Love extravagantly

                                                    
                                          Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

                                             I took the one less traveled by,

                                             And that has made all the difference.

                                                                                       - Robert Frost

Dream your biggest dream.  Hold it close to your heart and love it as you love yourself and everyone else in your life.

All your dreams are signs leading along the way you are being called to travel. We all have dreams of how we want our lives to turn out. Those dreams are filled with beautiful times with people we love, brimming with laughter and love. They are rich with our creative self expression, fun sports we enjoy, completing that 5K run, maybe it's graduating from medical school, or getting your driver's license. All these achievements are part of your larger picture. They are the individual puzzle pieces of your big dream.

And yet, so many of, maybe all of us, just don't feel like we're getting there. Too many of us feel lost and confused by what's going on in the world and feel like everything is slipping out of our hands. I also feel that way.

So, what would propel us closer to where we want to go? And, how do we get there?

Earlier today, I found myself watching the news and then caught myself thinking about it - almost dwelling on it. And, then, as if a light went on, I realized that was a waste of consciousness. 

To focus on what I didn't want rather than what I did want - which is world peace - was actually fueling what I didn't want with the focus of my consciousness. Suddenly, I intentionally shifted my mind and began thinking about world peace and reaching for a deeper understanding. 

I realized there are many roads in our minds. There's the road from the place of broken dreams, condemnation, judgement, betrayal, failure, emotional or physical injury at the hands of someone we loved. That is a dark road from a dark place where we once were and came out of. There's the road to and from work where there's a lot of energy, but it's not dream energy exactly, and so it, too, isn't where we want to go consciously on our own time. There are a lot of paths in our minds. The really bad ones that come out of a tragic time in our past, need to be sealed off, and allowed to overgrow and recede into the past, otherwise they could drag us into a place of depression, again a waste of time and valuable spiritual energy.

So, where do you want to go? What's your dream?

Give it light, love and focus. And, if you're not sure what it is, that's ok. I would invite you to feed your mind and your consciousness and your life with the best thoughts you can think, the happy ones, the funny ones, the beautiful ones, thoughts of hope and faith in your dream, the loving ones. 

Fill your mind with as much joy as you can, as much love as you can, and keep your eye on the prize, so to speak. Think about thinking about only loving, joyous thoughts. And, if you stumble onto paths into darker places, immediately turn around, and leave that place, close the gate, lock it, and run as fast as you can into the light. 

Sit like a Yogi and breathe and invite in the light, and remind yourself where you want to go (remember those dark places are off limits). If you find yourself slipping into worrying about your finances, your career direction, your kids, the state of the union, and the huge global conflicts, catch yourself and take a deep breath and allow all the stress that was secretly grasping you to leave you as you exhale.  

If you slip into worrying about the conflicts in the Middle East, stop the worry, turn it around to loving the persecuted in those places. Maybe try imagining a cloud of light, filled with Divine love descending on those places.  Hold that thought and feel the love, see the light. Remember, don't judge or condemn, only love.  It's not our job to judge, that's God's exclusive right. You obviously don't love the violence. You love the precious people.

That's not all.  Here's the other half.

This might sound a bit strange. At this present time, our solar system, which together with all the planets in it, is on a rotation into the Milky Way Galaxy and back. It is on a path, sort of. And, it has been on this path for many millions of years. As it travels deep into the galaxy, it encounters different patterns of energy with different levels of intensity. The further it was from the center of the galaxy, the dimmer that energy was, but as it is moving closer into the galaxy, the energy is intensifying. 

This notion is described in the Hindu Yuga system.  The worst of the worst of times in our civilization was during the Kali Yuga and the best were during the golden age.  We are now in the Dwarpa Yuga - just out of the Kali Yuga.  That's why I'm always saying the times are getting better.  But we can help it along.

What does that have to do with our personal mental focus and staying on our intentional pah to our dreams?

Whatever you think about is enabled more than it ever was in the past. The energy radiating to Earth from space through which our solar system is slowly moving is impacting all of life on the planet. It is intensifying whatever your conscious intent is focused on. 

If you focus on loving your dream, or discovering what it is, and feeding your consciousness love and kindness, that will magnify - and not just for you, but for everyone around you. You might feel like a dim night light right now, but as you focus on what is bright and beautiful, you will become like a little sun in your world, lighting up your world - and our world - with love and creative energy and magnetizing more of the same to yourself.

Sadly, the reverse is true as well. If someone, or a group of people, are focused on cruel intentions, prejudicial, controlling and abusive actions, that also will be empowered. You see that every day in the news, which I advise you not to watch. You can find out what's going on, without dwelling on it. It's sad. You don't need it. I don't either.

Martin Luther once said the battle between heaven and hell is fought in the mind. Indeed, it is. Focus on love and don't worry about what others are doing. Focus on the love. Your assignment is to love. You are not here to judge. You are here to love. Love yourself. Protect yourself from those dark pathways in your mind. Withdraw your consciousness from them. Think only about love, how you can love yourself, how you can love others. Allow your intention to love become creative. Your light will grow and expand faster than you can imagine.

The battle between love and hate will be won by love. It is the creative, more positively charged energy field. We can help hasten it as we raise the vibration on the planet by focusing exclusively on love - being love - giving love - living love and thinking of nothing that isn't love. I would advise us all to close and lock the gates to any other paths in our minds that take us anywhere that is less that gorgeous, joyous, hopeful, loving, affirming, creative and fun. You do have to catch yourself in the act of wrong thinking in order to stop and change it by deliberately thinking a thought of joy and love.

You are here to love, exclusively, unconditionally, abundantly, extravagantly. Do it. The world needs your love and where we are on our path into the Milky Way is giving us the energy surge to do it.

Take that road less traveled, that leads us into love. It is through the narrow gate that we pass and the beauty there is something we would never want to turn from. Take control of your thoughts like a soldier grasps his weapon. Your weapon is your mind focused on love, beauty, joy, hope. A focused mind is the most powerful weapon there is. The world needs yours in our army of light aimed to love and grow into the next step of our collective evolution which is a great civilization of beings of love

Light in the dark

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Planting Seeds of Peace with Arun Gandhi

"I plant seeds of peace in the minds of people.  

Live what we want people to learn."

- Arun Gandhi

In the world's calamitous, pernicious descent into a culture of violence, the powerful words of peace shared this morning by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, were a light in the darkness.  They sparked a new hope for the more than 100 people gathered this morning at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Vancouver, WA, to honor the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

Mr. Gandhi shared his grandfather's ardent passion for non-violence, and discussed the many ways in which it unfolds in our lives, including global non-militarism, alleviating world poverty which breeds violence, educating those marginalized by poverty, eliminating the "competition" among religions, and developing attitudes of mutual respect. 

He told the story of the late Dr. King's night in the museum where he slept in Gandhi's room for spiritual inspiration. That night changed the world for a new generation.

He said he was building on his grandfather's teaching of non violence, which calls for an individual choice to live lives of peace rather than a legislated obedience.  Ultimately, he said, peace is an attitude of love. 

Mr. Gandhi is an ardent defender and advocate for the children of abuse, hunger, exploitation and trafficking. 

Please go to his Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute website, to support his urgent mission. 

Thank you to First Congregational United Church of Christ for Arun Gandhi's presence this morning. Thank you also to the Wholistic Peace Institute for hosting Arun Gandhi and other presentations in the Portland area.  

Dedicated to the children of the world

                        Dedicated to all the children of the world, 
                        young and old, but especially to you precious, 
                        African child, who is suffering unbearably, 
                        yet courageously; to all Muslim, Jewish,
                        Hindu, and Christian children, innocently 
                        persecuted for their parents' faith, 
                        and all the world's little boys and girls, little
                        Iraqi, Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Israeli, 
                        South / Central / North American, 
                        Latino, Yazidi, North Korean, Pakistani,
                        Afghan, Asian, Indian, Arab child, all the
                        children of the world.  

                        I love you.  I love you with all my heart.  
                        I pray you find the peace and joy meant for 
                        you by God, Allah, Yahweh or whatever
                        name you  call our divine creator, our 
                        divine parent, who has loved you since 
                        the beginning of time, the dawn of creation 
                        and will love you, dear precious little one, 
                        forever and ever. 

Child trafficking involved in cocoa farming

Children in Africa are being trafficked across national boundaries to work on cocoa farms in violation of international law.  

"Children from Southern Mali are bused to the border town and from there smuggled across the border to the Ivory Coast," according to the film.

This documentary needs no introduction. It is a powerful and emotional voice on behalf of young children who are enslaved to produce almost all of the world's chocolate. 

When confronted with this information, the major international corporations which sell chocolate throughout the world were unwilling to change their practices.

The least we can do is to stop eating chocolate, unless we're 100 % sure it wasn't made through child labor. 

The film was made two years ago, and yet much of the world is still unaware.  

If you'd like to get involved, here's an important link:

http://www.antislavery.org/english/campaigns/cocoa_traders/chocolate_and_slavery_qa.aspx

and if you were wondering where you could buy chocolate that was safely farmed without child labor, here's link with some more information.

http://theartofsimple.net/chocolate/

Prayer for Peace

Most beloved Divine Father-Mother, whose radiant presence is cast in unlimited expressions across your universal canvas, please bless us with your deep abiding peace and heal our world.

You are being itself, ultimate consciousness, genius creator of everything - from life on our precious planet to galaxies and star clusters, supernovas, and physics beyond our most brilliant scientists' knowledge - even to the tiniest particle of quanta light.

You are more than we can imagine or understand. Yet, even in our dim awareness, we know you are within, among and even beyond us. We are finally grasping - even in the tiniest way - who you are. We realize now, finally, that in our primitive state of spiritual blindness we misunderstood who you are. We had fearfully misplaced our worship and allegiance on the phantoms of power in our world, rather than in trusting your love felt and experienced within us. We worshiped that which we feared, rather that which we loved, which is you - love itself.

We need you now more than we may have ever needed you in our history. We ask you, in your great love and benevolent goodness, to fill our world, our hungry hearts and minds, and wounded planet - torn apart by war, violence, fear and hatred - with your beautiful conscious light and all its radiant power and wisdom and profound life force. Please guide us onto the next step in our evolution and save us from the consequences of our violent fear.

You, whose very substance is embedded throughout and within creation, whose incomprehensible selfhood transcends time and space, are all we need.

You alone comprehend the vast expanse of silent space even to the imperceptible flickering of a fraction of the time between our thoughts, which fire like machine guns on a battlefield. They disrupt our consciousness, violently screaming out in fear and for attention. Without the guidance from your greater intelligence, we would remain lost amid the noise and confusion of our current state at this still early point of our spiritual evolution here on Earth. Without you, we might destroy ourselves.

Please, fill us with greater understanding and wiser intuition, and a more enlightened awareness to avert our current destination. We need your peace, the peace that comes from the secure knowledge that all is well, despite how tumultuous it all seems right now.

Make each and every one of us instruments of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
Where there is injury, let us pardon;
Where there is doubt, help us to find faith in your great benevolence and love;
Where there is despair, guide us into the vast sea of hope;
Where there is darkness, shine your light and help us to see, remembering that the darkness doesn't understand the light and therefore cannot and will not control it or subdue it;
Where there is sadness, remind us to surrender it to You, by accepting it, and therein, find joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console. Help us to remain mindful that the way out of our discomfort it to comfort another.

Grant us an ever increasing awareness that it is far greater to understand another than to insist on being understood.

Teach us to offer mercy to another, and thereby bring more of your love and mercy into ourselves, and increase our soul light in the dimmer regions of unawareness in ourselves and others.

Help us to focus our intentions to brighten the entire world even a little bit more with every thought and breath.

Help us to love always, first and foremost and remind us,

It is nobler to love than to insist on being loved.

It is more generous to give than to take, and it is in giving that we receive.

It is in forgiving that we are freed from the control of our oppressive judgmental systems, and harsh, soulless egos.

Divine Father-Mother, we invite you to take up greater residence in our hearts, increase in us your great presence which is peace, power, wisdom, compassion, love, joy and life itself, reaching fully into this life and out beyond the limitations of our mortal existence.

Divine Lover of all that you have created and are creating, we thank you for our lives, including the challenges of both joy and unrest as we move through this most recent stage of our collective existence on into a newer, brighter, wiser and more joyous stage of being.

Please bless us with your peace that passes all understanding and bring us into your infinite presence and strengthen us to love each other unconditionally for the rest of our lives and forever.

Amen

(inspired by and includes the Prayer of St. Francis)