Divinity on display

     

All that we behold and perceive 

by our senses bears undeniable witness 

to the existence of God - 

the stone and the clod, the plants 

and the trees, the living creatures, 

the heavens and the earth 

and the stars, the dry land 

and the ocean, the fire and the air, 

substance and accident.  

Indeed, we ourselves are the chief 

witnesses to Him. 

But, just as the bat sees only at night 

and cannot see in the daytime 

due to the weakness of its sight, 

which is dazzled by the full light of the sun, 
so also the human mind is too weak 
to behold the full glory 
of the Divine Majesty.

             -  al-Ghazzali

... just a comment on al-Ghazzali's eloquent thought....

We would agree that the human mind (i.e. our rational left-brain thinking machine) is too weak to behold God in the beautiful world in which we live.  In fact, it cannot behold God at all.  BUT, the human heart is not too weak.  The heart radiates an electrical power pulse that is many, many times stronger than that emitted by the brain.  All knowledge is NOT contained in the brain.  There is much memory in the heart - perhaps more than in the brain.  

The human heart CAN behold the full glory of the Divine Majesty spread out before us on this beautiful planet we share together.

The sad reality that so much of the environment has been exploited, abused, destroyed and violated by human beings, suggests that we have not been seeing the Divine Majesty perhaps because we have not been seeing with our hearts, but rather with our minds.

When we look through the lens of our hearts, we will see the soul of an animal, the light vibration emitted from a tree in the forest.  When we see the life in every living thing and being in our world, we will feel a love for it and in that love, we will feel God's presence, God's spirit, which spirals our hearts even closer to His Great Heart.

Photo of the bluffs overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, from Oregon facing Washington State.


Abu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī (1058–1111), Persian (modern Iran) was  a Muslim theologian and mystic (Sufi). 

Heaven on Earth

"Thy Will be Done on Earth as it is in Heaven"*

Nehwey tzevyanach aykana d'bwashmaya aph b'arha

Your One desire then acts with ours,

as in light, so in all forms.

Let all wills move together in your vortex,

as stars and planets swirl through the sky.

Help us love beyond our ideals

and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures.

As we find your love in ours,

let heaven and nature form a new creation.

Unite the crowd within in a vision

of passionate purpose: light mates with form.

Create in me a divine cooperation -

from many selves, one voice, one action.

Let your heart's fervent desire unite

heaven and earth through our harmony.

Your One desire then acts with ours,

as in all light, so in all forms.*

There's a beautiful scene in The Celestine Prophesy, in both the book and movie, in which Will is able to transcend the world, the third dimension.  He is able to appear and disappear, yet remain intact and whole. 

We would call that a miracle. It offers us a vision of what our ascension, our ability to transcend the lower, baser, heavier 3D in which we currently live and consider reality, might look like.  Our heavy 3-D world  is not ultimate reality.  It is only one reality and a rather heavy one with an oppressive spiritual atmosphere - one in which the ego prevails, causing separation, war and conflict, oppression and control, hatred and death, strife, jealousy, competition and violence. 

In this world we only barely get glimpses of real love.  Certainly within our 3-D world there are varying levels of density and luminosity, from the basest, darkest of an oppressive regime which tortures children and the light and love of those who selflessly give their lives to care for others. But, even among the most loving, few actually achieve the ascended state exemplified by Will's high love vibration that supercharges his physical body to the point that he vibrates out of the 3-D, into the fourth and fifth dimensions.

That sounds a bit "out there," you might say, but consider the gospel report of the Upper Room appearance of Jesus?  and the empty tomb and the conversation between Mary Magdalene and the gardener, who she soon realizes is Jesus, her rabboni? What about Jesus' appearance on the Sea of Galilee during a storm, on which he walked?  And, to add to this are many accounts in other less documented "gospels" where Jesus would appear and disappear.  So, there is a precedent for this ability to transcend this 3-D reality, moving in and out of it.

Later in the gospels, Jesus tells us we too can do this and commissions us to do this. Mystics such as Padre Pio and many others have been able to do this.  So, it's not fiction.  It's real.  These mystics also live their lives in bliss. If Christianity could focus on the spiritual maturity and ascension Jesus taught us, the entire human race would have a break through in creating peace, healing the sick and healing the Earth on every level. 

Throughout the ages, we've blindly held the notion that when we die we will go to heaven or hell.  We think if we follow the rules and become perfect little puppets of the religious control masters, we will be rewarded with a pleasant afterlife in paradise. And, if we don't?  There's that other place. Maybe that "carrot" is what kept us all down, enslaved to living outside our own centers, doing what we we're told and living inauthentically. 

The inner pain of living enslaved to any outside ideology, government, religion or dictatorial person, is the greatest abuse, one that would be so unbearable that it would be natural for anyone (individually or collectively) to look forward to a beautiful afterlife, a heavenly paradise and temporally seek refuge in anything that would dim that inner pain. 

The perpetuation of such an oppressive, dark and spiritually dead system has kept us all stuck like glue in this 3-D existence.  We've also been brainwashed so well not to believe that there is anything else, other than all this.

This ancient closed system treats us and all of life as lifeless, inanimate objects, depriving us of our personal access to the divine and our own growth and experience as the powerful, magnificent beautiful, beings we were created to be.  It seems, by the high ratio of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, violence everywhere, that both escapism is at an all time high and the frustration and anger with being trapped is at an all time high.  We know collectively that that old controlling system, that has permeated every other system in the world, has to go.  Time's up on that old trap.  Escapism isn't working anymore and the long repressed anger is exploding everywhere. 

The world is sick and tired of being enslaved and in that frustration is facing an enormous adversity, a never before seen problem and challenge. Can we look at it differently?  Rather than look out on the world stage and cry out in despair at what is happening, even if we can understand intellectually why it's happening, can we do something else?  Can we step onto the true path, to the truth of who we are individually and collectively?

It's not too late.  I think we can.  We can revisit some of the ancient wisdom and learn how to transcend these denser dimensions and ascend into the heightened, powerful, loving and creative beings we were meant to become.  We need to embrace this challenge, rather than try to rid ourselves of it.

Ancient Chinese wisdom calls problems/challenges "opportunities."  Oh, sure, you say when your house in going into foreclosure or your child is in the hospital or your boyfriend or husband is in the military in Afghanistan.  Yes.  It is to you that this message is most appropriate and most needed.  It is a gift that you are being challenged because without it your comfort level would keep you stuck in a place of complacency, acceptance of a mediocrity of living that - yes, is more comfortable - but terribly dim,  illusionary and unreal.

It is possible to experience heaven on earth.  It is possible to evolve spiritually into who you were always meant to be.  It is possible to convert every cell in your body into light cells, physical and metaphysical, simultaneously.  It is possible to live according to your own will, by your own choosing, your own self determination.  You have to know that you were always meant to be autonomous, to live without fear, and to trust your own innate instinct to love and live in love and be loved.  It is our natural a priori condition.  We can do it. And, when we choose to do it, little by little, we can become and experience our own ascended divinity while still in our bodies. 

And, maybe, that's heaven on earth.

* Prayers of the Cosmos, Neil Douglas-Klotz, p. 22 (Harper Collins, 1990)

Spiritual Evolution

Spiritual Evolution* 

We always have a choice to either keep our hearts open, despite what happens to us, or close down and react to what happens to us.  Whenever we react, we step out of our open heart and away from our precious power. When we realize who we really are -  magnificent beautiful and powerful beings of light, children of God - then the choice is clear, though not easy, nor painless. 

As spiritually evolving human beings, we can accept the perceived negative stuff as opportunities to remain in our power, keep our hearts open, and allow that love to flow into the heart of whomever we feel is less than loving.  Each time we do that, I believe our heart space expands and increases in light and power.

When I was a child in grammar school, our science teacher said that the human being was a fait accompli, evolutionarily completed.  He also said that our instincts were gone, eliminated by our rationality which has over ruled and eliminated them.  Nothing could be further from the truth, I have since realized.

In a sense, he was saying our rational mind had suppressed and silenced our innate primal instinctual nature, our most primitive mind.  That was a long time ago when science and religion were still at war.  Today, science and religion are best friends and in fact are walking hand in hand down the hall of our modern enlightened school house.

There was a time, and is still active among us, when we were all controlled by a collective attitude of judgment, condemnation, dogmatic cohesion which forced us all into conformity with the rules of religion or culture or government or parental mandates. 

Why?  Just as any parent tells his child not to run into the street, not because he wants to be mean and deprive the child of the thrill of chasing the passing cars, but to protect him.  Early religion was originally meant to protect us.  But, in that effort it did its job too well and became a harsh legalistic system which kept us enslaved, dependent, childlike, closed, looking for affirmation and permission from outside our own innate wisdom.  That natural, instinctual wisdom flows from a deep inner well which is connected to a powerful, underground life source of wisdom from the Great Creator, who feeds our divinity with His fluid spiritual wisdom.  In a closed state, we cannot access this life source and in order to evolve spiritually, we need to.  We must.

Depending on the degree of pain or punishment we experienced by our parents, our religious institution or our culture to enforce their particular protective paradigm, we remain at varying levels of liberation or "individuation" from that domineering status quo.  Our necessary liberation from it would allow us to awaken from our fear-created cocoons of childlike dependence. If we remained in that closed-down state we would remain closed off from that radiant interior well of spiritual life and power.

The first step in our awakening into our evolving spiritual empowerment and enlightenment, is to realize that we are indeed closed down, fearfully kept small, closed, cut off, alone, spiritually silenced and diminished by all that controls and silences us unconsciously, keeping us dependent and powerless.  It is time for us to grow up.

In that first realization many emotions may flood your being. You may feel angry, sad, overwhelmed, anxious or grief-stricken.  If you allow the tears to flow, the anger to be metted out through exercise and the sadness to be spilled out in a journal, you may in fact begin to shake off the long spiritually sleepy years.  You may discover you are not alone. In that moment, there may be a fleeting sense another is with you, perhaps comforting you, offering you a bit of peace as a faint new rainbow crests on your inner horizon after a life-long "dark night of the soul." 

At first there's this dim awareness that everything you knew just might not be right afterall and that thought opens you up to the possibility of a paradigm shift.  You just have no idea how gorgeous it all is, just yet. You may try prayer or meditation and something kind of feels right about it, something feels good and you find yourself drawn to living a more authentic life, one of more intentional love toward yourself and others.

So, you begin to pray or meditate a little, read odd writings, meet interesting and courageous people, all of which and whom help you along your newfound spiritual quest down that rambling inner road less traveled.  That dusty path will lead you to and through the narrow gate that leads you to a secret garden where everything real and lasting is.  In the dawning of this new awareness, you become more empowered, loving and REAL.

So, at first the process is slow - the initial awakening which breaks through our darkened state of enslavement to all that was taught us - then it begins to move a bit more quickly until, as the picture above beautiful illustrates, we begin to expand our heart centers until we become the magnificent mighty creative beings of power, love and light we were meant to be.

You might enjoy Adeon's beautiful "Rainbow Warrior" series on his website: http://adeon.com.au

May the light of God's love and peace and wisdom enlighten and empower your beautiful magnificent heart.  Always and forever.

*borrowed from: http://adeon.com.au/awaken-the-rainbow-warrior/vol2-spiritual-evolution/

Love makes all things possible

“It is love, not violence or hatred,

that will have the last word in history.”

- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel*

Love is the essence of all. It is the creative power of the universe, made intentional by an ineffably brilliant genius Creator, aka God, who fills the universe with His Spirit, His essence and His creative intelligence.

Love is all that is real. And, when we connect to each other in Love, with the conscious awareness that we are intending to connect in love and the Source/Creator of Love, we are super charged by this love. It is the only real power and is able to accomplish anything, even undoing a very complicated and sophisticated corrupt system.

Since we already know this, we must stay vigilant and aware and not be tempted (otherwise known as manipulated and duped) to give over our power to the loveless dark manipulations of those blind leaders who reign over us. We all know that all our political leaders have been bought by big business. We know that our military machine is out there to protect big business. We need to remember that they are merely emperors without clothes, leaders who feed their own pocketbooks with our labor, who live in their mansions, drive their Mercedez and BMWs, all bought and paid for with our blood, sweat and tears. Did we all forget that they have no authority, unless we give it to them? When will we stop giving it to them and stop believing the world's biggest lie?

Today we are not going to give them authority. We are not going to deliberately blindfold ourselves and fall back to sleep to be duped by those who live by the world's money game, who think "this" is all there is, those who don't know love, and rather are cold, indifferent cowards who hide in their corporate offices.

The power of the universe has never been with the worldly powerful but with the oppressed and downtrodden. Sometimes I think that Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit," BECAUSE the poor already know that they aren't powerful and consequently have opened their hearts and minds and lives to the One who is and does indeed bless them.

The money people rely on their own manipulations, control efforts, to dupe those less cunning out of their money. Our country is run rampant by slick salesmen and marketers who use sophisticated psychological means to manipulate us into giving them our hard earned money. I honestly think the best thing we can all do is turn off the television, read the newspaper for information, and start reading and listening to some of the great and brilliant people out there who understand the incredibly complicated economic systems and some of the political-economic-social philosophies.

It's interesting that the naked emperors out there are also condescending and harsh toward those who would use spiritual language to describe love as the ultimate substance, source and creative power of the universe. But, then, someday they will see, though today their eyes are blinded by their own ambition.

*1980 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
       Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was born in Buenos Aires in 1931. After training as an architect and sculptor he was appointed Professor of Architecture. In 1974 he relinquished his teaching post in order to devote all his time and energy to the work of co-ordinating the activities of the various non-violent elements in Latin America. It was at a conference in Montevideo in 1968 that the decision was made to set up a joint organization covering all non-violent elements throughout Latin America.
     At a conference in 1974 it was decided to give the organization a more permanent form, and Pérez Esquivel was appointed its Secretary-General. In 1976 he initiated an international campaign aimed at persuading the United Nations to establish a Human Rights Commission, and in this connection a document was drawn up recording breaches of human rights in Latin America. In the Spring of 1977 Pérez Esquivel was imprisoned without cause being shown. In May 1978 he was released, but with the obligation to report to the police as well as being subject to various restrictions. These have subsequently been allowed to lapse, and in 1980 he had an opportunity of visiting Europe.
       The organization of which Pérez Esquivel is the leader, Servicio Paz y Justicia, is a well-established one. Latin America is divided into three regions, each with its own offices, and under these come the national organizations. Their activities are co-ordinated from Pérez Esquivel's office in Buenos Aires.
       The organization is based on a Christian view of life, and enjoys close contact with clergy and bishops critical of present-day conditions in Latin America. The chief task of the movement is to promote respect for human rights, a phrase that is intended to include social and economic rights. On the practical level this means that Servicio provides assistance to the rural workers in their struggle for land, and to the trade unions in their struggle to protect the rights of their workers. This is done in the form of legal aid.
     Despite the opposition he has encountered, Pérez Esquivel insists that the struggle must only be waged with non-violent means.
    (From Les Prix Nobel)

Occupy Buffalo

I wish I were there with you, Occupy Buffalo.

Buffalo's story may be an interesting mix of lost economic opportunity met by a stepped up civic response and determination which has cocooned the city preventing a plunge into economic despair like other steel belt northeastern cities. That pride and initiative may be the energy behind the city's occupy movement.

During the Clinton years when the country was experiencing a bit of an economic boom, Buffalo never boomed.  The only boom Buffalo ever had was the ice boom they put in the Niagara River to keep it free of large ice jams during the long frigid winters. The city of the "beautiful river" continued to stagger under inflationary high costs due to many factors. Topping the list was the loss of economic development and the high cost of doing business in New York State which deterred small business development.

The city, which has seen the loss of one of the nation's largest steel producers when steel production was "shipped" overseas and has grappled with the high cost of an aging infrastructure, seems to have held its own with a steady and even relatively low 7.3% unemployment rate. (low in comparison to other cities in the country)

The city can be proud of its strong and well educated grass roots peace and justice conscience, active and outspoken interfaith peace network, a Peace Center launched during the Vietnam war years and active Catholic peace and justice workers along with dedicated and passionate Catholic religious sisters who work for the poor, homeless, hungry, imprisoned - carrying the gospel into the inner city. 

The photos above are from several of the city's news outlets.

To afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted

From:  http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/

"Fired for criticizing company on my (his) blog. Now on unemployment and food stamps. No Insurance - who can afford COBRA w/o a job? Looking for work @ 52, my wife is 62. Retirement? Just a dream. The Banksters have stolen the American Dream. Corporations are not people. They consume people. We Are The 99%. OccupyWallStreet.org."


... and, there are many more Americans - just like you and me - featured on this website, which will be a real wake up call to those who are comfortable, and comforting to those who aren't. 

Columbus Day, setting a new course

“I could conquer the whole of them with fifty

men and govern them as I pleased”

- Log of Christopher Columbus after the

landing of his first voyage to America in 1492. 

American lore and legend has heroized Christopher Columbus who, like the other explorers and conquistators who would follow him, is a human bi-product of the colonial imperialism that swept the globe dividing it up as booty for the strongest - or actually, best armed militarily. Whole cultures and peoples were subjecated or erased from the earth.  Only lately, are we rediscovering the awesome wisdom and giftedness of the Mayan, Incan, Aztec, Hopi, Sioux and other indigenous people here in North, Central and South America. 

Columbus' heinous treatment of the Native American people has already been recounted, yet it's essential we wake up to the truth about our history and change our own course and find a new direction, inspired by a new vision of who we want to be, not who we once were. 

I find it ironic that today, a day on which thousands of Americans are gathering in our nation's streets protesting the abuses of corporate America and the country's imperialistic military machine resulting in the on-going poverty and victimization of Third World and Middle Eastern women and children, and minorities, women, children, single parent families as well as now including a diminishing middle class here at the U.S., the banks and government offices are closed to honor this crude, barbaric explorer, who exploited, oppressed, raped, tortured and exterminated, the Indian population in the West Indies.

What a terrible irony! 

It is time we move beyond merely acknowledging the mistaken histories we learned and which we continue to teach our school children and look with new eyes at the "sins of our nation's fathers," repent and choose a new path, a new worldview, a new paradigm and write a new story for our country and our world.

Dan Furmansky of Standing on the Side of Love, invites us to consider this day, Indigenous People Day, rather than Columbus Day.  I am grateful to him for his thoughts and courage.  He wrote:

"Honoring Christopher Columbus is just another symptom of our country’s fundamental denial. It means lifting up a man who sent the first slaves across the Atlantic. More slaves—about five thousand—than any other individual, according to historian after historian. It means honoring a man who kidnapped indigenous Americans to take back with him to Spain, with several dying along the way. It means holding up as an example a man who demanded food, gold, and spun cotton from indigenous Americans, and used punishments like cutting off their ears and noses and hands to make sure the goods were received. It means celebrating someone who instituted policies of rewarding his lieutenants with indigenous women to rape.

"As educator and historian James W. Loewen writes in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, 'All of these gruesome facts are available in primary source material—letters by Columbus and by other members of his expeditions, and in the work of Las Casas, the first great historian of the Americas, who relied on primary materials and helped preserve them.'

... honoring Christopher Columbus—though he was skilled as an explorer—as some sort of national hero just makes me sad.

Each time we hallow Christopher Columbus over indigenous people, or Rick Santorum over a gay soldier in Afghanistan, or Sherriff Joe Arpaio over a migrant, I believe our moral amnesia is flaring up.

For many of us, commemorating Indigenous Peoples Day over Columbus Day is one way to show that we understand the symptoms of the lies that have been embedded in our country’s collective consciousness. Let's face it. We live in a country where children grew up playing 'cowboys and Indians.' Saying our country is in denial about our own story—our roots, our history—doesn’t make us unpatriotic, ungrateful, or unaware of the staggering beauty of our land, our freedoms, and of so many people in our nation, including people who may not agree with us a lot of the time. But we can't authentically move forward if we don't truly know the ground we are on, and where we have been. Honoring Indigenous People's Day is one important way to do that.

On this Indigenous Peoples Day, people are taking to the streets, hungry for a change that is sweeping the world, chanting for a country where those in power govern with love and justice, and heed the moral imperative to serve the needs of humanity over the needs of consolidating wealth or power.

The United States is full of countless children who go to bed hungry every night, overwhelming environmental degradation costing us our health, and a colossal disparity between the very few uberwealthy and the millions of everyone else. Our deeply ailing nation is full of people who think that constitutional rights should be abrogated in favor of their God-beliefs over others’ God-beliefs, or non-God beliefs. It is full of individuals who have convinced themselves that undocumented people—the poorest, most hard-working people in our country—are somehow taking something away from them, and that if immigrants end up being abused in border detention, it’s their own fault.

I believe those of you who are taking part in Occupy Wall Street protests across the country are trying to deliver these messages through inspired love. And I thank you.

This evening, I begin a 24-hour period of Yom Kippur fasting, contemplation, and prayer. I’m overwhelmed by the need for change—from deep within to that which connects us all to one another, and to all.

Wherever we are this long, Indigenous Peoples Weekend, let us think. Let us pray, however we may choose. Let us speak. Rally. Commit. Act.

And, above all else, let us love.
Dan Furmansky
Standing on the Side of Love

We, the people, are speaking again

Today is the 10th anniversary of the longest war the U.S. has ever fought, the war in Afghanistan, and yet a new breeze of hope is ever so slightly wafting through the nation's atmosphere.  

Until recently, Americans grasping for economic renewal have been tursting with antiquated systemic windmills, lunging blindly at old systems, not realizing the dire need for - or maybe realizing it but not knowing how to effect it - a complete and total change in American economics, a change that just might overhaul the system from the roots up.

Maybe this time, the vision for a new America won't be created by a wealthy religious-right selfish class of white men who felt entitled to their wealth made on the backs of those they deemed less worthy.

Initially, after the near collapse of the U.S. economy, which sent rippling effects throughout the world, "progressives" were silent.  Perhaps we couldn't yet imagine what kind of response was best.  We were in diaspora, silent and scattered, throughout the U.S. workplace and found the best way to keep whatever meager jobs we might have was to remain silent. 

Maybe it was a lack of organization, or vision, that kept change, real change, at bay.  But, our silence was finally broken on Sept. 17 when a smart group of courageous people made camp outside the New York Stock Exchange, demanding change and with a bright, outspoken, well regarded leadership.

Now, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement has extended to 778 U.S. cities with an agenda which focuses on ending our wars, investing in jobs, regulating and taxing Wall Street, and protecting the future.

In an interview by "Between The Lines" news radio magazine (http://www.btlonline.org/2011),  Chris Hedges, a pultizer Prize-winning reporter, told BTL reporter Scott Harris,

"People are doing something, they're rising up against this corrupt financial system that seized control not only of our economy and our political process, but our judiciary and our systems of information. And are dismantling everything that we have in place to create neo-feudalistic society. Looting the U.S. Treasury, trashing the ecosystem. In theological terms, these are systems of death because they know no limit. Karl Marx was right, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force which turns everything into a commodity. Human beings become commodities, the natural world becomes a commodity that you exploit until exhaustion or collapse. And because are there no impediments within the formal structures of power, unless we begin to engage in acts of civil disobedience we will not thwart the destruction that is being unleashed by corporate power."

Again, we, the people, are speaking out. It seems the initial constitutional vision for our country may be working, allowing us, as a people, to peacefully correct the course we've been on. The occupation of Wall Street, which is now spreading to most of the major cities in the country, is calling for a complete renovation of the U.S. economic system, one that has the potential to have a strong empowering effect on the larger global economic atmosphere. 

If it succeeds, it may end the pernicious evil of capitalism while maintaining the American dream of free enterprise.  Could it end this nation's fraudulent practices that have ripped off everyone?  Is it possible, just possible, for once and for all, we may end greed, the exploitation of the working class, the demoralization of the youth, the starvation of rising number of poor, hungry and homeless, and those who do not have the money, skills or sophistication to excel in this quickly narrowing over-the-top-competitive, elitist, wealthy class?

In the next few weeks, I hope to run a few pieces by people who are involved actively and far more knowledgable than I on what is happening in the Occupy Wall Street movement.  For more information,  please see:

"Occupy Wall Street Activists Inspire Non-Violent Resistance Across the U.S."
http://www.btlonline.org/2011/seg/111014af-btl-hill.html
Photo courtesy of:
(Minnpost.com)                  

Open hearts will heal the earth

"Prophecy tells us that at the very end the number of men with ambitious minds will decrease, while the people of good hearts, those who live in harmony with the earth, will increase until the earth is at last rid of evil. If the Hopi are right, this will be accomplished, and the earth will bloom again. The spiritual door remains open. Why not join the righteous people who are moving toward it?"

From Techqua Ikachi (Hopi for "Land and Life"), a newsletter published by Hopi Elders.


The human heart is infinitely more powerful than the brain.  Recent studies of the human subtle energy field indicate that the radiant "power" of the heart is tremendously more powerful than that of the brain. 

Yet, despite this, we continue to prioritize brain function over heart function. We focus, almost exclusively on feeding our brains with data, educating our youth with information that will be outdated in a few years.  We may place this high value on the brain because it puts us in control of our ability to draw from the well of the brain and suceed in our ambition. 

In a sense, the brain is a closed cage of information, a kind of data bank.  The more information we garner, the bigger our achievements in our material world can be, which fuels a sense of superiority over those with less information.  It creates an intellectual elitism, adding to the ego's edge on selective valuing of others.   (However, I am not advocating NOT educating ourselves or our children, but calling for a reorganization of our prioritizing paradigm by putting the heart first and intellect second.)


The side effect to this is as we continue to place the highest regard and emphasis on more "brain stuff," we simultaneously suppress the vitality of the more intuitive, more emotive, gentler and kinder knowledge and leanings of the heart.  The brain is never wise.  It simply puts data together and draws a cold analytical conclusion.  The open, fearless heart, crystal clear, without the deafening and blinding walls of the ego,  draws from the brain's data bank as it simultaneously listens to the voices of the higher self, of the angels, even of God, as well as others and synergizes it all with its own graceful responses to turn a potentially divisive or even violent situation into a learning experience, and a peaceful outcome. Each and every human encounter can be a beautiful magical experience.

There has never been a more importent time in the history of the world for people to put away their ego-driven, blind ambition for that relational, vulnerable, gentle open hearted approach to building bridges among others. Only through open-hearted relationships can we achieve any kind of connectivity on the planet, any kind of unity among people, and a healing of the divisions among us, built and held by racism, fear and elitism. 

Clearly many religions still promote exclusivity, killing and torturing others who don't convert.  Consequently, we must respond by opening our own hearts to learning the cultural languages and religious teachings of those who threaten and oppose us.  As we learn to "love our neighbor"  and "love our enemies," we heal the gapping wounds that infect our planet. As we step outside our own fear which has closed and locked down our hearts, in order to open to the "enemy," we will step into that realm over which we cannot and do not control which throws open the door to God's love and infinite healing power to heal the planet.

One person cannot do this.  No matter how ambitious, well meaning, inspired, one person cannot do this.  We need each other and we need to do this together, collectively, as one people, unified for our survival on the planet. Each of us must turn up the flame on our own inner lamps, open our hearts and listen without condemnation or judgment.  The ego and the brain judge, condemn and enter into a "crime and punishment" mentality, which only keeps the hatred going.  Love forgives and forgives and forgives until the world is a place of mutuality, a table set with love, hope and prosperity. 

"Every individual who becomes a clear and undistorted channel for eternal love into these times offsets a thousand who remain locked in the dissolving values of the old."
Ken Carey, Starseed: The Third Millenniumn

The future is ours to have and to hold and how we hold it today will make all the diffence in our future world.  If we choose to discipline our quick tempered reactions and open our hearts to feel the suffering of the one who has acted rudely or even abusively, and then step up to the plate with love, compassion and patience, one by one, we can and will change our world.  We don't need more stuff, more invention, more technology, more wealth - we need more love, patience, humbly kneeling before each other, knowing that only the love we give can heal us, our brother and our world.  The time is now.  We can't put this off for tomorrow or tomorrow's challenge before us will be greater.

It seems the time is right for us to listen to the Hopi elders, whose wisdom stretches back to the ancient Mayan and perhaps even beyond.