Ahimsa.

Non-Violence.

In thought, language, and behavior.

“We must disrupt harm whenever we encounter it.”

-Yogi & Activist Seane Corn

⁀︶

Ernest Holmes:

‘New arts, new sciences, new philosophies, better government, and a high civilization wait on our thoughts. The infinite energy of Life, and the possibility of our future evolution, work through our imagination and will. The time is ready the place is where we are now, and it is done unto all as they really believe and act.’

⁀︶

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

‘Fuse the powers of the sacred heart with the energies of the body, and you can transform everything.’

⁀︶

2 Corinthians 4:16/The Message:

‘So, we’re not giving up. How could we! Even thought on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where GAIA is making new life, not a day goes by without Her unfolding grace.’

⁀︶

Rolph Gates & Katrina Kenison:

‘At a Native American gathering in Arizona for the 1999 summer solstice, a Hopi elder said: “There is a river flowing now, very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination.

The elders say we must push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open and our heads above the water. See who is in there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment we do that, our spiritual growth comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.

Gather yourselves; banish the work ‘struggle’ from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred way and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’

⁀︶

The Enlightened Heart, p. 86:

‘With the happiness held in one inch-square heart you can find the whole space between heaven and earth.’

⁀︶

Hildegard of Bingen:

‘Divinity is in its omniscience and omnipotence like a wheel, a circle, a whole, that can neither be understood, nor divided, nor begun, nor ended.’

⁀︶

Mark Nepo:

‘Each person is born with an unencumbered spot…free of expectation and regret…free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry…an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God, Spirt, Sophia, Gaia.

It is this spot of grace that issues pace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.

To know this spot of Indwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work to what we wear how how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it.

This is our lifeline task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we’ve been, while nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential.

Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to the incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of whiteness, moment of satori, as the Zen sages term int, moments of clear loving when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness.

And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the restoration of that timeless spot of grace is the goal of all therapy and education.

Fr Richard Rohr:

‘The real question is “What does this have to say to me?” Those who are totally converted come to every experience and ask not whether or not they liked it, but what does it have to teach them. “What’s the message or gift in this for me? How is God in this event? Where is God in this suffering?” This is a prayer of unveiling, asking that the cruciform shape of reality be revealed to us within the very shape and circumstances of our own lives.’

A new journey around the sun.

As we leave a reckless and tragic year, I wish you for you all three, Love, Strength, & Courage.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be free.

May all beings be healthy and well, realizing potential and possibility.

jai

On this final night of 2020, may our hours be deep, meaningful, quiet, and tender (Seane Corn).

P

E

A

C

E

🕊

What does it look like?

What does it feel like?

“I know that deep within each person the Divine Paternities of perfect peace is already implanted. I now declare that in each person and in leaders of thought everywhere this Divine Pattern moves into action and form to the end that all nations and all people will live together in peace, harmony, and prosperity forever.”

-Ernest Holmes

“As far back as we can remember, people of the oldest tribes, unencumbered by civilization, have been rejoicing in being on earth together. Not only can we do this for each other, it is essential. For as stars need open space to be seen, as waves need shore to crest, as dew needs grass to soak into, our vitality depends on how we exclaim and rejoice, “I see you!” I am here!”

-Mark Nepo

🤍

“Midnight on New Year’s Eve is a unique kind of magic where, just for a momet, the past and the future exist at once in the present. Whether we’re aware of it or not, as we countdown together to it, we’re sharing the burden of our history and committing to the promise of tomorrow.”

-Hillary DePiano

The year brought lessons, challenges and opportunities to grow in unanticipated ways. Good or bad, devastating or productive, we navigated our way through the challenges, surprises and revelations that came out way. We dealt with circumstances the best way we knew how. We are here today, poised and centered, ready to leave the year behind and move into newness, fresh ways of living and greater connection to ourselves, each other and the Divine.

-Rev. Dr. Edward Viljoen

And from Marianne Williamson on this New Year’s Eve 2020:

The final Sun Valley sunset in 2020.

Only ℒℴve❥❥☆҉

2020

Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives.

-Rilke

Whatever today brings, try to make the most of it, making it the best day you can. I hope you will fill the day with many magical moments and grace notes and remember that everywhere, all of us are struggling and striving to do the same. In Emerson’s words we are seeking the divinities that are sitting disguised. Grace notes are multifaceted, rich. They are as scattered as shooting stars, as diverse as the sea and the sky. Some are wise and wonderful; some are intentionally vague and mysterious. Whether they are instructional, specific, questioning, inspiring or just plain fun, pay attention to them and how you react to them each day.

-Alexandra Stoddard

‘In dangerous times like these we have to produce generations of dedicated, courageous, and creative contemplative activists who will join [the conscious collective] to bring radical healing and change to this damaged world, before it’s too late.’

-Fr. Richard Rohr

︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶

“Whatsoever things are true,

Whatsoever things are honest,

Whatsoever things are just,

Whatsoever things are pure,

Whatsoevery things are lovely,

Whatsoever things are of good report:

If there be any virtue,

and if there be any praise,

Think on these things.”

-Philippians 4:8

︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶

Thomas Merton…”literally meditated on paper.”

‘But I do have a past to break with, an accumulation of inertia, waste, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk, a great need of clarification of mindfulness, or rather of no mind…a return to genuine practice, right effort, need to push on to the great doubt. Need for the Spirit. Hang on to the clear light!’

New arts, new sciences, new philosophies, better government, and a high civilization wait on our thoughts.

-Ernest Holmes

♀

In 2020, let us commit to evaporating patriarchy, power, and greed.

‘The influence of the Feminine is responsible for the growth of the Environmental Movement; for the determination of women in every culture to free themselves from their long oppression and encourage their increased participation to healing both psyche and body. It is reflected in the mountain revulsion for our addiction to war; in the engagement of hundreds of thousands of people in the work of helping both the planet and the victims of oppression. These different channel of influence are creating new perspectives on life, new ways of connection that bring together body, soul, mind and spirit. All this is being accelerations by organizations like Avaaz which now has many millions of subscribers.

The recovery of the Feminine invites a reorientation of consciousness: a receptivity not only to the events occurring in the external world but to the long-ignored voice of the Soul. The activation of the Feminine is helping us to relate to the deep cosmic source of our psychic life and draw up the living waters from those depths. This enormous shift challenges every aspect of our beliefs. It immeasurably deepens and broadens our perspective on our presence on this planet. It gives deeper meaning to our lives. It is changing everything.’

-Anne Baring, The dream of the Cosmos a Quest for the Soul

‘The journey in search of soul is difficult and even dangerous because it requires that we relinquish the certainty of what we think we know and what we have been taught for generations to believe. It means surrendering the desire to be in control and opening ourselves to a quest, a path of discovery. Many myths and fairy tales emphasize the need for surrender and trust in the strange non-rational guidance offered by animals or shamans on the quest. As the hero follows their guidance, so the hedge opens, the way unfolds. Following the guidance and wisdom of the instinct is the royal road into the realm of soul.’
-Anne

The Dream of the Cosmos is the story of a multi-layered quest to understand the causes of human suffering and to reconnect with a deeper reality than the one we inhabit in this physical dimension of experience. It seeks to answer the questions: “Who are we?” and “Why are we here, on this planet?” [google books]

Absence of fear…

…does anger follow?

‘…when one cherishes no desire, when one bears no hate, then is one said to have attained to the state of Brahma. -The Mahabharata

Fear is the only we shall be afraid of. It is not the host encamped against us, nor the confusion of war around us, that we need to fear; it is a lack of confidence in the good that alone should cause concern.

Through inner spiritual vision we know that evil is transitory, but good is permanent.

Then we should cherish no fear and when we neither fear nor hate when we come to understand the unity of life and then, our lesson tells us, we have attained to the state of Brahma (conscious union with God.)

Today my heart is without fear.

-Ernest Holmes

The Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as “the longest poem ever written”.Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the MahābhārataAmong the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, and the story of Ṛṣyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.

God is in the roses.

God is in the roses
The petals and the thorns
Storms out on the oceans
The souls who will be born
And every drop of rain that falls
Falls for those who mourn
God is in the roses
And the thorns. -Rosanne Cash

❧

“Vulnerability transforms you. You can’t be in the presence of a truly vulnerable, honestly vulnerable person and not be affected. I think that’s the way we are meant to be in the presence of one another.” [Richard Rohr]

The cross was not a transactional moment, but deeper, ensconced in humility and vulnerability. [Reference to Richard Rohr]

“As he draws near Jerusalem, Jesus weeps out of a sadness and frustration at people’s blindness to what is right in front of them…oblivious.” [Forward Day by Day]

“The Talmud says that unhappy conditions arise when we mistake shadower substance. We are ever renewed by the presence of that which cannot change. We are ever renewed by the passage of the Divine light through our consciousness. Silently, I pass from less to more, from isolation to inclusion, from separation into oneness.” [Ernest Holmes]

❧

“And this above all: that through these petals light must pass. From a thousand skies, each drop of darkness is filtered out and the glow at the core of each flower grows stronger and rises into life.

And the movement of the roses has a branch none could discern, were it for for what it ignites in the universe entire…

One could say they were self-contained if self-contained meant to transform the world outside, patience of springtime, guilt and restlessness, the secrecy of fate and the darkness of Earth at evening…on out to the streaming and fleeing of clouds and, farther yet, the orders of the stars…take it all and turn it into a handful of inwardness.”

See how it lies at ease in the open roses. -Rilke

The value of truthfulness.

A liar no longer needs to feel that his lies may involve him in starvation. If living were a little more precarious, and if a person who could not be trusted found it more difficult to get along with other men, we would not deceive ourselves and one another so carelessly.

But the whole world has learned to deride veracity or to ignore it. Half the civilized world makes a living by telling lies. Advertising, propaganda, (politics) and all the forms of publicity that have taken the place of truth have taught men to take it for granted that they can tell other people whatever they like, provide that it sounds plausible and evokes some kind of shallow emotional response.

-Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island [1955]

Humbly, we are asked to keep the flow real between what is taken in and what is let out. We have only to breathe to remember our place as al living inlet. Experience in, feelings out. Surprise and challenge in, heartache and joy out. In a constant tide, life rushes in, and in constant release, we must let it all run back off. For this is how the earth was made magnificent by the sea and how humankind is carved upright, again and again, by the ocean of spirt that sets us free.

-Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening [2011]

There is something in me that knows what to do. It not only knows what to do, It impels me to act upon what It knows. This very acceptance flows forth into action through me. Always there is an inner, quiet, persistent confidence, a nonresistant but complete acceptance, an inward flowing with the stream of Life, knowing that It carries me safely and surely to my destination and to the accomplishment of every good purpose.

-Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind [2001]

We are guided continually. We choose to follow what is good, and right, and just.

The principle of causation.

Read in current political context.

Every act carries with it a sequence, bringing the result of this action back to the self. This is what is meant by Karma, for Karma means the fruit of action. 

Emerson called it the Law of Compensation.

Jesus proclaimed the same in his teaching that as we sow, so shall we reap.

Kwang-Tze tells us that he more we give to ohers the ore we have. 

Walt Whitman also refers to this when he says, “The gift is most to the giver and comes back most to him”

This all means the return of the self to itself. The great apostle did not tell us to forget the self; he merely told us to also remember everyone else.

We are to view ourselves each in the other and behold God in all.

-Ernest Holmes

Apropos?

Man is all ready to come a god, and instead he appears at times to be a zombie.

A temperamentally angry man may be more inclined to anger than another. But as long as he remains sane he is still free not to be angry. His inclination to anger is simply a force in his character which can be turned to good or evil, according to his desires. If he desires what is evil, his temper will become a weapon of evil against other men and even against his own soul. If he desire what is good, his temper can become the controlled instrument for fighting the vile that is in himself and thus helping other men to overcome the obstacles which they meet in the world. He remains free to desire either good or evil.

-Thomas Merton

A New Year Prayer

I know there is but One Mind, which is the mind of God, in which all people live and move and have their being.

I know there is a divine pattern for humanity and within this pattern there is infinite harmony and peace, cooperation, unity and mutual helpfulness.

I know that the mind of humankind, being one with the mind of God, shall discover the method, the way, and the means best fitted to permit the flow of Divine Love between individuals and nations.

Thus harmony, peace, cooperation, unity, and mutual helpfulness are experienced by all.

I know there will be a free interchange of ideas, of cultures, of spiritual concepts, of ethics, of educational systems and scientific discoveries–for all good belongs to all alike.

I know that, because Divine Mind has created us all, we are bound together in one infinite and perfect unity.

I know that all people and all nations will remain individual but united for the common purpose of promoting peace, happiness, harmony, and prosperity.

I know that deep within each person the Divine Pattern of perfect peace is already implanted.

Now declare that in each person and in leaders of thought everywhere this Divine Pattern moves into action and form, to the end that all nations and all people will live together in peace, harmony, and prosperity forever.

-Ernest Holmes

´*.¸.• .¸. ❥❥¸¸.☆¨¯ .¸.¸¸.☆¨¯`❥❥

This precious human birth is unrepeatable. So what will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? What will you ask and of whom?

Today you are a precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.

-Mark Nepo

“…feminine, cooperative and supportive.”

The shift to a more sustainable political policy will involve:

. . . a shift of emphasis away from means towards ends; away from economic growth towards human development; away from quantitative towards qualitative values and goals; away from the impersonal and organisational towards the personal and interpersonal; and away from the earning and spending of money towards the meeting of real human needs and aspirations. A culture that has been masculine, aggressive and domineering in its outlook will give place to one which is more feminine, cooperative and supportive. A culture that has exalted the uniformly European will give place to one which values the multi-cultural richness and diversity of human experience. An anthropocentric worldview that has licensed the human species to exploit the rest of nature as if from above and outside it, will give place to an ecological worldview. We shall recognize that survival and self-realisation alike require us to act as what we really are—integral parts of an ecosystem much larger, more complex, and more powerful than ourselves. 

James Robertson, Beyond the Dependency Culture: People, Power and Responsibility, as cited by Richard Rohr and The Center for Action and Contemplation.

We cannot expect to draw a pattern of this right seeing from he objective world of confusion or our inner thoughts of doubt and fear. We are to look and think independently of the confusion in the moment.  I am seeing through confusion to peace, through doubt to certainty, through fear to faith. As I do this everything I look upon shall become transformed and reborn. -Ernest Holmes

Terrible things are hard enough to experience the first time. Beyond their second and third and fourth experience as trauma, ,their impact can easily makes u become terrible if we do not keep our want to love alive. Perhaps the most difficult challenge of being wounded is not turning our deepest loving nature over to the lie and way of the wound. The human heart–no matter how often it is cut–can reassert its impulse to love. -Mark Nepo

Also from Mark:

I see that we’re such fragile, resilient creatures, here for just a long unplanned moment, tumbling and waking in this beautiful, harsh tender existence.

Dialogue is a matter of understanding, of peeling away the mind to stand under (our thoughts) in Oneness.

Joy within me.

Joy has come to live with me. How can I be sad?

I do so love Thy presence, which is joy within me.

-Ernest Holmes

Be like the bird

That, pausing in her flight

Awhile on boughs too slight,

Feels them give way

Beneath her and yet sings,

Knowing that she had wings.

-Victor Hugo

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your

grasp, but which if you will sit down quiet, may alight upon you.

-Nathanial Hawthorne

Joy is the realization of the truth of one-ness, the oneness of our soul with

the Supreme love.

-Ravindranath Tagore

Happy May. Happy new birth. Happy love.