A New Story: Rewriting the Future

Our true self is like that pearl of great price or treasure buried in a farmer's field. It's like a beautiful, glistening radiant diamond, carved and shaped and worn as the most precious jewel as a forever keepsake from a lover.  Only, the Lover is our beloved Father Creator and the diamond is our eternal spirit which he has always and will always love as His own self buried within us.  We were created in love and live in love.  We are beloved forever and always will be.

Yet, sometimes it just doesn't feel like that.  The past has darkened our hearts leaving an ashy footprint in the ruined days it caused us, and when we look into the future through the lens of the past, it looks just as bleak.  It's been a long time since love graced the doors of our hearts and life has been a long thankless, tedious, empty journey.  Where did the hope for a bright future go?  Where is the music that sang in the heart?

The past was only our perception anyway, just as the birth of the future will also be from this moment on.  How will it be?  Will it be darkened by the ashes of our past, or can we leave the past behind and create our future with new hope, a new vision. Without a new story, we will perpetuate the old one, chapter after chapter, year after year.  We will drag the old into the pristine new future, only to darken it too. It's time for a new story.

The new story is the one we write, not the one that was etched into our lives by others.  It will require courage, trust, faith, and a genuine, sincere, desire for something better, something new. It is our story.  It is our life.  It's time to cut the cords to the past.  It's over, so we have to let it go.  The future is ours to dream new life into being just as a fresh new canvas calls to our inner artist.  How beautiful do we want it to be?  How colorful, how alive, how radiant, how joyous?  What, where, when, how and with whom do we want to live our new life?  The possibilities are endless.  Life is long.  Life is good.  Life is joy. Life is a gift given to us by the great lover of life itself.  As love is the ultimate inspiration for creation, there is no situation that love can't remedy.  The solutions are endless - as endless as life itself and love itself.  It is all good.  All of it.  

A new hope dawns

You have no need to travel anywhere.  

Journey within yourself,

enter a mine of rubies and bathe

in the splendor of your own light.

 - Rumi

The times were a-changin' when Bob Dylan* sang to a whole generation awakening after the Second World War.  Today, the times have changed. 

While we continue to pick up the pieces of a fallen cultural empire, the revolution is complete. An ancient religious hierarchy which had controlled the western world is crumbling and now revealing a truth unseen in 20 centuries. Today its once suppressed and hidden message has been discovered revealing a timeless truth with unimaginable power in the daylight of our new age. 

When Dylan sang his prescient lyrics, the country was immersed in a counter-cultural call to end a bitter, ruthless, immoral and illegal war.  Courageous college students around the country stood up (well, actually sat in) to protest the war.  In their righteous call to end the war, they ripped off the government's covert political agendas revealing an astounding level of corruption. As they tore down systems of national and international exploitation, they effectively left no stone unturned.  Everything from national and foreign political agendas, health, environment, education were scrutinized and challenged.  No sacred cow was left unexamined.  

Then, as if heaven itself was herding the rebellious generation's mission to find light in the darkness, the Nag Hammadi, which had been found in the desert in 1947, was translated from Coptic into English. The translation shocked the Christian world.  It shed truth on the last remaining untouchable system of control - The Church. The authentic and original teachings and ministry of Jesus was revealed and is anything but what the church had taught over the centuries. 

In fact, it seems the church had gone to great pains to hide the truth.  It had effectively crucified Christ's teachings so badly that when the post-war generation began exposing its errant systems, the church began to lose its ability to guilt and control the masses, leaving a spiritual vacuum in the wake of its fall.  

Dark angels took hold in the decades that followed as the next generation staggered and stumbled in a spiritual void. Slowly and persistently, many continued to seek the truth amid the ruins of a theologically fallen spiritual empire only to discover -while the truth was hidden - it was always there. 

As the image of  the Good Shepherd painted on Catacomb Walls, where once persecuted Christians hid from their Roman oppressors, Christ stands in broad daylight and in full power to gather the people of the earth together in love and in power. (The irony is not lost on those of the new revelation and only drives home the ancient truth that what was hidden in the dark would one day be revealed in the light.)  

The Good Shepherd still lives, and delivers a message which resonates around the world in alignment with those of other ancient faiths.  Today, as the earth is hurtling on a collision course to self-destruction, if the world now has ears to hear and eyes to see the power in this spiritual truth tragedy may be averted.

The following is from the Gospel of Thomas, verse 3, in the Nag Hammadi:

"Jesus said, If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you.  If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.  Rather, the kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.  When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons (and daughters) of the living father.  But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

_________________________________

Bob Dylan's The Times are A-Changin:

Living in Love

Artwork: Goxwa Borg

Peace is born within the silence of our minds. As Martin Luther once wrote, the mind is a war zone and we struggle for peace there first. It is always there.

Tragically, too often peace is lost when we are distracted by fears, worries and the million other thoughts that bombard us. They overtake us.  While we fight them, struggle to gain control over them with the use of alcohol or drugs - prescription or otherwise - to dull their power to inflict emotional pain, they ultimately cause us to suffer.  This is Buddha's definition of suffering and its root cause.  There is another way to peace and relief from the suffering for which all the great masters and teachers as Buddha, Christ, Krishna and the Yogis advocate.  That way is simple. We can all do it. We all do it every day, yet too many of us just don't know it. The masters invite us simply to breathe and enter the rich, palatable silence within. Christ calls this an inner kingdom, a vibrant and beautiful place of encountering the divine knowing.

Breathing slowly amid incoming thoughts, yet mindfully hearing them, even briefly lingering with them before departing again into the silence, we begin the way into the "kingdom within."  Breathing deeply, inhaling, exhaling while directing the mind, as a plane slowly lifts off from a busy airport, softly an inner space is finally reached. Imagine the deep silence of space outside the earth's orbit. While the same thoughts or even more thoughts and worries attempt to reach the mind as heat-seeking missiles would search and destroy the peace, once the outer ring is reached, it's too late for the invasive thoughts. We've reached the quiet inner plane of mindfulness where thoughts cannot enter or contaminate the peace.  Eventually, the outer mind - often called the ego or "monkey mind," dims into the distance.

Quieter now, having lost the power to distract, thoughts sound more like a distant radio in a neighbor's garage. It becomes easier to tune into the interior plane and rest in that quiet. Time seems also to disappear.  While thoughts will return occasionally, we can steer our minds away from them, concentrating on a word or thought-feeling, which keep our minds on course by pushing consciousness deeper into the silence. This may be a bit of a process for a while, but eventually, the thoughts dim and peace is reached. As a cool breeze and warm embrace from a lover, we are overcome by peace. The longer we remain in the silence, the deeper the peace.  It can last the entire day until we return to the silence. 

Rapt in peace, now we respond to daily life with a calm we didn't have before. Decisions are made with more clarity, mindfully and intentionally on behalf of retaining that peace.  Love becomes an easier choice to make. That place of peace we'd encountered and lingered in earlier in the day is recalled throughout the day. Small minor thought corrections are made throughout the day to retain that inner peace. We find ourselves often turning away peace-sabotaging thoughts. This is just the beginning of entry into the presence of the Divine, the peace of Christ. 

This is the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding.  It becomes an experiential even intuitive knowing rather than a deductive theologically rational understanding.  You don't need a college education to enter the peace of God.  All you need is the unwillingness to be swamped and controlled by the world's cacophonous control and predatory mind-sweeping any longer.  This is freedom, ultimate freedom.  The thoughts are generated by the world's reach into your mind. 

The great masters and yogis call us to still our thoughts for just a while until we gain control of our minds - and consciousness - through that mindful awareness.  Then we can choose what we want to think about and what we want to avoid. Once we can do this, we can think with our bodies, sense how thoughts make us feel.  Does a thought make us feel lighter, happier, more inspired, more motivated, calmer?  Or, does it make us feel tense, frustrated, slower, sadder, apathetic, somehow dimmer?  As we regain the power of choice over our thoughts we learn to choose to release our power into all the choices we make.  This is what it is to be a powerful being.  

Jesus said we are all sons and daughters of God.  He said we could be like Him, if we so chose.  He did not ask us to worship him, He did not come to create a new religion. He came to teach us how to unplug from the world's control by stilling our minds until we could gain control of them and make more conscious and loving decisions, including reaching for a more enlightened dimension far beyond this one.  When we enter into the divine presence, we can become instruments of peace and that will change our lives and the world. We can become troubadours of peace, ambassadors of love by gently impacting life itself with our peace.  

Maybe, we can bring a little bit of heaven to earth with each breath. Maybe, we can just imagine a world as one, at peace.

True peace awakens in love

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: 

not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

   John 14:27 King James Version (KJV)

As global political tensions sweep across nations in cresting waves of fear as palatable and dense as the toxic air pollution seeping into our bodies, minds, hearts and homes all of life as we know it is threatened. 

This dark smog of fear gnaws at the hearts and minds of everyone, slowly eroding any hope for happiness as it tempts each one's sanity with an outlook so bleak many find themselves descending into suicide's bitter pit of despair.  This global poison is everywhere.  

Survival for each of us, as it is for all of us, depends not on our denial, or optimism, or community organizing or even democratic caucuses. It is an infection of the mind with no medical remedy.  It is most certainly evil as wicked as humanity's ancient foe.

Yet, there is an antidote that would free each mind from its cold, grip of despair.

It is peace. It is the peace finally penetrating a landscape the brutal cacophony of war pummeled with gunfire, bombing, and screams of terror. It is even in the eerie silence after all the men have gone home when the battle is finally over.  It is the morning after, when a soft rain washes the blood of death away, readying the land for the lark and nature's recovery.  And, yet, that is only an outer peace.  As all outer events are first born in the heart, for there to be peace anywhere, it has to begin in the mind. 

When Jesus breathes His peace on His disciples before His final departure, He says His peace is not like the peace after a war.  He is describing the most important peace, one that has the power to prevent wars, neighborhood gang violence, drug addiction, and so much more.  If each mind could find this peace, we would evolve into a peaceful world.

His peace is the gentle breath of peace which calms the heart when the mind finally is reassured that only love is real and that self-condemnation and judgment destroys our individual self-determination and self-valuing. It is that inner destruction that breaks down our inner peace, creating a war zone in our minds. So, the remedy is in realizing the world spins on judgment, not love, and we have been infected with its lies.  It is a frothy place of deception, corruption and predatory exploitation of innocence.

It is not eternal or divine reality.  It is only our collective illusion. Blindly, we all play a part in that global theater.  But, what if we could awaken and know, really know, that this world is NOT real and that there is something, somewhere that is.  It is that place of love and peace that Jesus is steering us to.

His peace comes when you realize and know in the furthest recesses of your soul, there is another world that is real and that world only loves.  Once you realize this, you will be able to cast off all your worry, fear and judgment. To embrace this truth - that love is the fresh air of our real world - the world's power to control our minds by feeding us the poison of anxiety, fear, and violence, is eliminated.  It melts as fast at the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz.

Then, you can look across your inner mind and breathe in the peace of the silence where once the terror of wrong thinking, of self-judgment, where once the thoughts of controlling others seeped into your mind and caused you so much despair, and know you are finally free.  Jesus' peace is liberation. It frees your mind from anyone else's control of you and sends away all your fears, anxieties and worries. 

As you take back control of your mind, you may want to sit in meditation and put in place an inner watchtower to guard your mind against the outer world's control of it through judgment.

Jesus' message was never about religion. It was always about peace which prevails in the knowledge that while you are in this world, you are not of it.  You are from a place that is real and you can return whenever you choose to love yourself and others.  This peace is compassion, first for yourself and then for others.

Revolution of the human mind

Those words above are meaningless to a dull, enslaved mind, fast asleep in a kind of drugged stupor. Too many of us are still unable to hear the alarm to awaken and take back our lives and our world. 

"Awaken to what?" you ask.  

Without a total revolution of the mind, we are unable to see. With our eyes closed, we are unable to see.  But, when we awaken we will see.  

When we awaken from our thousands of years sleep and discover what the ancients knew, sadly and terribly, we will realize we were lied to by those institutions and systems that purported to care, to love, to shepherd us.  But, they did not.  In fact, they blinded our eyes and sold us into slavery, left to languish for many long centuries while they pummeled our beautiful planet. We have remained this way until it was almost too late.

The antidote to that long intoxication is a simple truth.  It's an idea that will thrust humanity into an awareness leading to our long awaited and urgently needed awakened state of consciousness. 

The Divine lives within you not outside of you.  All that you need to know is within you. The knowledge and wisdom of God is within you.  You need not worship an external God, but listen to God's wisdom already planted in you.  You were born with it.  The Divine was always part of who you are.  It is what makes you perfect. You are holy and beautiful, wise and genius.  Do not believe otherwise.  

A voice other than God led you to believe you were unworthy, flawed, broken, dirty and undeserving of God's love and benevolent wisdom and guidance.  That is untrue.  You are beloved and perfect.  Listen to the Divine voice within you.  Listen for your intuition until it rings clearly through the layers of lies heaped upon you.  

If you attempt to hear God outside of you, you will hear the judgment and controlling powers of those outside of you who themselves never found God within them. They control you with fear and manipulation, threatening hunger, unemployment, poverty or even terror and the possibility of torture and death. It's on CNN and BBC and all the networks every day.  It's on the cover of every newspaper, magazine and on the radio and in the lyrics of all the current music and depicted in our movies and videos and television programming.  

The great lie has become so common no one questions it.  It is assumed among us and left unquestioned. We have been completely seduced. People have been lured like sheep to the slaughter, selling their souls to the cares, conditions and goods of this very unholy world.  

Over the centuries, somewhere along the line we submitted to the great and terrible lie.  Even the teachings of the one who came to "save" us from this terrible lie were turned upside down and rather than used to free us, were twisted and corrupted to more deeply enslave us. 

The Divine voice is magnetic, resonating through you, calling your consciousness to listen to who is within you, who is the authentic YOU.  Not other, but you!  As we each begin to listen to God within us, we will realize that the same God who is in each of us, is in all of us.  When we respond to God's voice, together we will move across the face of the earth with a force to recreate and take back our lives, nations, tribes and entire planet.  Together we will move as ONE because the One who created everything is for us and within us.

God has spoken again: One World, One People

Wake up and listen.

We need to come together as a world. All separate nations and tribes need to put down their differences, and join forces - spiritual, economic, environmental, political - to strengthen humanity for what may lie ahead. We need to look each other in the face and see each other as our brother or sister as if we came from the same parents.

Unlike any other time in human civilization, we need to come together as a single force.  Today, we are facing something we never expected and for which we are completely unprepared.  

God has sent a Messenger to us, who is being backed up and supported behind the scenes by those previous great prophets of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. We have to come together as a single world, collaborating together to face the changes that are sweeping our planet - from environmental crisis that could exterminate life on the planet to ending all the wars, building a new civilization that shares resources across the planet and build up a strong, whole, active world population. 

Here's the introduction to the New Message from God, which I encourage you to read.  At this time, I know of no other way to begin spreading this urgent message.  So, I'll post it here and continue to comment on it, discuss it with you, and hope that you read it and share your thoughts.  

"There is a New Message from God in the World. It has come from the Creator of all life. It has been translated into human language and understanding through the Angelic Presence that oversees this world.

It continues the great series of transmissions from the Creator that have occurred over centuries and millennia.

It is a New Message for this time and the times to come.

It fulfills the former Messages that have been given to humanity, and yet it reveals things that have never been shown to humanity before. For humanity is now facing a grave and perilous set of challenges, both within the world and from beyond the world.

The New Message from God is here to alert, to empower and to prepare the human family—people from all nations and religious traditions, from all tribes, groups and orientations.

It has come at a time of great need, a time of great consequence. It is preparing people for things that have not even been recognized.

It is prophetic in alerting people to the Great Waves of change that are coming to the world and to humanity’s position in the universe, especially regarding your contact with other races.

It calls upon the great spiritual presence within each person—the great endowment of Knowledge that has been given to the entire human family, which must now be cultivated, strengthened and brought forth.

It speaks to the great spiritual need of the individual—the need for purpose, meaning and direction.

It speaks to the great relationships that people can establish with one another, relationships representing their higher purpose in life.

It speaks to the needs of the world and the needs of the future. In so doing, it brings purpose and recognition, unity and cooperation, wisdom and strength to all who can receive it, who can learn it, who can follow its steps, who can contribute it to others and who can share its wisdom in service to other individuals, to families, to communities, to nations and to the whole world.

Receive this blessing. Learn of the New Message from God. Realize it will affirm all that is true within your current traditions, and it will speak to the deeper wisdom that you already possess. It will speak to your heart, even beyond your thoughts and beliefs and the thoughts and beliefs of your culture or your nation.

Receive this gift and learn of it patiently, taking the Steps to Knowledge, learning the wisdom from the Greater Community and recognizing the power of the One Spirituality of humanity in uniting humanity, in strengthening humanity and in preparing humanity to recognize and to navigate the difficult times ahead.

Receive the New Message in its calling for the preservation and the strengthening of human freedom, cooperation and responsibility.

For without this New Message, humanity is facing a grave and precipitous decline.

It is facing the loss of its freedom and sovereignty in this world to other intervening forces from the universe around you.

Without this New Message, the human spirit will remain dormant, and people will live lives of desperation, competition and conflict.

It is the Creator’s Will that humanity emerge into the Greater Community of life in the universe as a free and sovereign race—as a strong race, as a united race, as a race that is capable of maintaining its cultural diversity while honoring the deeper strength and purpose that will keep the world strong and keep the human family vital, active and creative, presenting a new opportunity for advancement in the future.

But to advance you must survive. You must survive the difficult times ahead, and you must survive competition from beyond the world regarding who will control this world and its destiny.

Each individual must recognize that they have a great opportunity to discover the deeper Knowledge that God has given them—the Knowledge which contains their purpose, their meaning and their direction and the criteria for all their meaningful relationships.

Therefore, there is a New Message from God for the individual, and there is a New Message from God for the entire world. It is here now.

It has taken a long time for the Messenger to receive it, for the Message is very great.

Honor then the one who has come to bring the New Message into the world.

He is a humble man. He has developed the wisdom necessary to undertake such a great role, and he has been sent into the world for this purpose.

Receive him. Understand him. Do not exalt him. He is not a god. He is a Messenger bringing the New Message from God into the world.

This is the time now. This is the great opportunity. This is the answer to people’s prayers all around the world—prayers through every faith tradition, through every nation and culture, praying for wisdom, strength, unity, freedom and deliverance.

Receive this New Message now. It is come, and it is come at just the right time.

Please see A New Message from God   https://www.newmessage.org/the-message/volume-1/god-spoken-again/the-proclamation

Peace is the way to peace

"Force, violence, pressure or compulsion with a view to
conformity, are both uncivilized and undemocratic." 

     - Mahatma Gandhi

As our city streets are filling once again with idealism, with young and old, who want to revisit the nation's economic system and are looking to some of the old thought from the 19th century to bring relief to the plight of our current economic climate, we need to be careful not to fall into the old pattern of revolution, riots, violence, bloodshed. 

It is one thing to come together under the banner of a beautiful vision for our country that edits - and I mean edits rather than completely rewrites - our current system, but it is quite another to follow in the footsteps of our Arab friends who are embroiled in unimaginable bloodshed. 

We need to remember the beautiful lessons Mahatma Gandhi taught us.  Peace is the way to peace.  And, any kind of oppression - whether it's corporate, political, economic that cheats the innocent of their fair share through the cunning and predatory behavior of the loveless and selfish is violence against those people.  So, the entire "occupy" conversation is about peace and nonviolence in a less obvious,  indirect way.  It is again an opportunity to step out on the world stage, into world history, and effect change drawing on love and nonviolence as the means.

If, we, the people, are to continue to lead the world as a free society, advocating for peace, liberty, free expression and free enterprise, we have to hold that noble vision with as much dignity and maturity as possible.  We have to remain peaceful at all times, regardless of whatever comes our way.

One of the best ways for people to come together, to move as one body, one mind, is through music.  In the '60s when Americans poured out into the streets calling for an end to the Vietnam War, it was music that spoke to the masses and for the most part, the masses remained peaceful.  The war ended and everyone went their own way. 

Now, we're back in the streets again, calling for further changes, for a modified economic status quo, one that may call for a revamping, a remedial restorative role by government in the outrageous bank policies, which have gone on unchecked and continueto be backed by corporate interests.  In my simple opinion, the system may be beyond repair. BUT, the opportunity for people to come together - to sing one song - is beautiful. 

It's the vision that's so powerful and if we can hold that vision, together, in peace, believing in faith, loving and inviting God into the masses, the change may not be what we can envision today, but it may be what is best, what  brings together diverse threads of our common humanity to heal our country, and send healing ripples throughout the world.

"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love. 

It is entirely the perogative of the brave." 

- Mahatma Gandhi

Where are the Bob Dylans, and the Peter, Paul and Mary's of today?  You are out there.  Put your songs on the streets again.  As we sing together, we knit our hearts and minds together, and thereby become stronger and more invincible.  This occupy movement must not be seen as another "dirty hippie" event.  (I'm sure you've heard its detractors) Rather, it's a powerful need that must be handled with expertise and great wisdom and vision. We need to be united, we need to be peaceful and we need to be wise - and not just for ourselves, but for the whole world because the whole world is watching.

While the traditional meaning of "anarchy" is NOT what we want, it is possible that an understanding of "anarchy," as per Norm Chomsky may be worth considering. Following is an article in which he discusses his vision of a helpful form of anarchy (bloodless, of course).


http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19760725.htm
The Relevance of Anarcho-syndicalism
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Peter Jay
The Jay Interview, July 25, 1976

"... there are obvious tendencies in industrial capitalism towards concentration of power in narrow economic empires and in what is increasingly becoming a totalitarian state. These are tendencies that have been going on for a long time, and I don't see anything stopping them really. I think those tendencies will continue. They're part of the stagnation and decline of capitalist institutions." - Norm Chomsky (from 2nd last paragraph of this article.)