A Solemn Journey...

Photo by Martin Stranka

I feel deeply for a world in pain...
I know others of you do too...
A world bound by insanity and ignorance,
hatred and greed;
holding onto racist ideologies,
beliefs of empires of the past,
tattered by time and flamed by delusion.
Volatile violence erupting from darkened minds;
the new "prophets" of a civilization in denial
- uncivil -

burdening others with their detritus; like
robots blindly playing their part in the universal
tick-tock - already dead - lost to false beliefs -
blinded by their own nightmare,
wanting to inflict their pain on others...
Children killing children...
Survivors traumatized for life...

And we - the collective "we" - carry on-
business as usual...

Nothing changes...
And yet - Everything changes...

Life is a solemn journey for many...

Prayers for a broken world...

Mystic Meandering
May 15, 2022
revised May 24, 2022

~

Photo from No Mind's Land

 

 

The Real Virus...

In the first minutes of dawn,
at the edge of the dark night,
she awakes...

Inexplicable dread overtakes her...

... a dream?

...or the zeitgeist of our time...

~

In the dark hours of time,
a "virus" slipped in;
a failing, narcissistic system;
a divisive ideology,
resurrected from former shadow
minds of tribal hatred,
attempting to invade and isolate
through the power of greed and
self-interest...

Turning us
against ourselves with its myopic lens,
demeaning and deriding
"other" cultures,
"other" races,
"other" religions,
"other" peoples -
while pretending
to protect its own...

The "virus" imposes boundaries on a
boundaryless world,
polarizing unity into fragments
that shatter,
creating the current paradigm
of Ignorance,
Paranoia,
Protectionism,
Isolationism,
Narcissism,
Nationalism,
Racism,
Fear
 and
 Violence.

But those who know the beauty of
true Light,
endure the false light,
knowing that the mindless "virus"
cannot shatter the pristine Light of
a radiant Cosmos;
for it cannot be rent in two
by the darkness of ignorant minds
whose pretense and perniciousness
would even attempt to destroy
what cannot be destroyed:

The Eternal, Infinite Light and
movement of a Grand Cosmic Mystery
with its own Rhythms and Purposes
unknown
by
feeble, darkened minds
and the ineptness of
fake power.

Mystic Meandering
January 23, 2017

~

May the Infinite Spirit of Love heal our
wounded lives and help us endure what
is happening in our country and the world...

Namaste

_/\_

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Free to BE - Fred LaMotte

The first discipline of non-violence is to honor every human
being as a unique soul-body, refusing to identify them by
race, gender, religion, or political party.

Yet just as much as right-wing movements, today's "progressive"
movement often promotes conflict and division by labeling
individual Persons by their group identity.  Some of us who
talk about "diversity" actually stifle it, because real diversity
is not to promote tribalism [or nationalism], but to recognize
the incomparable [unique] Personhood of individuals.
[As it also says in the Declaration of Independence.]

It is much easier to hate a category than a Person, whether
your animosity is toward Muslims or Christians, "black people",
or "white people", liberals or conservatives.

The beginning of world peace is to free each human soul-body
from racial, political, or religious abstractions.  Our incidental
association with a group is not who we really are.

I do not identify my Self [Eternal Being] as a color, as rich
or poor, capitalist or socialist, Republican or Democrat,
Christian or Pagan [or American].  I am neither "good" nor
"evil."  Those are just conceptual chains with which your mind
attempts to enthrall me.  But I am not your concept of me:
you are.

If you want to superimpose a group identity on me, that is your
act of violence against the singularity of my Personhood.  You
are free to label me, but I am also free...  I refuse to identify with
your label...

I Am who I Am...

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance
(from a 2018 post)

[brackets mine]

Photo from Stillness Speaks

~

This is a newspaper clipping from 1968 that I still have.
The same year that Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy
were assassinated...

~

We are truly Free when we recognize our Eternal Beingness
in each other, and, the diverseness of our individuality
that expresses that Beingness, and treat each other with
respect and compassion...

Race and Walls - Kendi and O'Donohue

What a powerful construct race is - powerful enough to consume us.
But for all that life-shaping power, race is a mirage, which doesn't
lessen its force.  We are what people see ourselves as,
whether what we [they] see exists or not.
What people see in themselves and others has meaning and
manifests itself in ideas and actions and policies....

Race is a mirage but one that we do well to *see*,
while never forgetting it is a mirage, never forgetting that
it's the painful light of racist power that makes the mirage.

Ibram X. Kendi

from: How To Be An Antiracist

A provocative and fascinating look
at how to end racism in the Western mind,
and to see that beyond race we are all fully
human.

~

Your complicity with other people's images and expectations
of you allows them to box you in completely.  It takes a long
time to recognize how some key people on your life's
journey exercise so much control over your mind, behavior,
and actions.  Through the image they project onto you
through the expectations they have of you, they claim you.

Most of this is subtle and works in the domain of the implicit
and unstated subtext; it is, of course, all the more powerful
for not being direct and obvious.  When you become conscious
of these powerful builders and their work of housing you in,
something within you refuses to comply; you begin to send
back the building materials.

Such projection and expectation is based on their fear and the
need to control.

John O'Donohue
from: Eternal Echoes

~

Photo from the internet

Hate - Baldwin, Kornfield & Seng T'san

I imagine one of the reasons that people cling
to their hate (prejudice and racism) so stubbornly
is because they sense that once hate is gone,
they will be forced to deal with
their own pain...

James Baldwin

~

We project our fears and hate onto others
because we can't look honestly
at ourselves...

Jack Kornfield
Buddhist Teacher

~

When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinion for or against anything.

To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.

When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the minds essential peace is disturbed....

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject
that we do not see the true nature of things.

Seng-T'san

Chinese Poet

~

Photo from the internet