Look in the Mirror!

     It feels good to belong to a group that professes comforting values (especially when mere membership advertises some version of heaven). But because of our evolutionary history, we have a strong 'negativity bias'. And so behavior, which reflects actual values, can starkly contrast professed values. 
      The more fear, anger, greed & hatred we harbor, the more likely we are to elect a nasty brute who shares our actual values: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, because I'm the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley."

     "Every nation gets the government it deserves." Joseph de Maistre 

     "The truth is, going against the internal stream of ignorance is way more rebellious than trying to start some sort of cultural revolution... The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart... Waking up is not a selfish pursuit of happiness, it is a revolutionary stance, from the inside out, for the benefit of all beings in existence." Noah Levine

Ego is the last to go ...

     We're usually far more eager to claim ownership of a concept or the messenger, than to really understand and embody the message.

     There's an old story of several blind men coming across an elephant. Based on which part of the animal each had their hands on, each of their descriptions was completely different. The fellow holding the elephant's ear vs the one holding the foot, the belly etc. Yet they were all correct - partially.

     But most of us would rather grab hold of & claim as ours anything, even a partial truth, than to open up to & become porous to all of reality. Just more useless attempts at creating & maintaining a solid sense of self - ego.

Being Swept away by Tribal Hatred is Easy - Only Evolved Human Beings can Live Wisely

     "The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.”                Winston S. Churchill


     "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them..."                       Adlai E. Stevenson


     “The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.”         Thucydides
 
 
     “Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”               Bill Watterson


     “Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.”                          Herbert Hoover


     “Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.”         Mahatma Gandhi


     "That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw."         Hesiod 
 

                                 “War is over ... IF you want it.”                 John Lennon


        Our Choice: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/08/381-each-moment-new-beginning.html

Spiritual Immaturity, Neurosis, Estrangement from Being, ... & Maturation

     “Immaturity, unripeness, is the cancer of our time, the incapacity to ripen the specific mark of our time. The neurosis which drives the spiritually sick to the therapist is simply the clearest expression of the universal suffering, the suffering due to man’s estrangement from Being! Healthy and unhealthy alike are to be understood as ‘on the way’ – hence never statically, but always in the perspective of their becoming one with their being. So it comes to this, that as in the East since time immemorial between pupil and master, so today between a sound person and his spiritual counselor, between a ‘disturbed’ person and his therapist – all are seeking, over and above any psychological aid, a firm metaphysical foundation for life. A longing for their being moves them all. They seek resonance and guidance out of a need which is not only constitutional and personal but which involves their whole existence.
     Modern man suffers from his immaturity and causes suffering to all around him. What we are called upon to do is to restore him to the context of the Greater Life, to un-block the door to at-one-ment with the wellsprings of his existence, and to show him the way to give expression to his contact with Being through life-affirming attitude. For there is a way to be trodden by actual practice.”

       Durckheim KG. “Hara – The vital center of man.” Inner Traditions, Rochester VT, 1975 (originally published 1956 - hence the masculine terminology). 

Richard Kirsten Daiensai    http://www.kirstengallery.com