To Love or Not to Love – That is the Question
We have made ourselves as a society so busy we have the mirror of the reality we have created for ourselves: No Time. By the time the average person, family gets done the things we need just to keep a roof over our heads, eat, cook, clean and other chores, homework, overtime, pay bills, provide any kind of quality of life for children, make sure kids get educated, support charities, our environment, deal with crises, etc., there just isn’t enough time for the self, relationships, religion/God, and yet the irony is that more people are watching more t.v. than ever before, more video games are being bought and played, more videos are being watched, more people are watching more videos, and as stress mounts happiness and quality of life declines and more and more distractions, addictions, greed and violence increases.
What time is left for loving and nurturing ourselves, our families, our neighbours, community and society? Each one of us is busy doing what we are doing out of some kind of love (misguided or otherwise) for life, the self, the world, truth, religion and even though so little time is available to experience or share love, the little love we do experience is powering our entire lives and our world, a testament to the power of love and the little love we are experiencing is manifesting in a cruel, harsh, numb and desensitized world. What a resilient race the human race is and yet new cracks appear daily. So where do we go to find solutions? We have to leave the prison of reasons and excuses, causes and circumstances and find unique and powerful solutions otherwise the quality of life on earth will deteriorate faster than global warming is melting our ice caps. When everyone is empty and life is rushing by, there is ultimately only one refuge to find love and that will be in the inner still point of peace.
When the mind speeds up, the prerequisite for love, peace, is lost. When I lose contact with my inner self, when I am engaged in more dialogue outside of myself than within myself, the casualty is peace of mind and inner emotional and spiritual stability. Within each and every being is a centre point of stillness, where resides my inner virtue, power, wisdom and love. If I don’t visit this place often during my daily routine, I get caught up in the hurricane called life; and love is lost. The price we pay for lost peace is the ability to love ourselves and this is the foundation to love others. Before loving we must first know how to accept and feel love and although this sounds simple enough, anyone who has felt the sting of the loneliness of rejection, the sulking pride of hurt feelings, inconsideration of being excluded, low self-esteem, and the emptiness of being disrespected and feeling no self-respect, knows that love doesn’t come easy. Love is powerful because it reminds us of the experience of who we are at the most fundamental level of our being. Yet, where there is desire, selfish motive, and no respect, there can never be love. Our ability to love is undergoing its most serious test because there is more negativity and selfishness occurring on our planet than any point in history and coincidently more religions being “practiced” by more people than in any point in history, if for no other reasons than the power of media and the increased population. Yet, more people are feeling, thinking and deciding, doing, expressing and manifesting more negativity and violence in more places, more frequently than at any other point in history. This is what happens when we lose connection and relationship with our own self and who we are and all that is good within the human spirit and become victims of greed, selfishness, cynicism, disillusionment, apathy, pettiness, jealousy, fear, anger attachment and arrogance. When truth is lost, its children: faith, hope, charity, courage, honesty and trust are also lost. This is why meditation, a simple and powerful technique to go within and find your power, truth, creativity, wisdom and greatness, is so fundamentally needed as we accelerate into the 21st century. Is our destination to be the greatness inheritance within each of us or great self-destruction? The further we move from the seed of truth, purity, and power, the more lost we become in the jungle of confusion, doubt, hypocrisy, apathy and despair.
The great challenge facing our political leaders, activists, bureaucrats, law professionals, clergy, etc., is not the economy, Afghanistan, energy supply, the environment, as serious as all these issues are, but the great challenge that we have, to rise to the occasion, to meet head on, is the disintegration of human values, spirituality, truth and integrity within the human spirit which is at the seed of these negative symptoms, ravaging our societies. When spiritual truths, principles are removed from society the result is decay, degradation, conflict and destruction. Whether it is spiritual values in how our hospitals should run, spiritual values in how our education systems operates, whether in the justice or social systems, or how wealth is distributed and earned, the common denominator is that all systems ultimately fail and become gridlocked when the glue of spiritual values is no longer present to hold them together. This is problematic to ego based decision makers and leaders because they think spiritual values will just add more cost without any financial reward. But reflect for a moment on the capital cost never mind the spiritual cost, of a society without spiritual values such as trust and good faith. What do we pay for our increased security that still can only provide us with the illusion of security (billions)? What do wars cost? What is the price of political corruption? We are paying for these multi fold of the cost it would be to change. Without the greatness and power of our spiritual values (not necessarily always synonymous with religious values) the human spirit is diminished to a shadow of its greatness, and love is lost. How long can you go on without love? So whilst “to be or not to be is ultimately the question, to love or not to love, is the core spiritual value to being. Of course as mentioned in previous articles, loving has to and can only be unconditional, constant, and selfless, otherwise it is the ego of selfish attachment masquerading as love. It is only spiritual love that has the power to regenerate the spirit, and only spiritual love that never gives sorrow.
Your mind does matter.
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