Kindling

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle warmth and light in the darkness of mere being.”
Carl Jung

Never give up.

"Never give up no matter what is going on. Never give up. Develop the heart. Too much energy in your country is spent developing the mind instead of the heart. Develop the heart. Be compassionate. not just to your friends, but to everyone.
Be compassionate. Work for peace in your heart and in the world. Work for peace, and I say again, never give up, no matter what is happening. No matter what is going on around you. Never give up!"

- An inspiring reminder from Nobel Laureate and leader, the Dalai Lama, who for 50 years now has ceaselessly and compassionately worked to support his people and preserve his culture amidst the on-going holocaust of the Chinese invasion of Tibet.

The phase change ...

The human being is that space in which the comprehensive compassion that pervades the universe from the very beginning now begins to surface --within consciousness. (As compared with the natural displays of compassion by other creatures that is not necessarily 'within consciousness.') That's the only difference. We didn't create compassion, but it's flowing through us - or it could. The phase change that we're in seems, to me, to depend upon that comprehensive compassion unfurling in the human species.
Brian Swimme, coauthor with Thomas Berry of The Universe Story

What is needed and evolving ...

What is needed and evolving is a metamorphosis in basic cultural premises and all aspects of social roles and institutions. What is needed is a new consciousness in which competition will be balanced with cooperation and individualism will be balanced with love. It will be a ‘cosmic consciousness,’ a ‘higher consciousness,’ which relates self-interest to the interests of fellow man and of future generations. And it will entail nothing short of a fundamental transformation of truly awesome magnitude.
Willis Harmon, Director of Futurist Studies, Stanford University

...the universally recognized need ...

"One cannot but feel that…there is an evident relevance to the universally recognized need in our time for a general transformation of consciousness. The message here is of an actual age of harmony and peace in accord with the creative energies of nature which for a spell of some four thousand prehistoric years anteceded the five thousand of what James Joyce has termed the ‘nightmare’ (of contending tribal and national interests) from which it is now certainly time for this planet to wake."
Joseph Campbell

The Axial Sages ...

"The axial sages were not interested in providing their disciples with a little edifying uplift after which they could return with renewed vigor to their self-centered lives. Their objective was to create an entirely different kind of human being. Sages insisted that people abandon their egotism and greed, their violence and unkindness. Not only was it wrong to kill another human being, we must not even speak a hostile word about or towards that person, not even make an irritable gesture. Further, we cannot confine our benevolence to our own people. Our concern must somehow extend to the entire world. If people behave with kindness and generosity to others we could save the world."
Karen Armstrong

Jesus' Teacher

"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."
Rabbi Hillel

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to to love.
For it's in giving that we receive, and it's in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it is in dying that we are born into eternal life."
- St. Francis of Assisi

It's here.

It has been said by many that we cannot save the planet unless there's a widespread spiritual or religious awakening. When I've heard that in the past I have sort of buckled and stiffened-not because I didn't think it'd be a good idea, but because I thought, well, yeah, but we have work to do. Things are going so fast that we can't depend on such a thing arising. But in my research for the book, I have come to think about this in a different way. My question for you is this: Would we recognize a spiritual awakening in this world if we saw one? Let me put the question to another way: What if an awakening was already deeply in place and we don't see it? In other words, it's here.
Paul Hawkins

Never Forget

In prayer, never forget to use the petition, “They Will Be Done.”
Stonewall Jackson, on his deathbed

... the self element that exhausts ...

Very important is the work of preparation for the next higher sphere, but nothing equals the importance of the work of the world in which we are actually living. When we feel important, we lose energy to the wear and tear of ego dignity so that there is little energy left to do the work. Self-importance, not work-importance, exhausts immature creatures; it is the self element that exhausts, not the effort to achieve.
Urantia Scipture Text

... a great man

He who attends to his greater self becomes a great man, and he who attends to his smaller self becomes a small man.
Mencius

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams

Beyond the Realms of the Bringer of Death ...

In Buddhism the word translated as 'demon' is the Sanskrit , which means 'bringer of death'. There are Four Kinds of Demons: 1) demons which are afflictions, 2) demons which are illnesses, 3) the demon of death, and 4) heavenly demons. The first three can be said to be internal demons and the fourth, external demons. The head of the heavenly demons is Mara the Evil One, who rules over the Sixth Desire Heaven. The demons of that heaven derive their bliss from preying on the energies of other beings. They are particularly threatened by those who practice on the spiritual pathways that reach beyond their realms and finally lead to genuine enlightenment.

When one's inner fire departs ...

When one's inner fire departs, a demon takes possession. Demons come to polish the Way. Those on the True Way have to endure demons. The more you get polished, the brighter you get; you'll be polished until you're like the autumn moon, which illumines all the demon hordes in empty space. When the demon hordes are scattered, then the original Buddha manifests. (Chinese sayings)

Meeting Need

How few of us understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart. It is so frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service. But these things in themselves are not love. Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as we see someone as he or she really is, here and now, and not as they are in our memory or our desire or in our imagination or projection that we can truly love them, otherwise it is not the person that we love but the idea that we have formed of this person, or this person as the object of our desire, and not as he or she is in themselves. The first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping our desires, prejudices, memories, projections, selective way of looking ... a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When we set out to serve someone whom we have not taken the trouble to see, are we meeting that person's need or our own need?"
--- Father Anthony de Mello

Not an Occidental view

The idea of living creatures is that trees, buffalo and man are temporary energy swirls, turbulent patterns. You find that perception registered so many ways in archaic and primitive lore. I say that it is probably the most basic insight into the nature of things, and that our more common, recent Occidental view of the universe as consisting of fixed things is out of the main stream, a deviation from basic human perception."
Gary Snyder

Wood to the Fire ...

So, to deal with anger, we avoid letting our mind jump again and again to the trigger for our anger. Then we look at anger itself and keep our attention upon it. If we stop adding wood to a fire and just watch, the fire will die out. Likewise, anger will vanish away, without being forcibly repressed or allowed to explode.
Mathieu Ricard - Yes magazine

... the more I realize ...

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
Vincent Van Gogh

Quarrel not ...

"Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of hs temper and loss of self-control."
Abraham Lincoln

SOMEDAY

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of Love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered Fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Nature's Best Beings

Giving Birth.
Nourishing Life.
Shaping Things without them possessing them.
Serving Life without expectation of reward,
Leading without dominating:
These are the profound virtues of nature,
And of Nature's Best Beings.
(Lao Tse)

Consider the philosopher ...

David Foster Wallace was especially concerned that certain theoretical paradigms - the cerebral asceticism of modernism, the clever trickery of post modernism - too casually dispensed what he called the "very old traditional human truths that have to do with spirituality and and emotion and community." He called for a more forthright, engaged treatment of these basic truths, yet he himself attended to them with his own fractured and esoteric methods. For instance ... "Let a physical possibility structure be a set of distinct but intersecting paths, each of which is a set of functions on ordered pairs of time world situations, such that for any set of functions in some intersecting paths there is a primary accessibility relationship corresponding to physical possibility understood in terms of diachronic physical compatibility."

... without your permission

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The Paradoxical Lesson ...

The paradoxical lesson is that we can change the world only by changing ourselves. This is not just a cute abstraction; it is an elusive key to effective performance in all aspects of life." -- Robert Quinn in Deep Change

The One that can Never be Solved ...

If you need to visualize the Soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyper-spatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not 'a' mystery, mind you - but "The Mystery." The One that can never be solved.
American novelist Tom Robbins in Esquire Magazine, 1993

It is Not I ...

"It is not I who create myself, but rather I happen to myself."
C.G. Jung

Winds of Grace

To know the will of God is the greatest knowledge, to find the will of God is the greatest discovery, and to do the will of God is the greatest achievement. W.A. Criswell

"The man who is born with a talent that he was meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it." Will. I. Am.

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I Cor. 4:2

"The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is up to us to raise our sails." Rabindinath Tagor

What makes for a good house ...

What makes for a good house is not what gives it a striking appearance, but the solidity of the unseen foundation. Look out for this in other areas of life as well: for example, sincerity in speech and depth of mind do not get as much attention as eloquence and brilliance, but they are more solid. Cultivating truly solid qualities means forging social competition and a willingness to accept the lowest rung on the social ladder. These are the qualities of the most actual benefit to others. Cultivating these should be the main business of anyone truly devoted to helping others in public service, rather than just making a name for herself.
Michael LaFargue

Good Anger vs Bad Anger

"You cannot be afraid. There is good anger. It is the anger of seeing clearly. It's the anger the Old Ones warned me about. Yu must learn to control that anger, then it can be of use. But there is bad anger, too. It is the anger of people who only want their own way. That anger is selfish. It is a child's anger, and you must not back down from that anger. If you back down from it, you are being a coward. You will use your gifts well if you stop being afraid of other people's bad anger. You are a keeper of the fire. Keepers of the fire cannot be cowards. They are carrying the light."
'Dan," in Kent Nerburn's book "Neither Wolf Nor Dog."

... the mightiest word is love

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self." Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.... anything can be made, any sentence begun.
Elizabeth Alexander excerpted from her Inaugural Poem, 1/20/2009

Hatred and love

"Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rev. King went from being listed as "public enemy number one" in the 1960's-as an outspoken voice for human rights and against the war in South East Asia-- to becoming a national hero with a holiday dedicated to him in the 1980's. In Dec. of 1999, a jury in Memphis, Tennessee found local, state, and federal "government agencies" guilty of planning the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (How often have you heard this point reported by our media?) May his courage and devotion to human dignity and justice continue to inspire us all as we continue this important work.

Power in Needing Less

In the Taoist view, individuals who are materially oriented - who identify themselves with their possessions - have no real purpose in the universe other than moving matter from place to place and reproducing life forms that may ultimately have the potential for intellectual evolution. Materially oriented individuals cannot evolve intellectually because their attachment to and hoarding of matter trains the mind to view reality as fixed and not flowing. This view is in harmony with dying, not growth, and thus they cannot with the larger meaning behind consciousness. Those who follow the Tao realize that they are in a more powerful position when they are mobile, unburdened, and independent. for the Taoist, excessive possessions are treated like ballast. they are released to gain greater buoyancy. Just as air rushes in to fill a vacuum, more things will come into and pass through such lives. Most important, the capacity to need less and pass things on brings Evolved Individuals closer to themselves and closer to the continuous unfolding of reality - a perspective of advantage in the world.
From R. L. Wing's translation of the Tao of Power

Luminous Beings

"We are luminous beings. We are perceivers. The world that we perceive though is an illusion. It was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reasons, forget that descriptions are only descriptions, and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in a lifetime. We are an awareness. We are not objects. We have no solidity. We are boundless."
Carlos Casteneda speaking as Don Juan

One thing we do know

"From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men [and women], both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."
~ Albert Einstein

Mystics and Technocrats

How can mystics and technocrats, so long at odds in their vision of the universe, find a common path to the future? Mystics must give up their insistence on the empirical truth of their metaphysics, and technocrats must stop denying the truth of anything that cannot be proven empirically, for both the mystical experience and technology transcend cultural and religious differences. It is this transcendent quality of each that will allow them to merge in the 'conscious technology' of the future.
Jerome Glenn, author Future Mind

What is Beauty?

It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. (Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.) Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?

We are Holy because we are whole.

Reductionism fails to explain the phenomenon of the emergent mind. The reductionist approach has no place for the "I" at the center of everything. The whole is best understood in terms of the whole. William James argued that any method that tries to dissect the mind into a set of elemental units, be it sensations or synapses, is the opposite of science, because it ignores actual reality. Thus it is the contradictions of gaps in reasoning, of illogical experiences, of non-sequiturs, of inexplicable feelings as depicted by artists which best represent us in our world, better than logic and method ever can. In venturing beyond a simplified, reductionist world, beyond one directional time, and beyond three dimensions, we are forced to resort to metaphor. Math formulas only represent fundamental forms. Beautiful language induces integrity. To understand the whole we must us analogy. A drop of liquid symbolizes the atomic nucleus. To understand the whole we must represent the Holy, because we are not whole because and if we are Holy; we are Holy because and when we are whole.

Our Birth is but a Sleep...

Our Birth is but a sleep and a forgetting/ the Soul that rises with us, our life's star
Hath had elsewhere its setting/ And cometh from afar/ Not in entire forgetfulness/ And not in utter nakedness/ But trailing clouds of glory do we come/ from God Who is our Home.

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows/ Like harmony in music; there is a dark/ Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles/ Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.

William Worsdworth

The Vedic Sages recognized ...

The Vedic Sages recognized that each of us exists as an interdependent being and that we are linked to the Universe through our ancestry. They predicted that the collective grief of of the modern world would be caused by the loss of our ancestral memory. When ancestral memories are blocked, a part of our psyche is blocked from innate intuitive guidance. We forget who we are at the deepest levels. When we do not remember our ancestors we also fail to recognize ancestral traumas that continue to influence our live, thus re-enacting patterns that originated in our family lines. These blueprints may appear as seemingly impregnable obstacles in the way of our joy, health and abundance.