Slice the bread for your toast with love and gratitude, drive
your
car with love, love the people you come in contact with, be the love
you are in your workplace, when you shop let love
guide the way you interact, as you spend your evening, love yourself, as you fall asleep, be in Love. If
you sit
in a cave for the rest of your life, love your cave and sit and
contemplate the world with love.
You do not have to "do" anything. Just "be" the love that you
are.
********************************************************
revenge/ compassion... by Linda Stewart, experiencer, moderator,
nde@yahoogroups.com
Each
of us project our own perceptions of life upon any scene or scenario we encounter; thereby, creating our individual version
of reality. We think if we could change the world, everything would be okay. Wrong!
All we
have to do is change our mind about the way we think of things. Accept that all of the different life vignettes we perceive,
we have created by our own thoughts and that God within us uses our own miscreations as lessons from which we can grow.
When I speak to people about the concept that there is
no evil or that what we see as evil, is only a misperception we have projected,
I sometimes find very strong resistance. When I state that there is no sin or evil, I am not suggesting that we humans
do not make mistakes, and sometimes the mistakes take the form of heinous crimes against humanity.
But even those crimes are forgivable in the sight of
God because he does not judge or condemn us; He only wants us to change. When I am counseling someone who is struggling
very hard with this idea, I give the example of a time when my son asked me if I would always love him, no matter what. My
answer was yes, of course.
Then he added, "Even if I killed someone?"
My answer still was, "Yes" but I added that I would be
the one who called the police to turn him in. I would also visit him in prison every time the doors opened, consistently
tending, loving and hoping that he learned from the horrible lesson he had created by his actions. The crime of murder
is considered sinful, an evil act. And yet I would never stop loving my son, nor would I have him hurt or tortured,
even for a second, whatever he might do.
I pose the following situation: assuming you have children
and one of your children comes to you in secret, admitting he had killed the neighborhood bully and thief, because everyone,
including himself had been stolen from, brutalized, and they walked around in terror of meeting up with the brute. What
would you do about it?
Would you demand that the bully’s hands be chopped
off so he could not steal from anyone again (as some cultures have done)? Murder is the ultimate sin in many people’s
minds, perhaps even yours. Yet would you have your son put on the rack and tortured by having his body stretched in
excruciating pain until his spine snapped in pieces, in retribution for his "sin" (this was a type of torture used during
the inquisition)?
For other crimes, would you have the eyes of your child
gouged out, or have him burned at the stake? I doubt it. And do you think you love your children more than God
loves His?
If you consider that the acts of revenge I just described
have some degree of mercy because they result in death, then think of how horrific the judgment is that many religions suggest
God would make against us if He thought we were evil. The punishment of religion’s God is even more horrendous
because the unspeakable torture to which he would presumably condemn us would last for an eternity, with no chance of reprieve.
This is not true; it does not happen. The
stories brought back by Near Death Experiencers, even those
who were murderers, and who have had first hand experience in the presence
of God and the Beings in Heaven, tell us that we are not judged.
Rather, our loving spirit guides gently show us the consequences
of our actions and through our understanding we have a change of heart. This is all God wants: for us to change our minds
about the life we lead. We make mistakes both large and small and He waits patiently as we learn our spiritual lessons.
On earth, we perceive reality that we then project outwards,
based upon our choice between two ways of thinking. We are of two minds and every choice we make, every thought we think,
every word we utter, and every action we take is made from one or the other.
When we think with our ego or personality mind we are
using the limited thinking that leads us into chaos. When we are willing to relinquish our little ego thinking and trust
the part of our mind that remembers and listens to the voice for God, then we can make decisions that reflect the Love of
God. Choose for God.
***********************************************************
compassion... by Marie Taylor, non-experiencer, http://www.onemountainmanypaths.com
I was reading a book the other day by Robert
Adams, an American born mystic who passed about ten years ago. His presentation is very easy to read, simple and direct. Someone
asked him about compassion; his answer made my thinking/reading mind stutter, stall and, for an instant, stop. He said, “Compassion
is not being against anything.”
My mind’s first reaction was ‘He
means not being against something as long as it’s not bad. It’s okay to be against something bad.”
But the more I thought about it, the more my judgmental mind rebelled. “Does he mean to say that it’s okay
that people are child molesters or animal torturers, etc., etc.” So I had to look deeper.
Compassion is often confused with pity but there
is no similarity. In pity, you look (down) upon some poor wretch, see what a shambles his/her life is, draw upon your own
stronger resources/wisdom/insights, and show them ‘your’ way out of ‘their’ situation. It’s
a kind of a “you poor thing, let me show you the error of your ways,” – a rationale similar to our foreign
policy in Iraq as well as the resistance to it.
And while it may be the heart whose interest is
first aroused in a situation, it is the mind that moves in, judges, finds it wanting, and offers a solution. A wall has gone
up in which you, the good guy, are on one side, the other person, the bad/foolish/pitiable guy, is on the other.
If we examine Adam’s definition of compassion
– not being against anything – another picture emerges. The word ‘against’ brings to my mind the image
of a stone wall – either building one for protection against ‘invaders’, leaning on one for support, or
pushing a field of energy in front of you to repel. Against is the essence of dualism.
If you are not against anything or anyone,
you build up no protection, lean on no support or resist any flow. Does this mean you will be overrun, defeated, collapsed?
Does this mean you condone the actions of murders, rapists, etc.? But to condone is an action of the judging mind –
“I don’t condone what you do but my spiritual teaching tells me I must forgive you – although I really
don’t.”
If life brings us a loss or sadness, do we set
up barriers to feeling it deeply? By resisting the sadness, we hold it to us. If life brings us a great joy, do we cling to
it? By clinging, we hold it to us. This holding on becomes memory and we then use this information to filter the experience
of life- thinking to repeat the good and avoid the bad.
Soon we experience only what the mind ‘permits’.
The holding on blocks the ongoing flow of life through us and we begin to wonder why everything is so flat. But, if we are
not against anything coming in, we are also not against anything going out.
Compassion is neither holding on nor pushing away.
By not holding on or pushing away, we are, by default, painfully tender, life is acutely poignant because we feel its transitory
nature. There is no judgment of good or bad, worthy or unworthy, just deep, deep silence.
It is found in the catch in the throat when we
see a child’s first step, or, hear an old person’s last sigh. It is the gasp of seeing a whale crest the water
or the parting from a beloved. There is nothing that needs to be, indeed can be, changed, kept or repelled.
Compassion is beyond mind and judgment. It is
seeing what is behind external appearances to the Consciousness beneath. It is in touch with the Real which by definition
is Unchanging and Eternal. It is the recognition that the play of life is the Dance of Change. To resist its rhythm is to
never rest in the joy of stillness.
* * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
writing on the wall ... By JDBourdon
Seen on the the men's room wall of Hotel Utah, San Francisco...
Q: Is Love still Alive?
A: It is as long as you don't let it die.
***************************************************************************************
bird in a cage... by Marie Taylor, non-experiencer, http://www.onemountainmanypaths.com
Her name was Sally and she shared the room in the nursing home where my mother had just been moved.
She had a high piping voice like a small wren; she was delicate and was probably short even before the diabetes had claimed
her legs from the knees down two months ago. “If I just sit in my room I look at my legs and cry,” she said. “So
I go out in the halls and talk to people. Then I don’t think about it so much.”
My mother on the other hand had not achieved this detachment and instead was lying on the bed
crying out for God to rescue her in a frightened weak voice. Since I was a child I had heard her speak of the horrors of nursing
homes and her biggest fear was that she would end her days in one. It was this fear, in fact, that had powered her resistance
to even moving to an assisted living accommodation. Instead, she spent the last year and a half of her life living alone and
isolated in a senior apartment, rarely visiting the community room and waiting only for a relative to call or take her out
to lunch or to the doctors.
In the last several months of her life, her mind became even more confused and she would often
phone in the middle of the night thinking it was morning, or make several calls in succession to the same person not remembering
the prior ones. Last fall I had consulted a lawyer to see what I could do improve the quality of her life but was told that
since I did not have power of attorney I would have to wait until an emergency occurred at which time the hospital or doctor
could recommend a different environment. The phone call finally came a couple of weeks ago.
I flew back East and found her in a hospital bed, her thin arms bruised from the IV’s and
tests, the sternum of her chest high and protruding like a baby bird’s. Although she recognized me, she was not surprised
to see me and immediately demanded to be taken home. She wasn’t sure where she was but said the doctor had taken her
to a room and wanted to clone her which she refused because she ‘didn’t go for that sex stuff.’ The woman
in the next bed said, “God did not mean his children to suffer like this.”
The next week was filled with visits to the lawyer, the bank, the nursing home, the funeral home
– for I knew that she was on her final journey and there were preparations to be made. The afternoon she was admitted
to the nursing home was the worse for there was still a glimmer of rationality blinking off and on and she knew that her worst
fears had been realized. She railed, cried, tried to get out of bed, take off her clothes. She called out for her mother and
Saint Anthony. Nothing anyone said could penetrate the fear that surrounded her mind.
I saw people of all shapes and sizes in the nursing home – some rational, some not; some
in wheel chairs and walkers, some needing to be fed like a child, some silent in beds. It was a place that most of them had
come to die but there was no chapel here, no quiet room for meditation. Instead, there was a large community room with a big
screen TV, a smaller room for games and bingo, a lunchroom for meals. The purpose seemingly was to distract the mind, to keep
it busy so that most ancient of visitors, death, did not need to be acknowledged.
As I saw these old, damaged people I was surprised that I had no desire to turn away from their
pain, nor any pity for their condition. Instead, I saw bright birds trapped in rusting cages some of whom were beating their
wings against the wires attempting to escape. Some birds sang while others wept; some slept while others talked. I kept repeating
a line from The Course in Miracles to myself. “I am not this body. I am as God created me.” I felt in myself a
glimmer of what is called compassion – not a desire to change what is, but an acceptance of it, and a knowing that all
things are perfect in God’s eyes.
I flew home the seventh day knowing that I would not see her alive again but not knowing when
she would leave. Just eight hours after my return I got another phone call at 4 in the morning saying she was failing fast.
Knowing that time and space have no authority in things of the spirit, I urged her to let go and relax into peace. An hour
later she was gone and I prayed that the bright light of that new world would not frighten this woman who had lived so long
in dimness.
The funeral is over now; documents filled out and filed, meals with relatives eaten, old photos
looked at and old stories told. Yet what is the sum total of this life that had taken 92 years in the telling? That life lives
through us and there is no doer, only doing; that what we fear is what we create; that love may at times be forgotten yet
never erased; that even the loneliest bird at last finds its way back home.
