Bridging The Divide

Israel impressionen by Claudia Henzler

Since the recent events between Israel in the Gaza strip occured, I’m receiving several emails calling to boycott or to sign petitions to support one side or another.

I feel very sad that even people who believe and work for Peace are falling in the trap of a dual approach of these events. If we wish to live our life mission consciously and by extension achieve a United society, it is fundamental for all of us to see beyond duality and not to nourish egregores* of division, but to focus on Peace and Brotherhood only.

The manipulation of the media is very prejudicial in this process; instead of showing the demonstrations for peace around the world and insisting on that, it is much more “juicy” and spectacular (and of course more lucrative) to show the despair or the anger of people. It belongs to us, the audience, to make the choice to give credit to this system or not.

During the war in Lebanon, every day we would see image of hatred on TV but we would never be shown the Christians and the Muslims supporting each other by offering food to a hungry neighbor or a friend. The civilians are always the hostages of political divisions and financial interests.

I’m also lucky to travel around the world and to see with my own eyes that in countries like Israel, Iran, Turkey or in Lebanon people live together in harmony and respect the religious celebrations of the others. This is also particularly obvious in India where many religions are represented and co-exist in Peace.   

Our choice should be to remain perfectly centered most of all during crisis and feel compassionate for each being involved in this situation, whatever his/her religion can be. What would be the value of a choice made by/with Love if there was not a different choice possible? This is the only role of duality; testing if our values and acts are perfectly synchronized and if we’re guided by Love only.

 It is a highly initiatory experience for workers of Light to remain focused on Peace and to spread words of tolerance and Unity right now. As we’re entering the Era of the Aquarius, let’s all have FAITH in the capability for humanity to live all together in harmony.

Hashem Ehad**,

Allah wahad**,

God, Life, the Cosmic energy, whatever the name you give to this Universal power and whether you believe in it or not, we’re all part of the same unique Force…

RM   

*Egregore: Active magnetic field with a specific attribute which is nourished and nourishes the same attribute (ex: angry people nourish the egregore of anger and are themselves nourished by the same energetic field that they attract over again in a vicious circle. Same with egregores of Love, Compassion, Peace which create virtuous circles in our life and for the entire Universe)

** “God is One” in Hebrew and Arabic.

Many Faiths, One Truth

By TENZIN GYATSO, His Holiness the 14th Dalaï Lama.

The New York Times: May 24, 2010

“When I was a boy in Tibet, I felt that my own Buddhist religion must be the best — and that other faiths were somehow inferior. Now I see how naïve I was, and how dangerous the extremes of religious intolerance can be today.

Though intolerance may be as old as religion itself, we still see vigorous signs of its virulence. In Europe, there are intense debates about newcomers wearing veils or wanting to erect minarets and episodes of violence against Muslim immigrants. Radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold to religious beliefs. In the Middle East, the flames of war are fanned by hatred of those who adhere to a different faith.

Such tensions are likely to increase as the world becomes more interconnected and cultures, peoples and religions become ever more entwined. The pressure this creates tests more than our tolerance — it demands that we promote peaceful coexistence and understanding across boundaries.

Granted, every religion has a sense of exclusivity as part of its core identity. Even so, I believe there is genuine potential for mutual understanding. While preserving faith toward one’s own tradition, one can respect, admire and appreciate other traditions.

An early eye-opener for me was my meeting with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton in India shortly before his untimely death in 1968. Merton told me he could be perfectly faithful to Christianity, yet learn in depth from other religions like Buddhism. The same is true for me as an ardent Buddhist learning from the world’s other great religions.

A main point in my discussion with Merton was how central compassion was to the message of both Christianity and Buddhism. In my readings of the New Testament, I find myself inspired by Jesus’ acts of compassion. His miracle of the loaves and fishes, his healing and his teaching are all motivated by the desire to relieve suffering.

I’m a firm believer in the power of personal contact to bridge differences, so I’ve long been drawn to dialogues with people of other religious outlooks. The focus on compassion that Merton and I observed in our two religions strikes me as a strong unifying thread among all the major faiths. And these days we need to highlight what unifies us.

Take Judaism, for instance. I first visited a synagogue in Cochin, India, in 1965, and have met with many rabbis over the years. I remember vividly the rabbi in the Netherlands who told me about the Holocaust with such intensity that we were both in tears. And I’ve learned how the Talmud and the Bible repeat the theme of compassion, as in the passage in Leviticus that admonishes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In my many encounters with Hindu scholars in India, I’ve come to see the centrality of selfless compassion in Hinduism too — as expressed, for instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, which praises those who “delight in the welfare of all beings.” I’m moved by the ways this value has been expressed in the life of great beings like Mahatma Gandhi, or the lesser-known Baba Amte, who founded a leper colony not far from a Tibetan settlement in Maharashtra State in India. There he fed and sheltered lepers who were otherwise shunned. When I received my Nobel Peace Prize, I made a donation to his colony.

Compassion is equally important in Islam — and recognizing that has become crucial in the years since Sept. 11, especially in answering those who paint Islam as a militant faith. On the first anniversary of 9/11, I spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington, pleading that we not blindly follow the lead of some in the news media and let the violent acts of a few individuals define an entire religion.

Let me tell you about the Islam I know. Tibet has had an Islamic community for around 400 years, although my richest contacts with Islam have been in India, which has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. An imam in Ladakh once told me that a true Muslim should love and respect all of Allah’s creatures. And in my understanding, Islam enshrines compassion as a core spiritual principle, reflected in the very name of God, the “Compassionate and Merciful,” that appears at the beginning of virtually each chapter of the Koran.

Finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever. As a species, we must embrace the oneness of humanity as we face global issues like pandemics, economic crises and ecological disaster. At that scale, our response must be as one.

Harmony among the major faiths has become an essential ingredient 

of peaceful coexistence in our world. From this perspective, mutual understanding among these traditions is not merely the business of religious believers — it matters for the welfare of humanity as a whole.”

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the author, most recently, of “Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together.” 

Un Peu de Gay-té Dans Les Coeurs…

Mardi 18 Mai 2010,

Il est rare que je prenne la plume, ou plutôt le clavier, pour m’insurger…mais devant le spectacle affligeant auquel j’ai assister ce soir devant la cathédrale Saint Jean à Lyon encerclée par une vingtaine de camions de CRS , comment faire autrement ?

C’est la semaine de la lutte contre l’homophobie en France ; eh oui, il faut encore des « journées dédicacées » pour que la tolérance se rappelle au bon souvenir de tous et puisse émerger. Sur la place Saint Jean, plusieurs centaines de personnes manifestent ce soir pour le droit à la tolérance et à l’égalité quant au choix de leur sexualité. Face à elles, sur le parvis, je suis choquée de voir des représentants de l’extrême droite et des prêtres de la cathédrale, se mettre à genoux pour prier et brandir la Sainte Croix comme s’ils avaient affaire à des vampires qu’il leur faut à tout prix chasser, ou encore à des possédés qu’il faudrait exorciser… On se croirait revenu au temps de l’inquisition, il ne manque plus que les bûchers…

Il semble que l’église ai bel et bien perdu sa divinité. Il est loin le message d’amour et de tolérance prêché par Jésus il y a plus de 2000 ans ; lui n’aurait guère apprécié cette chasse aux sorcières des temps modernes…  « Aimez-vous les uns les autres »: plus de 2000 ans de «programmation» à répéter le même message sans que celui-ci puissent trouver un écho dans les têtes et dans les cœurs de certains religieux. Jésus-Sananda, Issah, Yeshouah, peu importe le nom qu’on lui donne,  reste sans conteste le prophète de l’Amour Inconditionnel qui accueille chacun d’entre nous sous son aile sans distinction de race ou de religion, encore moins de pratiques sexuelles (est-il encore nécessaire de rappeler comment il protégea Marie-Madeleine, prostituée de son état, contre le jugement et la lapidation?). Heureusement, nombreux sont aussi les prêtres qui dans l’anonymat de leur paroisse ou de leur congrégation sont les portes-paroles d’une religion ou aucune brebis n’est jugée comme égarée.

 Peut être  faudrait il rafraîchir la mémoire du clergé afin qu’il ne voit pas seulement la paille dans l’œil de ses voisins alors que la poutre est énorme dans le sien. Il est grand temps que l’église fasse face aux millions de prêtres homosexuels tiraillés entre leur amour de Dieu et leur amour des hommes, pourquoi devoir choisir lorsque l’on est un ambassadeur de l’Unité ? La question renvoie à nouveau à celle non résolue du mariage des prêtres, rares religieux à ne pas pouvoir se marier contrairement aux représentants des principales religions monothéistes.  Mais surtout l’urgence est qu’elle fasse le ménage en ce qui concerne les nombreux pédophiles qui peuplent son propre clergé avant de prétendre être la détentrice d’une sacro sainte morale dont elle se veut l’unique ambassadrice.

Cette institution poussiéreuse creuse rapidement et surement sa propre tombe;  approcherait-on des temps ou celle-ci est amenée à disparaitra comme l’annonce de nombreuses prophéties à travers les siècles? Alors peut être que de « l’autre côté », les Anges qui comme tout le monde le sait, n’ont pas de sexe mais sont porteurs de la combinaison des énergies Yin et Yang unifiées, pourraient se réjouir de voir disparaitre les gays pride de la surface d’une Terre qui aurait transcendée sa dualité, ou chacun respecterai la liberté de ces semblables et leur droit de tout simplement EXISTER.

RM

6th Sense: Gifted Children And Their “Imaginary” friends

It’s a very common thing to hear stories about kids talking with their “imaginary friends”. These manifestations can happen in very different ways; they may see ladies or gentlemen or family members who have passed talking to them in the living room, asking them questions in a pacific way.

 They also may say that they play with luminous or Angelical beings who visit them at the tip of their beds… Shall parents be afraid of these types of reactions from their kids? And most of all, how is the best way to react when destiny gave us such gifted children?

Taking the “right” decision for their good: a sensitive question

Parents are usually disconcerted by the comments of their kids and they usually don’t know how to react, which is understandable; there is no school to be good parents, worse, there is no school to be good parents of gifted children…! Some of them may wonder if their kid is really sane and can choose for their good to bring them to a check up with an analyst. Usually very quickly, after a few sessions the kids are convinced, that these visions are “only in their head” and that it’s not “politically correct” according to their environment to see these type of manifestations; then they only yearn to one thing, being like everybody, being “normal” again and they simply “forget”…saying that they repress, would be more correct because one day or another their abilities will emerge again.

Other parents, with or without spiritual beliefs, notice that their children have a strong mystical inclination even though they’re not given any religious education. They want to be baptized, they want to pray every night before sleep and even ask to meditate at very early ages…These parents choose to be more open and supportive and start to exchange with their kids, knowing that they’re mentally perfectly healthy and that there are maybe unknown territories that their child is reaching which is worth discovering… When they make the effort to connect to their children’s world, they start to live stunning experiences; the children start to open also more to them and share with more confidence with their parents telling them things that they would keep normally hidden deep inside not to “disturb mummy and daddy”…Their lost keys are found miraculously thanks to their children’s affirmation who says that “the lady who speaks without opening her mouth” told him that they were under the sofa… They realize that the date given by their daughter on a calendar for an important business deal is exactly the moment where the deal happens without having planned any appointment with the client that day and time…

The freedom to express who they are

When parents have such an open attitude, they prevent any feeling of loneliness for their children who feel very often different and not understood. Very often, Indigos* adults remember a very lonely path in their childhood and a gap between being a child but thinking like an adult. 

Energetically talking, until 7 years old we’re still very close to our original nature and our ability to use our 6th sense is still very sharp and “rough”. As the conditioning of the environment is not too strong yet, during these first years of our life we can even still have clear reminiscences of our past lives.

 Some children start to talk about their “previous family” and their “other mummy”. Recently, a team of psychologists and psychic searchers lead an interesting inquiry with a 5 years old Scottish boy in Glasgow: the child was pretending to remember his vacations with his “previous family” and was perfectly describing his daily life thousands of kilometres away from his hometown. With the help of his mother and the professional team around him, he went back to the exact place he was describing and where he never put a foot in his present life; the village, the house and the detailed description of the decoration inside, the neighbour’s identity (with names) and even the description of the dog they used to have (the animal wasn’t alive anymore when the inquiry was done…) everything was perfectly fitting to reality. The little boy’s emotion and sadness (the nostalgia not to be anymore with his “previous brothers and sisters”) was obviously real…He was keeping saying to everyone “I told you that it’s all true…” After coming back from the place, he never mentioned this story again to his family; he accepted that he was now in “another story” in a “new family” and most of all, he was in peace that people were believing him…

The future of our planet

Conscious parenting can definitely change our world. To the parents who live this dilemma I’d say, try to understand these kids and don’t burn them on the swot of your own fears… Their reactions can be disturbing of course but there is various literature about intuitive children or Indigos* relating about similar stories that can help you. You may also contact an organization which gives the possibility for parents to organize gatherings and exchange about their daily experience with gifted children. Living with such sensitive children doesn’t happen by chance; it also gives you the possibility to wake up to your own sensitivities. Through their story you may start to remember your own experiences as a child that you buried deep inside you because they were not fitting to the background you were raised in…Remember how you felt that a person was not “nice” simply by intuition or how you used to have premonitory dreams about a place where you have never been and that by chance, you saw a few days after during a walk…and all the déjà vu you’ve experienced etc…You may then realize that you are gifted yourself…

To the professionals who work with children living these types of phenomenon I’d say please, take the time to talk with them and make a deep inquiry to know better if the visions of these kids are only stories because of a simple need of more attention or if they are really experiencing a connection with something different, other beings and realities. Sometimes it takes years for people to reconnect to their abilities because their memories of other realms were “erased” during their childhood…

It’s important to know that with the quick evolution of consciousness of our planet, these children will be more and more numerous and that the indigos were preceding the Crystal* children, even more skilled who are starting to incarnate a few years ago.

Today, it’s the responsibility of the scientific community to study these questions and to give empirical proofs to valid what millions of children and adults have experienced through history and what religious and mystics reported in spiritual scriptures around the globe.

These sensitive children can be the incarnation of a Peaceful generation on our planet… at least…

This article is dedicated to all the inspirational children who crossed my path one day : to Samantha, Matthieu, Alec and Matt,  Julien,  Sophie, Louis and Santiago… and to all the adults and children around the world who will feel the resonance of these words within their heart. 

*Indigos children, so called because their Auric field is saturated by the colour of the 3rd eye and symbolize strong intuition, started to be born in the 60’s. The Crystal children started to arrive around 2000. Their level of consciousness is very high and their expectations toward life, community and unity are remarkable and they’re also unusually skilled… Some autistic persons and children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD) are known to be Indigo/Crystal children.

Feeling Comfortable With Uncertainty

Some of us are living times of great uncertainty about their future nowadays. This uncertainty can touch different areas of life and sometimes many areas can be in crisis simultaneously. Very often, our natural controlling behaviours dominate our attitudes and create the inability to leave space for surprises in our life and even with a positive attitude, when you’ve just lost a job or when you face difficulties in your private life, uncertainty can bring a lot of fear and frustration. Just like the temptations sent to the Buddha during his meditation under a tree, our “old devils” come to tempt us and try to make us believe that this uncertainty is a synonymous for insecurity.

Then a thirst to know more about the future emerges from within, with a throng of questionings and the urgent need to find answers. We can then ask ourselves if it’s really helpful for our spiritual growth to know more about the future.

Usually, the last months of the year and the arrival of winter are always suitable moments for introspection and a check up before the fresh start of the new coming year, full of promises and resolutions that we want to bring into our life. During a recent spiritual retreat, I commit myself to let go a lot of old patterns that I sensed to be a weight for my spiritual growth. The main topic on which I focused on to make me move forward and achieve more happiness was to work on feeling comfortable with uncertainty about specific points of my life: a challenge for a medium used to live with insights and guidance about the past or the future.

“I am at ease with uncertainty and I go with the flow of the Universe”…

My "inspirational partner" in Ida Mountains (Turkey)

…I repeated peacefully this sentence like a mantra…over again, focusing on the flow of the river in front of me, enjoying the ideal temperature, the rays of sunshine on my skin and the Nature around witnessing this moment of bliss…It just felt fantastic to be able to reach this state of acceptance and confidence in the Divine timing and to be content without knowing anything about what would arrive around the corner of my destiny… Welcoming the unknown like a possibility to exciting new ventures was like a door opening to a lighter life, far from the ponderings of the mental.

Shifting from uncertainty to total acceptance and feeling comfortable with it, is transforming lead to gold; a real alchemical process. This “path in the middle” is the one which leads us to happiness and contentment, avoiding any negative projections on a possible future which can be very different from what we imagine in the confusion of our mental. It’s very important to experience this state in a personal way; we have to live it from within in order to realize that it is not only words, but a powerful way to be in the essence of things.

Through time, many spiritual texts have insisted on the power of ‘’here and now”: when we manage just to live in the moment, there is no place for wanderings anymore: sufferings from the past, regrets or even resentments such as fears regarding our future, literally vanish in front of our ability to focus on the present moment. We simply “ARE” in the Grace of time suspended…

Disciplines like meditation can help us to facilitate this “acuity to the present moment” where there is no space for discomfort regarding uncertainty anymore, one of the main teachings of Krishnamurti.

Living in uncertainty and in the unknown with being in full contentment and peace of mind in the present moment can be really challenging; it obliges us to settle unconditional acceptance within us and to remember that we are agents of the Divine who will have to trust the plans that the Universe has for us. We can’t imagine how much magical events we can live by adjusting our life to this Cosmic law…until we experience it: and it’s so much worth it.

“We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything.”  Zen Master D.T Suzuki.

A big thank you to the little squirrel who suggested me this topic to work through during my retreat…