Mahatma Gandhi: When I Despair

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 can seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Think of it - always.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Marian Wright Edelman: Every Day Light Your Small Candle

It is so important not to let ourselves off the hook or to become apathetic or cynical by telling ourselves that nothing works or makes a difference. Every day, light your small candle.... The inaction and actions of many human beings over a long time contributed to the crises our children face, and it is the action and struggle of many human beings over time that will solve them - with God's help. So every day, light your small candle.

 

- Marian Wright Edelman 

Pema Chödrön: The Natural Warmth of the Heart

I will always be profoundly grateful for the wisdom, 

compassion, and love of my many teachers, 

very much including Pema Chödrön. - Molly

"Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, 

can open us to a loving relationship with the world."

 BY PEMA CHÖDRÖN

Before we can know what natural warmth really is, often we must experience loss. We go along for years moving through our days, propelled by habit, taking life pretty much for granted. Then we or someone dear to us has an accident or gets seriously ill, and it’s as if blinders have been removed from our eyes. We see the meaninglessness of so much of what we do and the emptiness of so much we cling to.

When my mother died and I was asked to go through her personal belongings, this awareness hit me hard. She had kept boxes of papers and trinkets that she treasured, things that she held on to through her many moves to smaller and smaller accommodations. They had represented security and comfort for her, and she had been unable to let them go. Now they were just boxes of stuff, things that held no meaning and represented no comfort or security to anyone. For me these were just empty objects, yet she had clung to them. Seeing this made me sad, and also thoughtful. After that I could never look at my own treasured objects in the same way. I had seen that things themselves are just what they are, neither precious nor worthless, and that all the labels, all our views and opinions about them, are arbitrary.

This was an experience of uncovering basic warmth. The loss of my mother and the pain of seeing so clearly how we impose judgments and values, prejudices, likes and dislikes, onto the world, made me feel great compassion for our shared human predicament. I remember explaining to myself that the whole world consisted of people just like me who were making much ado about nothing and suffering from it tremendously.

When my second marriage fell apart, I tasted the rawness of grief, the utter groundlessness of sorrow, and all the protective shields I had always managed to keep in place fell to pieces. To my surprise, along with the pain, I also felt an uncontrived tenderness for other people. I remember the complete openness and gentleness I felt for those I met briefly in the post office or at the grocery store. I found myself approaching the people I encountered as just like me—fully alive, fully capable of meanness and kindness, of stumbling and falling down and of standing up again. I’d never before experienced that much intimacy with unknown people. I could look into the eyes of store clerks and car mechanics, beggars and children, and feel our sameness. Somehow when my heart broke, the qualities of natural warmth, qualities like kindness and empathy and appreciation, just spontaneously emerged.

People say it was like that in New York City for a few weeks after September 11. When the world as they’d known it fell apart, a whole city full of people reached out to one another, took care of one another, and had no trouble looking into one another’s eyes.

It is fairly common for crisis and pain to connect people with their capacity to love and care about one another. It is also common that this openness and compassion fades rather quickly, and that people then become afraid and far more guarded and closed than they ever were before. The question, then, is not only how to uncover our fundamental tenderness and warmth but also how to abide there with the fragile, often bittersweet vulnerability. How can we relax and open to the uncertainty of it?

Please continue this article here: https://www.lionsroar.com/the-natural-warmth-of-the-heart/

Mass Shootings: The Military-Entertainment Complex’s Culture of Violence Turns Deadly

This was written following the mass shooting in Las Vegas, which occurred four weeks ago. This excellent, well articulated, and vital article illuminates a much larger picture of violence in America and beyond, one which is critical for us to see, understand, heal, and transform. This is hard and painful work, this peeling off the layers of our not knowing and coming to see, to truly see the depths of what we are faced with and what needs to heal within us individually and collectively. Tragically, the deeply harmful and toxic distraction from this work that is propagated in much of the American media is that we Americans need to fear the Other in the form of the Muslim or Mexican, the Blacks or other people of color, the refugees or immigrants, those in North Korea or Iran, and all those "terrorists" out there. Yet Ron and I have dear friends who had to dive under a table in a shooting at a mall in Oregon three days before the much larger horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook. There are reasons for all this violence, all this home grown violence that is epidemic in our culture. May we all be courageous enough to seek to understand the larger picture. It is this deeper truth that has the potential to set us free to work together to heal the sicknesses of our nation and beyond and create a more just, kind, and peaceful world. Bless us all - Molly

 By John W. Whitehead

“Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of violence cannot be abstracted from either the culture of business or the corruption of politics. Violence runs through US society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all cultural sources, whether it be the nightly news or a television series that glorifies serial killers.”—Professor Henry A. Giroux

This latest mass shooting in Las Vegas that left more than 50 people dead and more than 500 injured is as obscure as they come: a 64-year-old retiree with no apparent criminal history, no military training, and no obvious axe to grind opens fire on a country music concert crowd from a hotel room 32 floors up using a semi-automatic gun that may have been rigged to fire up to 700 rounds a minute, then kills himself.

We’re left with more questions than answers, none of them a flattering reflection of the nation’s values, political priorities, or the manner in which the military-industrial complex continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.

For starters, why do these mass shootings keep happening? Mass shootings have taken place at churches, in nightclubs, on college campuses, on military bases, in elementary schools, in government offices, and at concerts. This shooting is the deadliest to date.

What is it about America that makes violence our nation’s calling card?

Is it because America is a gun culture (what professor Henry Giroux describes as “a culture soaked in blood – a culture that threatens everyone and extends from accidental deaths, suicides and domestic violence to mass shootings“)?

Is it because guns are so readily available? After all, the U.S. is home to more firearms than adults. As The Atlanticreports, gun fetishism has become mainstream in recent decades due in large part to “gun porn in music, movies, and TV, [and] the combination of weapons marketing and violent videogames.” (Curiously enough, the majority of gun-related deaths in the U.S. are suicides, not homicides.)

Is it because entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office? As Giroux points out, “Popular culture not only trades in violence as entertainment, but also it delivers violence to a society addicted to a pleasure principle steeped in graphic and extreme images of human suffering, mayhem and torture.”

Is it because the government continues to whet the nation’s appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters and video games)—what professor Roger Stahl refers to as “militainment“—that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America’s expanding military empire?

Is it because Americans from a very young age are being groomed to enlist as foot soldiers—even virtual ones—in America’s Army (coincidentally, that’s also the name of a first person shooter video game produced by the military)? Explorer scouts are one of the most popular recruiting tools for the military and its civilian counterparts (law enforcement, Border Patrol, and the FBI).

Writing for The Atlantic, a former Explorer scout described the highlight of the program: monthly weekend maneuvers with the National Guard where scouts “got to fire live rounds from M16s, M60 machine guns, and M203 grenade launchers… we would have urban firefights (shooting blanks, of course) in Combat Town, a warren of concrete buildings designed for just that purpose. The exercise always devolved into a free-for-all, with all of us weekend warriors emptying clip after clip of blanks until we couldn’t see past the end of our rifles for all the smoke in the air.”

Is it because the United States is the number one consumer, exporter and perpetrator of violence and violent weapons in the world? Seriously, America spends more money on war than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil. America polices the globe, with 800 military bases and troops stationed in 160 countries. Moreover, the war hawks have turned the American homeland into a quasi-battlefield with military gear, weapons and tactics. In turn, domestic police forces have become roving extensions of the military—a standing army.

Or is the Second Amendment to blame, as many continue to suggest? Would there be fewer mass shootings if tighter gun control laws were enacted? Or would the violence simply take a different form: homemade bombs, cars driven into crowds, and knives (remember the knife assailant in Japan who stabbed 19 people to death at a care home for the disabled)?

Then again, could it be, as some have speculated, that these shootings are all part of an elaborate plan to incite fear and chaos, heighten national tensions and shift us that much closer to a complete lockdown? After all, the military and our militarized police forces have been predicting and preparing for exactly this kind of scenario for years now.

So who’s to blame for the violence?

Please continue this article here: http://www.gilmermirror.com/view/full_story/27487567/article-Mass-Shootings--The-Military-Entertainment-Complex-s-Culture-of-Violence-Turns-Deadly?instance=home_news_bullets

Follow This Way Like the Moon in the Path of the Stars

These quotes reflect glimpses into what I have come to experience as my lifelong journey of awakening, of shedding layer after layer of my illusions and forgetfulness, and of instead opening more deeply with each passing day and year to the remembrance of love and our sacred interconnection with all of life. Within each of us is truth, beauty, wisdom, compassion, and love. May we each grow in this connection with the depths of who we most wholly are and know the beauty of our true nature. ― Molly

Whatever path of action you find that brings good and happiness to all, follow this way like the moon in the path of the stars.

Inner freedom is not guided by our efforts; it comes from seeing what is true.

Don't keep searching for the truth, just let go of your opinions.

Take time to sit quietly and listen.

Like the mother of the world, touch each being as your beloved child.

Harm no other beings. They are just your brothers and sisters.

To awaken, sit calmly, letting each breath clear your mind and open your heart.

Just as a snake sheds is skin, we must shed our past over and over again.

In life, we cannot avoid change, we cannot avoid loss. Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.

Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.

Most of the sorrows of the earth humans cause for themselves.

Even loss and betrayal can bring us awakening. 

Our own worst enemy cannot harm us as much as our unwise thoughts. No one can help us as much as our own compassionate thoughts.

Every wakeful step, every mindful act is the direct path to awakening. Wherever you go, there you are.

Live every act fully, as if it were your last. 

Words have the power to destroy or heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change the world.

The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

― Jack Kornfield

Buddha's Little Instruction Book

It Is Only With the Heart That One Can See Rightly

Thank you to my friend Denise Eileen Wiedbrauk Slabaugh for this little gem and to the book The Little Prince. I would add to this that we can all grow hearts with eyes. As I've grown older, I've come to recognize that the vision of our eyes becomes wiser and ever expanding as we are able to be increasingly connected with our hearts. Hearts with eyes are capable of experiencing empathy, compassion, wisdom, love, courage, kindness, and consciousness of the Divine and our deep interconnection with all of life - all that is essential. May we each grow into the wholeness of the beauty of our own true nature and act out of the wisdom of our hearts. This is the wisdom that holds awareness of a highest good for ourselves and all beings.

Bless us all, no exceptions ― Molly

 

Christiane Northrup: The World Is Awakening To a Powerful Truth

The world is awakening to a powerful truth: 

Women and girls aren’t the problem; 

they’re the solution.

―  Christiane Northrup