therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God.
I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu,
a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic…Mother Teresa
More of my thoughts on religion and God: For as far back as we can remember, religion has been a source of contention, being the cause of many wars and countless deaths and sufferings in the name of God. Most religions say that they are the only true religion and that all others are wrong. This is a result of the false belief of separateness - separate from God and separate from each other and nature. We are all a part of God because we exist. God can be interpreted in many different ways. Religions tend to teach that God is a separate entity, whilst other belief systems speak only of a 'Creative Force'.
We are of the same 'stuff' that God is made from. Each a spark of the Divine Creative force (Love). We are here to experience life in the form of matter. We are all spiritual beings having an adventure, and we will all eventually return to the same place. It is time now to have respect for each and every different religion or belief system, and allow each person his/her right to follow the path or belief system of their choice - without preaching at them or trying to convert them, or even killing those of a different belief system.
A friend of mine wrote this next piece. My faith is secure enough that even though I may not agree with everything she says, I know she speaks her truth and for that I respect and have no right to reject, because we are both more alike than different. I am willing to find the common ground for us both to stand together as one……. "I believe in nonviolence. As such, I cannot support American troops on their mission of mayhem in the Middle East. I shall never accept killing in the name of God. This is a duality, a double standard absolutely.
You cannot say "I love God" with your mouth while your hands are busy holding AK-47s. It doesn't wash. Christ said, "Don't serve two masters. Love God with your whole being." This also means one's hands.
Why would anyone swallow the puerile propaganda put out by the leaders of the land? Mental laziness. Spiritual brainwashing. Oh, I used to believe as you. I waved Old Glory and sang "America the Beautiful" at every governmental prompting.
That was before I was in the Ambassador Hotel the night Bobby Kennedy was slain by a puppet of the government. That was before I saw a man, an unarmed Vietnam protester, bludgeoned to death in San Francisco by a keeper of the peace, a policeman. His brains and blood were splattered everywhere as he clung mercilessly to a pole, the life force ebbing from him.
I dropped the flag, quit hearing the official line and started thinking for myself. Questioning authority.
The concept of ahimsa, nonviolence, washes across the globe like a balm, transcending all faiths. I speak of God and Christ because that is my heritage, but I have read the Hindu Gita and the Koran, holy books. I adore the Sermon on the Mount, but I sing to the inspiring Buddhist "Heart Sutra."
The words of Gandhi fill my soul. Of violence, he said, "It appears to do good, but the good is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent."
I believe in nonviolence because of much higher teachings. I believe in Christ's love and peace. One member of JustPeace….I could have written this with only a few alterations, her ideas and mine are not all that far apart and more the same than different.
I recently read Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn's commencement address to Harvard's 1978 class that struck me hard with his observations…here is the jest…… "On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life." .…."If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism."
I do not do labels, I prefer to be called a follower of Jesus Christ's teachings. No more no less. I have had the emerging need of late to separate myself from so-called Christians. (I feel if I have to stop and inform someone I am a "Christian," if they can't see Christ in me by my actions then it is probably best they don't know, they might think I am a hypocrite and all Christians act this or that way. Now, if someone happens to ask, that's different, that is my opportunity to witness for Him.) Student of Christ, that is what I am, I strive to embrace all faiths with Christ as my spiritual Shepard, I am one of his sheep, he knows me and I know him, his voice, I can recognize his voice. He also said, "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen." I try to love everyone because I want to, never because I have to. Jesus, through his word said, God can only be in worshiped spirit and in truth, Jesus left me all the tools I need to communicate with the unknowable through the holy spirit which dwells within my soul. This connection is my Devine instant massager through prayer, I talk to God and meditation is how I receive His response, his wisdom, knowledge of his will, and the power to carry out my purpose for which he sent me.
Much has been written about prayer in the Christian faith but there is little focus on meditation. Christians seem to want to refer to this mediation as contemplation, ponder, think, consider, deliberate, reflect, ruminate, muse, mull, perhaps to separate this behavior from other belief systems. Meditate may sound too mystical. Call what whatever you want, the verbal symbols used to represent the action does not change what meditation is. This blog post is my attempt to give testament of why this activity is so important to my spiritual being. Learning to receive God's Word. Intuition, that knowing without proof.
Learning to sit quietly alone by ones self is a silent room with your mind clear of any of thoughts is difficult, well, it was for me anyway. We become conditioned to always be thinking about something. I would never developed to the level I am today if I was not in solitude. I will openly admit that I don't know everything, as much as I would like to, that's never going to happen, but I can tap into the One that does through meditation and prayer. Today, if I am not writing or reading, most of my idle brain time is spent either praying or meditating. I don't leave much room for the world to clog my reception, I am learning to master this gate keeping more and more each day. The results of tapping into this unlimited source has been overwhelming for me at times. I know in my heart the practice has made me a better human being and has moved me closer to God by becoming a productive spiritual being. There does not seem to be one best way to meditate, some methods work better than others, it is a highly individualized process. "Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen for God speaks in the silence of the heart"…. Mother Teresa
In music, it is the amount of space, the silence, between the notes that makes the noise joyful. I mean for perspective, a song is not all the notes played all at once. The same with written word, it is the space between the individual letters and the space length between words that make written thought possible, space gives the meaning to understand, meditation is that spiritual space in between my soul and God. Meditation is one of the best ways to learn how to know the unknowable, to improve conscience contact with my higher self. Practiced often enough it becomes automatic and instant, This silent space during meditation is where you can hear or sense that quiet still voice called intuition, some of us call this feeling the holey spirit. The native Americans relates that God is in the space between the inhale and the exhale of a breath.
This binary thought is everywhere if you pay attention to the contrasts. This light and dark make letters visible on paper, art possible. Nature too is a series of dualisms. The world can be viewed in terms of absolutes. Light and dark, good, evil. There is no gray area, you are either giving or receiving, we contribute to the light or the dark, one or the other at any given time. Half truths are whole lies…."It is not enough for us to say: "I love God," but I also have to love my neighbor. St. John says that you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live?"…. Mother Teresa
The Hindus have a greeting that roughly translates: the entity in me says hello to the entity in you. All of nature, of which we are part of, not separate from, as we have been conditioned to believe by religion, has this capacity to communicate through intuition. This unseen force that moves through everything is what tells a school of millions of like fish to instantaneously move and cut in unison one way or another to avoid danger. When one senses danger they all sense it together and move together as cohesive unit at the same time in one fluid graceful motion, making the sum behavior greater than individual separate actions. Human beings are born with this capacity, our thoughts, through meditation, move in the same manor. Science is only now beginning to study this phenomena of social convergence with earnest, this universal consciousness is real. Believers since the beginning of time have known of the power of this collective consciousness, know there is strength in numbers, have witnessed the power of the holy spirit move through a body of believers as one mighty force.
Emerson said, "the ancestor to every action is a thought." What we think about expands and this initial thought is the first step toward any action. God told us, my word does not come back void. With every thought we produce, we cast a ripple through the collective of all of humanity, good or bad. Like Jesus said, you commit adultery with your mind first before any act. He used adultery only as an example of the behavior. All of the spiritual teachers through the ages has expounded on this principle, basically saying "Guard your thoughts." "be careful what you wish or pray for." even praying for patience is risky if you really think about it. Just because our temporal bodies haven't developed, or lost the ability to use these spiritual tools to see, to realize, to interpret where these thoughts and prayers go, does not mean these prayers and thoughts are not received, not heard, not being answered. World peace is the thought I want to put out, if that is what we really want, we must think it and the actions will follow. Just remember, when Jesus Christ was born, he was called, "Emmanuel — God with us." Now, he is God in us!" I not only believe I can fly from the inside, I know I can, I do it everyday, and so can anyone and everyone.
You and I, we are the Church, no?
We have to share with our people.
Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not giving, not sharing.
Jesus made it very clear.
Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.
keep fighting the good fight, with your minds as weapons!!
.........................................kosmicdebris.............................................................
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