Events this Weekend
Hello all 🙂
There are many things happening which may be of interest to you in the next few weeks.
The John Two Hawks Concert to benefit the Living Insights Center in St. Louis is Saturday night. John Two-Hawks is a Grammy award winning Native American Flute player in the Lakota tradition. His music is unparalleled and this promises to be a beautiful concert. Tickets are buy 2, get 1 free for this benefit, located at the Midwest Music Conservatory Sat night at 7:00. You can buy tickets here.
There are events at MABA on Sunday, if you are interested in the Buddhist community in St. Louis.
Missy Bradley is bringing the Heroic Journey Seminar to St. Louis on Oct. 18, to Kansas City on Oct 19, and is in several cities in the meantime. You can find more info about registration for that here if you are in St. Louis or Kansas City. For other cities, you can find her schedule here. She is a dynamic speaker and this is a great seminar. And she is my co-author to boot! 🙂
Have a great weekend!
The Bridge, a Story about Consequences
“To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light…”
~~Carl Jung
This is a story about fear, about our choices and ultimately what we are responsible for in our lives…To what do we owe ourselves and the Other, whomever that may be?  How do we face our fears? If you like this story and the following questions, I wrote a post on the Blessings Blog called Smiling at Fear, about how we face these choices and deal with these inevitable situations in our lives.  If you are interested, you can find that here.
I got this story some time ago from Missy Bradley, the teacher of the Heroic Journey Seminar. If you get a chance to see her in your city, it is so well worth it! You can find her schedule here. This is a great story, and it a total cut and paste, nothing original here but not much I can do to improve on it, so enjoy!
The Bridge
By Edwin Friedman
There was a man who had given much thought to what he wanted from life. He had experienced many moods and trials. He had experimented with different ways of living, and he had had his share of both success and failure. At last, he began to see clearly where he wanted to go.
Diligently, he searched for the right opportunity. Sometimes he came close, only to be pushed away. Often he applied all his strength and imagination, only to find the path hopelessly blocked. And then at last it came. But the opportunity would not wait. It would be made available only for a short time. If it were seen that he was not committed, the opportunity would not come again.
Eager to arrive, he started on his journey. With each step, he wanted to move faster; with each thought about his goal, his heart beat quicker; with each vision of what lay ahead, he found renewed vigor. Strength that had left him since his early youth returned, and desires, all kinds of desires, reawakened from their long-dormant positions.
Hurrying along, he came upon a bridge that crossed through the middle of a town. It had been built high above a river in order to protect it from the floods of spring. He started across. Then he noticed someone coming from the opposite direction. As they moved closer, it seemed as though the other were coming to greet him. He could see clearly, however, that he did not know this other, who was dressed similarly except for something tied around his waist.
When they were within hailing distance, he could see that what the other had about his waist was a rope. It was wrapped around him many times and probably, if extended, would reach a length of 30 feet.  The other began to uncurl the rope, and, just as they were coming close, the stranger said, “Pardon me, would you be so kind as to hold the end a moment?”
Surprised by this politely phrased but curious request, he agreed without a thought, reached out, and took it.
“Thank you,” said the other, who then added, “two hands now, and remember, hold tight.”
Whereupon, the other jumped off the bridge.
Quickly, the free-falling body hurtled the distance of the rope’s length, and from the bridge the man abruptly felt the pull. Instinctively, he held tight and was almost dragged over the side. He managed to brace himself against the edge, however, and after having caught his breath, looked down at the other dangling, close to oblivion.
“What are you trying to do?” he yelled.
“Just hold tight,” said the other.
“This is ridiculous,” the man thought and began trying to haul the other in. He could not get the leverage, however. It was as though the weight of the other person and the length of the rope had been carefully calculated in advance so that together they created a counterweight just beyond his strength to bring the other back to safety.
“Why did you do this?” the man called out.
“Remember,” said the other, “if you let go, I will be lost.”
“But I cannot pull you up,” the man cried.
“I am your responsibility,” said the other.
“Well, I did not ask for it,” the man said.
“If you let go, I am lost,” repeated the other.
He began to look around for help. But there was no one. How long would he have to wait? Why did this happen to befall him now, just as he was on the verge of true success?  He examined the side, searching for a place to tie the rope. Some protrusion, perhaps, or maybe a hole in the boards. But the railing was unusually uniform in shape; there were no spaces between the boards. There was no way to get rid of this newfound burden, even temporarily.
“What do you want?” he asked the other hanging below.
“Just your help,” the other answered.
“How can I help? I cannot pull you in, and there is no place to tie the rope so that I can go and find someone to help me help you.”
“I know that. Just hang on; that will be enough. Tie the rope around your waist; it will be easier.”
Fearing that his arms could not hold out much longer, he tied the rope around his waist.
“Why did you do this?” he asked again. “Don’t you see what you have done? What possible purpose could you have had in mind?”
“Just remember,” said the other, “my life is in your hands.”
What should he do? “If I let go, all my life I will know that I let this other die. If I stay, I risk losing my momentum toward my own long-sought-after salvation. Either way this will haunt me forever.” W ith ironic humor he thought to die himself, instantly, to jump off the bridge while still holding on. “That would teach this fool.” But he wanted to live and to live life fully. “What a choice I have to make; how shall I ever decide?”
As time went by, still no one came. The critical moment of decision was drawing near. To show his commitment to his own goals, he would have to continue on his journey now. It was already almost too late to arrive in time. But what a terrible choice to have to make.
A new thought occurred to him. While he could not pull this other up solely by his own efforts, if the other would shorten the rope from his end by curling it around his waist again and again, together they could do it. Actually, the other could do it by himself, so long as he, standing on the bridge, kept it still and steady.
“Now listen,” he shouted down. “I think I know how to save you.” And he explained his plan.
But the other wasn’t interested.
“You mean you won’t help? But I told you I cannot pull you up myself, and I don’t think I can hang on much longer either.”
“You must try,” the other shouted back in tears. “If you fail, I die.”
The point of decision arrived. What should he do? “My life or this other’s?” And then a new idea.
A revelation. So new, in fact, it seemed heretical, so alien was it to his traditional way of thinking.
“I want you to listen carefully,” he said, “because I mean what I am about to say. I will not accept the position of choice for your life, only for my own; the position of choice for your own life I hereby give back to you.”
“What do you mean?” the other asked, afraid.
“I mean, simply, it’s up to you. You decide which way this ends. I will become the counterweight. You do the pulling and bring yourself up. I will even tug a little from here.” He began unwinding the rope from around his waist and braced himself anew against the side.
“You cannot mean what you say,” the other shrieked. “You would not be so selfish. I am your responsibility. What could be so important that you would let someone die? Do not do this to me!”
He waited a moment. There was no change in the tension of the rope.
“I accept your choice,” he said, at last, and freed his hands.
The End.
Copyright 1990, The Guilford Press, under option to Snaproll Films
The questions that come with the clinical book with this story are:
1. How would you get the man hanging from the rope to take responsibility for himself?
2. How much responsibility does the man on the bridge have for the other?
3. Why is is so difficult to let go once we are experiencing “rope-burn?”
4. What is a higher value, self-sacrifice or achieving your own salvation?
5. Why do the needy often get most needy when others around them are functioning best?
6. Why are the dependent so often calling the shots?
7. If the man on the bridge never got away, could the man handing on to the rope be accused of murder?
8. How does this story get played out in families, schools, religious institutions, health-care delivery centers, business organizations and government?
9. Could both men be the same person? If so, how?
10. If someone came up to you and said, “Hold the end or I’ll jump,” what would you do?
Food for thought.
Have a great weekend. peace 🙂
Smile at Fear…
Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future…
~~~Fulton Oursler
Because we are afraid, we develop all kinds of habits which over time lead to addictions. Human beings are funny like that–We look for strength in the things that weaken us…
~~Pema Chodron, Dharma Teacher
I took this picture over Labor Day weekend while hiking the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) in New Mexico. For those of you with eyes over 40, that is a cow patty with flowers growing out of it. You have to understand the enormity of the canyon and the area in which we were hiking to fully appreciate this image–ginormous doesn’t begin to capture it. The CDT runs from Mexico to Canada, it’s hundreds of miles long. We were in the Rio Chamas Wilderness section, just a few miles from the CDT trail head in New Mexico. There are countless acres and square miles in which this flower could have planted itself, but it chose to land in cow poo and stay there, to use the inherent qualities of the excrement for fertilizer and grow just a bit taller and stronger than the surrounding flowers. Let us take some instruction from this brave little wildflower– it was not afraid to get down in the muck and take root in order to grow and thrive in an otherwise harsh desert environment.
This is the area in which we were hiking…gorgeous, yes. But fully sunny, hot and dry during the day, chilly at night. Deep in canyons surrounded by mountains in the Chamas River Wilderness Area, about an hour outside of Santa Fe, 13 miles back on a red dirt road then walking toward Ojitos Canyon on the CDT…Desolate but full of Life, a blank slate on which nature and Life can assert itself to grow and thrive.
So that little flower could have inserted herself anywhere. But Life doesn’t necessarily choose what is easy, it chooses what is Life-Giving. And sometimes Life acknowledges that shit makes great fertilizer. But the truth is that as humans, we fear the pain, the stink, the stickiness, appearances of “how this will look,” and so we go for what seems easy in the moment, rather than what might actually feed us and give us more life. But choosing the easier, softer way may not always be life-affirming; if we are not discerning, it can also lead to addictions and much more pain. Fear can make us choose things which in the moment seem easier–it seems easier in the moment to avoid tears and pain. But in doing so, we often strengthen habits which just lead to more pain and fear and so on and on the cycle goes. The biggest obstacle to true healing is our fear, because what usually happens in the middle of big healing experiences is that our fear arises and we shut down or check out. Yet we can also use that same fear to move us forward or feed us, to strengthen us and lead us to seeking out a new way of being. Discernment is the key here.  (I recently wrote a more in-depth post on this concept in the Spirituality Blog called Spiritual Fruits or Just Nuts? You can read that here if you are interested. )
I think there is something really powerful and encouraging about knowing that since the beginning of time, humans have felt fear and elation, grief and joy, happiness and sadness, compassion and rage, resentment and forgiveness, hope and despair. The list of feelings and their opposites could go on and on, but the truth is we are not so different than our ancestors. All of the Religions of the Book and all of the sacred scriptures of each religion address this…each time the Angel of God comes to a prophet or recipient of Divine Love or Intervention, the first thing the Angel says is, “Be not afraid.” Not, “Hey Joe, it’s your lucky day!” But, “Fear not!” Fear is natural and human, but so is love. So is compassion. So is forgiveness and grace. It’s all true at once, and so we have to choose. We have to choose to heal. We have to choose to love. We have to choose to move forward in our fear, and of course that is the hardest time to choose something. But it can be done, and you don’t have to do it alone.
Humans have always divided off into groups or tribes and have always liked to talk about how civilized we are and how that group over there is so wrong or bad..you can see it now between Christians and Muslims, Muslims and Jews, Republicans and Democrats and on and on. But the real enemy, if there is an enemy at all, is our fear. Our fear of change, our fear of loss, our fear of success, our fear of failure, our fear of abandonment, our fear of getting what we want or not getting what we want, fear of really living, fear of what “they” will think, fear of how it will look if we ask for help or tell the truth of our lives, and on and on it goes. But if we get down to the basics of life, a Muslim parent in Afghanistan wants the same health and safety for his children as an American Baptist parent wants for his kids. We all want to be loved, to be nourished and to have happiness and freedom from want or suffering. We all want to be free of the things that bind us, we all want to feel safe and happy and know those whom we love are safe and happy as well.
There has been a lot of recent press about 9/11 and our fear based reactions to that date, to that event. What people fail to remember is that Iran was the first country to send condolences to the United States after the Twin Towers fell. Yes, Iran. Not Great Britain or Israel, but Iran. They were the first country to hold a prayer gathering and other Muslim countries quickly followed suit, because in that moment we were not enemies without official relations, we were all just human beings, all feeling the horror of the enormity of that loss. Human compassion was able to override fear and mistrust and bring forth compassion and prayer. Nine years later mistrust reigns again, but in the deepest moments of need, compassion can always take root. Like that flower, Life can always find a way to grow through the pain, through the fear, through what looks like shit, and come out smelling like a rose on the other side. Life just does that, because Life is rooted in Love, in our Oneness, in our connection.
The danger comes when we decide to root into our fears and just create more fertilizer in our life without ever really planting good seeds of compassion, growth, love or humility. The seeds we plant will always grow–of this there is no doubt. And poo makes great fertilizer regardless of the seeds, but as any gardener knows, too much fertilizer can also kill the plant. So when in fear, I have some choices…Will I ask for help? Will I be discerning about which seeds I am sowing? Resentment seeds seem to germinate faster than seeds of compassion, but both need fertilizer to grow. So which seeds am I planting today, which seeds am I feeding? What do I want this garden of my life to look like in a few months? Because have no doubt–the seeds you plant today will be harvested tomorrow. You can call it karma or what comes around goes around, you can call it fair or unfair, you can call it what you want and what you call it won’t change what it is: your responsibility. It us up to each of us to choose which seeds we will nurture and feed, because we all carry the seeds of hate and love, fear and faith, hope and despair within us. We can choose. I can choose. You can choose. It is not always easy, but it is always possible. This does not mean shutting off feelings, but really honoring them, inviting them in like a wise guest and accepting the gifts they offer us. It means we can choose which seeds we will cultivate over time, what we will feed, what we will harvest in the future. If you plant apple seeds you are not going to get pear trees, that’s just a fact.
The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron speaks of smiling at our fear and of embracing it, and speaks of the Buddhist saying,
Place your fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness…
It is a beautiful image of holding our own pain and fear with the same gentle loving-kindness we would extend to a beloved child. Fear is not the enemy. The “other” is not the enemy. What we truly wrestle with is our own inner demons, our own fears, our own sense of inadequacy. Our fear of not having enough makes us cheat or lie, steal or withhold, go too far or not far enough, hold back or shut down, hurt ourselves and others. Interestingly, the definition of a fully enlightened being is one who is fearless because they are intimate with their fear. Not that they don’t have fear, but that they have smiled at it, befriended it, invited it in like a wise teacher and discussed its gifts over a cup of tea. The enlightened ones are fearless because they know the nature of fear and no longer fear their fear, not because they have managed to shut it down or off permanently. This I like very much, this I find tremendously encouraging.
So today, like that little flower, we can choose to plant seeds of growth and abundance, of rooting down into the people, places and things which help us grow, regardless of how it might look from the outside. Today we can choose to plant seeds of compassion and love, of forgiveness and loving-kindness and just stay with it, even if it feels or smells like shit in the moment. Today we can smile at fear…
If you would like to watch Ani Pema Chodron talk about Smiling at Fear, you can see a snippet of that video below.
Wishing everyone peace and blessings and the peace and joy that comes from knowing we are all One, even in our fears. Have a great day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIOaJ7g09YM
9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance
Hello all! From some info I received from College Church in Midtown, this is just a direct cut/paste of the info. Sounds like the music will be great, the choir at College Church is always wonderful. Have a great weekend. peace to all… 🙂
“College” Church has been invited by our neighborhood churches in planning a day of service on Saturday, 9/11, the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. This is an opportunity to meet, serve alongside, and worship with folks from other congregations in memory of the victims of the 9/11 attacks and in honor of all of our local heroes who have given and risk their lives daily, including firefighters, EMS, police and those in the armed forces.
Planned Schedule
8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.: Gathering and registration for service projects of your choice in Strauss Park (across from the Fox)
9:00 a.m. to Noon: Collaborative service projects in neighboring area
Noon to 1:30 p.m.: 9/11 Prayer Service and Choir music (made up of all representative congregations including SFX) followed followed by BBQ lunch. Contact Vicki at vsimon1@slu.edu or 977-7309.
Peace to all… 🙂
Spirituality of Grief and Joy
Hello! 🙂
I received a few questions this week about the differences in the blogs I write, so allow me to clarify a few things about the differences in the blogs from Blessings Enterprises...
The Blessings Blog you are now reading was created to discuss topics specifically related to the work we do at Blessings Enterprises. So I will post things about events, education, cool healing things happening around town, blog about healing or techniques, have a thought of the day or whatever.
But since so many of my clients are out of town, I didn’t want to just fill your in-box with things that won’t always apply. Thus the Spirituality blog was started…there you will find posts on random ponderings, healing, spiritual practices, healing ideas, grief, joy, ways to walk the path and so on. Those posts tend to be a bit more personal in nature and are more reflective and spiritual in their approach. So if you are looking for that type of thing as well, you can subscribe those posts too. You can find that link here.
I promise your in-box won’t be inundated with tons of mail, I generally post on one or the other every week or so, sometimes more or less but on average about once a week.  Recent posts on the Spirituality Blog have been about living your dreams; things we do when upset or under stress and how to manage that without reacting; loving-kindness practices; grief, joy and so on. The most recent post is a reflection on Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and non-violent approaches to ourselves and others as we walk the path and live our dreams.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly or check out the Spirituality Blog. Thanks, have a great day!
peace 🙂
You May Say I’m a Dreamer, But I’m Not The Only One…
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you also refuse to hate him… ~~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by Love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law… ~~The Dhammapada
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor… ~~Anne Lamott
There has been a great deal of recent media attention about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. I absolutely do not want to politicize this blog, but I would like to talk about the background of non-violent resistance and the spirituality of the choices we make to non-violently engage aggression or oppression, in ourselves and with others.
Dr. King based a lot of his approach to non-violent civil disobedience on Quaker philosophy and Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of Ahimsa, which means non-violence in every aspect.  Ahimsa is the philosophy of total non-violence. It refers not only to physical violence, but all violence– all cruelty, all unkind words, thoughts, values and behaviors toward self and others. Teachers and committed practitioners of non-violence emphasize that peace begins within, with disciplined and mindful practices of prayer and meditation. True peace involves cultivating skillfulness in these areas. We cannot be peaceful toward others if we hold self-hatred in our hearts. To love one’s neighbor as oneself means we must practice peace and self-love first; not in an indulgent, mindless way, but with true mindfulness and balance.  We must truly practice non-violence within first in order to extend that to our fellows. We must be kind and gentle with ourselves first if we are to ever be consistently kind and gentle with others. (I wrote a lot about these practices in recent blog entries, if you are interested in learning more about these practices just scroll down to the previous posts).
Gandhi struggled with what to name this movement of active resistance and eventually coined a term he called Satyagraha.  Satya means truth, the equivalent of love, and both are attributes of the soul. Agraha is firmness or insistence. Satyagraha is therefore translated as Soul Force. Gandhi wrote, “Satyagraha is the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering upon an opponent, but on one’s self. The opponent must be weaned by patience and sympathy…” Weaned, not crushed or in anyway violated or retaliated against. A true adherent of Ahimsa shows the patient love of a mother to endure pain for the greater good of the birth of a beloved child.  Soul Force assumes peace is possible and returns good for evil until the evildoer grows weary of the evil itself.
Some of the great Gandhi thoughts on this philosophy and his beliefs can be summed up in these quotes…
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS. …Non-violence is the article of faith…It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business… Hatred can be overcome only by love…
At one time, Gandhi had considered himself an atheist but explored many religions and philosophies. He was deeply influenced by the Sermon on the Mount and some of the Buddhist scriptures, but eventually returned to Hinduism, the religion of his youth.  He was trained as a lawyer but nearly went broke because he was so afraid of speaking up in court or in public that he gave all of his cases away to other attorneys. Interestingly, the peaceful man known as a Mahatma, literally translated as “Great Soul,” described himself as at one time being very aggressive. His wake up call came one night when he and his wife were fighting and he became physically forceful with her, grabbing her wrist and trying to throw her out of the house. Her tears stunned him into silence and he vowed from that moment to cultivate an inner discipline and peace which eventually led to his commitment to non-violence.
The civil rights violations of his fellow man and the violence he personally endured because of the color of his skin sparked his non-violent action and led to a world wide movement. Gandhi based his non-violent resistance on the Bhagavad Gita and the Sermon on the Mount, citing their influences repeatedly. Martin Luther King Jr. based his non-violent civil rights movement on Gandhi’s ideas and methods after a trip to India, the Baptist minister bringing the message of spiritually based social justice full circle around the world. In his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Dr. King said,
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with Soul Force…
Buddhism, Hinduism, the Christian Gospels and the Religions of the Book all teach peace at their core. Gandhi understood this and thus his ideas and practices were based on the Hindu scriptures from the Gita and from the Sermon on the Mount. Dr. King and many others have followed those examples throughout the ages. With that in mind, a few thoughts on the Sermon on the Mount…
Matthew 5: 38-42
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles….”
These verses are taken from the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon in which Jesus addressed an oppressed people. Many consider the Sermon on the Mount to be the key address on Christian non-violence. It’s important to note that the people hearing this sermon were not rich and powerful; they were the poor, oppressed and downtrodden subjects of an occupying military force, as well as people oppressed by their own religious authorities. They were tired; they were in need of a Voice which told them they were loved and worthy, a Voice to speak of a deeper truth of Love, a Voice which reminded them, “You are the Light of the World.”  They were abused by the rich and powerful every day. What Jesus is advocating in this passage is about social justice, but in a manner which emphasizes non-violent active resistance to a violent system.
The phrase, “do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him also,” refers to the custom of the day and meant more to them then than it means to us now. A better translation of this from the Greek is “do not meet violence with violence.” This is not instruction to passively accept brutality or injustice, it is instead encouraging a courageous stand which exposes the violence.  During that time, the master or slave-owner had the right to strike the subject or slave on the right cheek—but only the right cheek, with the back of the right hand. To strike the left cheek would indicate a loss of temper or control and bring shame upon the one doing the hitting. But since it is impossible to strike the left cheek with the back of the right hand, what Jesus is advocating here is exposing the violence, but doing so non-violently.
The next instruction, “And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well…” refers to the time in which they lived and more customs of the day. At that time, the wealthy and those in power abused their authority by suing the poor and oppressed who literally had nothing but the clothes on their back. The court would then say the person had to forfeit their tunic, leaving them essentially standing in their underwear in court. What Jesus is saying is that if they want to try to humiliate you through abuse of power, to again resist non-violently and expose the violence. Be empowered but do so through your own sense of internal power, of knowing you are valuable and worthy as a child of God, but do not resist the evil of abuse with more violence. So if they want to strip you of all you have—fine. Counter with stripping down in court and exposing it all, literally. But do so from a position of non-violent empowerment, not angry retaliation.
The next line, “if someone forces you to go a mile, go two miles...” is part of an expression we use all the time without understanding its context. The Romans were an occupying force of that time and under the law a Roman soldier could force a person, usually an oppressed subject, to carry his pack one mile. While this might not sound like a big deal, it was abuse of power with serious consequences. The poor laborers of that time worked each day for their money and bought food for their families each night with their earnings. So to force a man to carry a heavy pack a mile meant he would then have to turn around and walk back to town, ensuring he would miss a day of work; this meant he and his family would therefore go hungry that night. Going the extra mile was again a way to expose the violence of the oppressor and be empowered in doing so, but again to choose to expose the injustice and violence through non-violent means.
There is much more to the Sermon on the Mount, as well as to the philosophy of non-violence called ahmisa. I will cover some of that in a future post, but for now, if you have never watched the full I Have a Dream speech, you can do so in the video below. It’s about 17 minutes long, so give yourself the time to really sit with it, and maybe ponder a few questions….
As we head into Labor Day, what are you really working for and toward? Does it feed your soul? Is it congruent with your values? Is your behavior in alignment with what you say is important to you and what you want to model for your children? As the Prophet Isaiah asks, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance…”
With that in mind…What are your dreams? Are you willing to work toward them without force, using methods of non-violence, starting with yourself? Are you ever forceful or violent toward yourself or others? Do you practice self-hatred or self-oppression which leads to aggressive behavior with yourself and others? Will you go the extra mile for yourself as a means of empowerment, but not force? Will you turn the other cheek with that voice inside that may be the oppressor and gently wean it from the harshness with which you speak to yourself? Are you violent and aggressive with yourself while you smile and pretend life is good, do you act as if all is well when you are enduring great pain inside?  Does life have to be forced and perfect, or can you strive for an excellent peace? Can you cultivate inner peace and share that with others?
Are there ideals or values you hold so dear you would die for them but not kill for them? Can you have a dream, vision or value so important to you that you give up everything in order to work toward it, but do so peacefully, allowing yourself to be transformed in the process?
What are your dreams today? What keeps you from your peace?
What are you willing to do to take responsibility for your dreams and your peace? Are you willing to use your own Soul Force to cultivate peace and non-violence within, to live your own dreams?  If you have these dreams, but haven’t opened yourself to them, why? And if not now, then when?
We may be dreamers, but we are not the only ones…
Have a great holiday weekend.
peace 🙂
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk]
Seek and ye shall find
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