall away, they are left with a vacuum - and yet they know in themselves the irresistible force of lovingness that streams through their being and begs recognition. Such are the Shamans, the healers, the 'spirititual facilitators'. .
You talk of fear and arrogance as though you have the monopoly :) Welcome to the club.Find me someone who is not full of fear and arrogance. Oh yes, there are some - but you will usually find that such as there are have discovered some 'out of this world' methodologyas a means to exist within it or have withdrawn into a cocoon of some form of self-indulgence or escape. Some have bungled the equation .
It depends where you stand what you see, huh?
It depends where you stand, in relation to yourself, what you are willing to see.
If you wish to see the fear and arrogance that are the emotional reactions and fight/flightresponses of the amygdala, then that is all you will see. If you wish to see the spiritual you that is beyond this physical/emotional entity - then that is what you will see. Simply look behind the 'metaphors of experiencing', for hiding behind/within every life experience is a blessing of self-awareness.
You have craved 'societal normality' whilst completely knowing that you were not being true to yourself. I believe you know just how very gifted you are...and would have preferred not to have been 'blessed/cursed' with such gifts. Fighting against 'what is' (that is to say refusing to accept the reality of who you are and the reality of the experiences that come to you as a result of this), is a recipe for a difficult and traumatic life.
In your search for answers I humbly beg of you not to seek answers in the experiences of others, as wonderful as they may have been and are. Your uniqueness, your individual preciousness marginalises the experiences of others.
You have not lived their life, nor they yours, and consequently have not been subjected to the individualised aspects of lovingness that transcend mere coincidence.
The age of the experience of authority (doctrine/ritual/membership/conformity/control) is past...we are now in the age of the authority of experience - your own experience. That is the ruler of your insights. That is the king of your consciousness, that is electricity of enlightenment. Just plug yourself in...to yourself :)
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