Thank You, Old Friend

I have come into this body as the sun comes into the new day. Here I have come to know dichotomy. Here I learned about love and its opposite; I learned about goodness and its opposite; I learned about cognitive knowledge of our Divine Parent and its opposite and I became aware of boundaries. In this body I have felt pain and suffering as well as joy, physical pleasure and awe. In this ephemeral home I have known what it is like to be human seeking knowledge of God and I have known the sweet feeling of reassurance with the twinkle of spirit our Divine Parent has allowed us to see. I have known anger and hatred as well as respect and profound friendship. I have felt the new kind of love that came at the first holding of each of my children and grand children. I have experienced a profound sadness that filled my heart when discipline was necessary.

Like an old suitcase you have carried me around, it seems like such a long time. Yet, at this moment of now our time together seems like a flash of light. You are worn and battered, still able to carry me about, but the last stitches are unraveling. My destiny is to leave you old friend, to fly like a song sparrow from the cage. My time with you helped me become my destiny. I’m not sure how our life lessons will be useful in my Pure Spirit Being, but I believe that just as I developed physical attributes before birth that were needed in my time with you, I have developed spiritual attributes that are needed in my next state of being. Thank you for allowing me to be with you for a while.

The Lesson of the Candle

Life is full of rituals. Nearly everything we do is a ritual of some kind. From pushing off the covers when we awaken to pulling them back on when we go to sleep, nearly everything we do is a ritual that is routine and has meaning to our life.

Some rituals, like those we perform when we expel our bodily waste, are so mundane that, while we perform them daily we give them very little thought. Yet, in the performance of these rituals we are dealing with a natural function ordained for us by our Creator. There are rituals we perform when we prepare food or clean up after eating. Still, the performance of these rituals is part of the way we interact with the Divine gift of life. How well we perform these rituals can have a great impact on our health, our longevity, and our quality of life. For a long time I have observed how life is played out during meditation practice.

My little meditation practice involves lighting five candles on my little shrine table. It progresses through a short melody I play with my bamboo flute, prayers of thanks and supplications, and a short chant requesting a greater opportunity to know and love our Divine Parent. At the end of the chant, I attempt to quiet the mind and become aware of my “now.” (breath, aches and pains, how I’m sitting, birds, smells, tastes, candles, etc) I attempt to remove all discernment from this awareness. At the end of the meditation I spend a little time cognitively considering any thoughts that come up and then I blow out the candles, one at a time.

It was while blowing out the candles that it suddenly dawned on me how much our lives are like those little flames. Some outside force brings the warmth and light to the candle of life inside us, we flicker and provide a light to the meditation table of the world for a while, and then the light goes out. Some times the fuel burns up and the flame fades away. Sometimes the breath of God snuffs out the flame before the fuel is spent. Whatever extinguishes the flame there is that brief period when smoke rises from the wick like the soul leaving the body and becomes part of the atmosphere. In time only the fragrance of the candle is left to remind us of the light that illuminated the shrine. We never remember the flicker of the flame, we only remember the glow, the warmth, the beauty. It seems to me that this is not only how I should remember the candle but also how I should remember the people passed on or even passed out of my life on another path.

I hope you will think of the simplest rituals in your life and take a few seconds to consider the possible larger lessons that might be learned about human nature and the Divine interaction that we are blessed with.

If I Love You, Why would I say something to hurt your feelings

I am in an environment of different and very often conflicting political views freely expressed by people I care about. In a younger, more aggressive time of life I would jump feet first into a heated discussion about some political idea not caring what I had to say to make my point and win the debate. Today, despite knowing that I did this, I can not remember any point I argued, the people I debated with, or whether the actual outcome of the point was proven right or incorrect. I do have a since that feelings were hurt and friendships, at best, began to decay or dissolved all together. I know this by the few friends with whom I keep in touch with from my youth, yet, at some point I loved them all. So it is with this motivation that I write about the Sempiternal Harmony admonition of discussing political points of view.

Followers of the Sempiternal Harmony are cautioned to not engage in political rhetoric because it is diametrically opposed to the establishment of peaceful coexistence. This does not mean that one should not form and contemplate truth. It simply means to refrain from engaging in speech that does not foster peaceful coexistence. As an example of this point, consider how you may feel if someone comes to your door to give you a religious message that WILL save your soul. They assure you that they have the one true path to heaven, yet the elements of their path are foreign to your spiritual understanding. They quote passages of scripture in ways that you find offensive and furthermore they quote from another mysterious book that has little meaning to you at all. You most likely began to feel irritated and since they don’t get your subtle hints to leave your door, you ultimately have to say something offensive to them to get rid of them. Just moments before they arrived at your door both of you were living in peaceful coexistence but because the visitor insisted on discussing an un-provable issue, hard feelings arose between the two of you and a time of coexistence turned into a conflict. What if anything was gained.

The person who is rejected for the gift of their belief at your door gets to go away feeling like a martyr because they stood up for their beliefs. You get to close the door on this short time feeling powerful to control your environment, even if you are irritated that a few moments of your life have been lost forever. Because if this encounter, potential friends go their separate ways, most likely to never meet again.

Political rhetoric is much like the above scenario. The reality of political speech is that extremely few of us have first hand knowledge of the truth surrounding any particular issue. If we were to attempt a Doctoral Dissertation given the resources we typically have at our disposal (ie. news papers, tv, radio, books), we would be laughed off campus and expelled from the PhD program. Yet, we are willing to risk the loss of friendships over the hearsay we take for truth. One reason we are willing to do that can be found in ego.

Ego in and of itself is necessary for a healthy individual. It is the excessive or inflated ego and the poorly developed ego that runs counter to peaceful coexistence. Healthy, well established ego allows one to be secure in him or her self. The healthy ego can coexist beside other egos without feeling threatened. The inflated ego is unable to accept that another person might have a valid point of view. While this might not lead to peaceful coexistence manifesting in conflict and the inability to maintain friendships it is rarely truly dangerous. Except as in the case of someone like Hitler, who by the strength of his hugely inflated ego plunged the world into great conflict resulting in massive loss of life. This can not be said for the under developed ego.

The underdeveloped ego has little definition and is potentially open to corrupting, often dangerous thoughts or outside influences. This weak ego may be open to peaceful coexistence with other people but is not capable of establishing a set of beliefs based upon personal experiences and objective truths. It is subject to the most current influence in life. Thus, the weak ego is unable to allow ideas that differ from whomever or whatever is influencing it at the time, making peaceful coexistence nearly impossible.

All human beings have some level of ego and see life from that prospective and it is in this psychic environment that Sempiternal Harmony seeks to foster peaceful coexistence. It is because of this simple understanding of human nature conjoined with the singular theological understanding of our sensory universe as a factor of the Infinite, Divine, Dimension that we seek to refrain from political discussion. The strength of compassion is often reflected in peaceful coexistence.

I seek to strengthen my ability to be compassionate and foster a feeling of love for each of you and among you. Why would I risk the possibility of offending you by attempting to prove you wrong on some issue, when the vast majority of my worldly knowledge, as is yours, subject to interpretation. For the Sempiternal Harmonist, it is far better to allow you to understand the world as best you are able without interference from me. Perhaps this is the ultimate expression of love.

The Blessing of the Senses

I have created you from the elements of my created universe. Into you I have given the ability to see, the ability to smell, the ability to taste, the ability to hear, and the ability to feel hot, cold, and pressure. I have blessed you with a very cognitive brain with which you may observe your senses. But, I have also given you a mind with which you might know my creation and live compassionately. Always remember that my essence permeates every element of your cognitive dimensions. I am in you and I am out of you. When you observe your world, your universe, and derive laws of physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and human nature, your are understanding my laws, laws of God. Then, remember that I have blessed all of human kind with five senses.

Each person will observe his or her universe through a historic cultural lens observing a truth that may be subjective if not objective. Never forget that the blessings of knowledge of me began many thousands of years ago with understanding of that time. As sensory understanding has grown understanding of me has grown. Epoch after epoch I have given a person to a culture, an area, or the world who has broadened understanding of me for you. As long as there is an aware person I will not fail to speak to him or her, if their mind is open to my voice.

It is not hard for me to hear the above as it might be spoken to us by our Divine Parent. All of the Great Scriptures tell us about the ultimate reality and how we might know this through the traces of God’s existence. Is there any Christian, Jew or Muslim who would say that God did not create the universe? (Genesis 1.1 -2.3 and Qur’an 32.4-9) Surely one must understand that Avesta, Yasna 44.3-5 of Zoroastrianism recognizes the Divine creation. Indeed all religious people, whether primal or sophisticated understand that everything seen and unseen are creations of God. It is only through our senses that we are able to experience the miracle of creation and it is with our mind that these experiences come to knowledge of God. If one stops for a moment to consider the theoretical “Big Bang” and considers what set the whole universe on its path to creation, the hand of God must be a possible cause of the whole thing. Then here is the really cool part, every subatomic particle is a part of God’s own essence. In other words, when the scriptures tell us about God never leaving us alone, physics would seem to agree. Have you ever thought of physics, chemistry, math, medicine, or science in general as potential laws of God?

I know that is kind of wild for most people to comprehend but just stop for a moment to consider the importance of living a good life. Think about how God’s love for us takes on a new and truer meaning if we are a real part of God. It is beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Coexistence

For me the notion of coexistence can be summed up in the phrase, “live and let live.” Isn’t that the way the majority of our peacefully coexisting relationships work? We have friends who have different values and living conditions from our own, yet we get along with them because we respect invisible boundaries that give us the space into which we may each pursue our lives.

This doesn’t mean that there are not disagreements, yet when conflicts arise we consider peace and respect for each other more important than winning an argument or having the superior point. If we look to the dynamics of our own circle of friends as a model for a more global society of peacefully coexisting people, I think it will be easier to understand that the greater Coexistence is achievable.

I hope you will reflect on the possibilities and respond with ideas which may help us reach of a more tolerant state of Peaceful Coexistence.

Sempiternal Harmony adds its voice the quest for peaceful coexistence.

11/22/2008

Thank you for stopping by. In a few days we here at Sempiternal Harmony will publish ideas that can help with the achievement of peaceful coexistence. We know that world wide peaceful coexistence is possible because it happens all the time. We constantly live in peace with neighbors, family, and people we pass on the street. In a few days we will publish an article pointing to research with mirror neurons which shows that we are hard wired from the beginning of life to be compassionate and identify with other people