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IMAGES OF INSPIRATION 16 – 20. OUR WORLD’S RELIGIONS HAVE OFFERED PATHWAYS TO GOD. THEY HAVE OFFERED CLEARLY DELINEATED PATHWAYS TO GOD. BUT IN ONE KEY ASPECT THEY HAVE BLOCKED OUR PATHWAYS TO GOD, AND THAT IS ESPECIALLY SO IN OUR PRESENT TIME. FOR NOW AT THIS CHANGING TIME INTO THE NEW TIME, WHEN WE ARE INCREASINGLY CITIZENS OF A GLOBAL WORLD, EXCLUSIVITY DENIES US THE TRUTH AND THE MEANING OF OUR SPIRITUAL PURPOSE. OUR PURPOSE, THE SPIRITUAL AND SACRED MEANING OF OUR LIVES IS TO EMBRACE OUR SOUL-GROUNDED INCLUSIVITY OF PURPOSE AND BEING. THE TRUTH OF OUR TIMES THAT WAITS FOR US IS THAT WE ARE ALL TOGETHER ON A SPIRITUAL, MYSTICAL AND INDEED SACRED PILGRIMAGE TOWARDS ONENESS WITH THE ALL, WHICH IS WHAT WE CALL GOD. TO DENY ALL PATHWAYS BUT OUR PATHWAY, IS TO DENY EACH OTHER, DENY GOD AND US TO DENY THE ONENESS THAT IS THE SPIRITUAL TRUTH THAT GIVES MEANING TO OURSELVES AND TO THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE: TO ALL

The interconnection of text and image: the ONENESS of visual and textual transcendence. The new ways of spirituality can in one sense mean an end to those profound feelings of religious guilt that can afflict so many. In other words, the artificial doctrinal guilt that religions so often imposed on their adherents can be dissipated in moments, as those adherents become free of the stranglehold of doctrine and theology. But that does not mean that the new ways of spirituality negate all guilt. The key to the new ways of spirituality is that there is embedded in our consciousness and our souls the profound sense of spiritual and actual responsibility. We are responsible for what we think, and for what we do and thereby for what we are. We may be free of an artificial guilt imposed from outside of us, but because the new way recognises our responsibility, that responsibility we thereby have for ourselves and for each other, and for the whole of the world around us, social and environmental, becomes immense. When we get things wrong, as indeed we shall, then there might be some other word for it, but guilt will still play its part.

Two hands clasped together in prayer.

THE INCLUSIVITY OF ALL THE FAITHS WILL BRING TRUE ACCOUNTABILITY. AS WE EMBRACE WITH INCLUSIVITY ALL THE FAITHS, WE AT LAST SHED GUILT, AND AT LAST EMBRACE ACCOUNTABILITY: FOR OURSELVES, AND FOR OUR PLANET. THIS IS THE SACRED AND SPIRITUAL TRUTH WE MUST AWAKEN TO, THAT ALL IS ONE, AND THAT THE PROFOUND REALITY OF THAT ONENESS IS THAT THE ONENESS PERMEATES EVERYTHING. WE ARE ONE WITH EACH OTHER AND WITH ALL THE WORLD AND WITH ALL THE UNIVERSE HERE AND NOW, AND FOR EVER. INDEED, TIME TOO IS ENTANGLED UTTERLY IN THE ONENESS OF THE UNIVERSE. THUS THE SPIRITUAL TRUTH OF NOW AND INDEED OF ALWAYS IS THAT WE MUST LIVE ENTIRELY INCLUSIVELY. WE MST EASE FROM OUR SOULS AND OUR LIVES, FROM OUT THOUGHTS AND OUR ACTIONS ALL VESTIGES OF THE ANCIENT AND ATAVISTIC PREVAILING INSTINCTS OF EXCLUSIVITY. WE ARE AWAKENING TO THIS: AT LAST. AND WITH THIS AWAKENING, SO SHALL COME OUR SPIRITUAL HEALING OF OURSELVES, OF EACH OTHER, OF OUR COMMUNITIES AND OF OUR MOTHER EARTH, OUR HOLY GAIA.THE INCLUSIVITY OF ALL THE FAITHS WILL BRING TRUE ACCOUNTABILITY

Two hands are clasped together in prayer. The deep blackness of space is beyond the hands. The hands are in prayer, but the sense of the prayer being universal and cosmic in scope is impossible to ignore. The hands in prayer have become ONE, and the hands in prayer have become ONE with the very Heavens.

The  new ways of spirituality can in one sense mean an end to those profound  feelings of religious guilt that can afflict so many. In other words,  the artificial doctrinal guilt that religions so often imposed on their  adherents can be dissipated in moments, as those adherents become free  of the stranglehold of doctrine and theology. But that does not mean  that the new ways of spirituality negate all guilt. The key to the new  ways of spirituality is that there is embedded in our consciousness and  our souls the profound sense of spiritual and actual responsibility. We  are responsible for what we think, and for what we do and thereby for  what we are. We may be free of an artificial guilt imposed from outside  of us, but because the new way recognises our responsibility, that  responsibility we thereby have for ourselves and for each other, and for  the whole of the world around us, social and environmental, becomes  immense. When we get things wrong, as indeed we shall, then there might  be some other word for it, but guilt will still play its part.

Exclusivity,  whether political, social, personal or spiritual, has been and still is  the fault line in human affairs. The great tragedy of our human story,  our slow spiritual pilgrimage to ONENESS with each other and with the  ALL, has been the corrosive tendency of our world’s religions –  organisations and people who should have known better – to invariably  define themselves in opposition to other religions and faiths. Indeed,  even within religions, that exclusivity continues to corrode and hold  back our spiritual advancement. For even within religions there are  sects and factions, each seemingly as much at each other’s throats as  they are with regards to the adherents of entirely different faiths and  religions. Our spiritual journey is not dependent upon how we define  ourselves, our spiritual journey is defined by our inclusivity, and by  how we behave towards others. There is not certainty with regards to  doctrine. There cannot be. The spiritual Truth of the Cosmos is too  infinite and eternal for us, with our three-dimension-conditioned  languages to describe or define. But with regards to how we behave  towards each other: that can be clear for all. Our spiritual awakening,  the sacred and ultimately mystical journey we all must at some point  take, can never happen if we are locked in the corrosive ‘death’ of  exclusivity. ALL is ONE, and we must live that in our hearts, in our  minds, and in everything we say and do, if we are to embark at last upon  the sacred pilgrimage. ONENESS transcendent is what we must live.  ONENESS with each other and with each other’s faiths. ONENESS with our  planet, with our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia and all of the flora and  fauna of our Mother Earth. When we can rejoice in all the holy ways of  others, can we look the spiritual founders of our faiths in the eye.  This is the great moment in human history that we are painfully moving  towards: when we can live the ONENESS of ALL and be with each other in  the ONENESS of ALL. That is our spiritual destiny, that is the one true  path – that embraces all the paths – that will open up our future as  true pilgrims upon the sacred way to the eternal infinite. We are on the  threshold. The Light and Love of the eternal infinite is close. Embrace  it, as we embrace each other. Embrace it, only when indeed we have embraced each other.

As we embrace with inclusivity

All the faiths,

We at last shed guilt,

And at last embrace accountability:

For ourselves,

And for our planet.

***

A figure silhouetted against stars. There is a model of the atom filling the sky.

PHYSICIST AND MYSTIC DELVE DEEP: INTO THE DEEPEST TRUTHS

We see a person standing upon the edge of the world, upon the edge of reason, staring upwards at the cosmos with its stars and galaxies. This person both wonders and learns from what is seen. Merged into the starlit otherness of what is being seen is a luminescent portrayal of the atomic and molecular structure of all of creation. This is science and this is mysticism. This is the interconnectedness of both.

What  is the difference between trusting a psychic about the world, and  trusting a scientist who tells us what weird flickers on a monitor  screen mean? One key difference is that what the scientist does is  repeatable and can be corroborated by others. But there is an important  point that can be made here, and that is – leaving aside the psychic,  but focussing instead on the mystic – we can see that both the mystic  and the physicist are delving deep into the realms of mystery and indeed  of uncertainty: the mystic delving into the realms of mind, the  physicist into the realms of matter. Both touch all but unimaginable  dimensions. Our pursuit of science, the knowledge of creation that it  gives us, does not necessarily take us further from the wisdom and inner  realisations of the spiritual, mystical and sacred way. We have chosen  to let it do so to us, and so perhaps by default we have slipped almost  unconsciously into a materialistic and spirituality-defying mindset that  has begun to define us and define our world. But this is a travesty of  what science has been offering us. In the last few hundred years we have  not proved that the spiritual, the mystical and sacred ways are without  foundation. Instead, for those who will open their minds and their  souls, we have found extraordinary truths within the very heart of all  matter, within the very heart of the vast cosmos itself.  One of the  great tragedies of our time is that we have seen science and religion  become all but divorced from each other. The one seems to negate the  other. Certainly, the claims of theology and the literal claims of our  holy scriptures can appear to be at odds with all that we have  discovered about the world, and the universe and about how they work.  But this seeming ‘divorce’ is only there when our spirituality is bound  up with rigid and obsolete theologies. The true spiritual, mystical and  sacred path for us as spiritual entities, is only enhanced and  accelerated by what we actually learn through science. The scientific  revolution is also a spiritual revolution of the sacred awakening of the  human soul. The scientific revolution has enabled us to grasp more  clearly our ONENESS with each other and indeed our ONENESS with the  environment, with our beautiful Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia. The  scientific revolution did not bring to an end humanity’s spiritual  journey, it was instead a vital stage in humanity’s spiritual and sacred  journey towards the living ONENESS of and with the ALL. The scientific  revolution was and is a vital part of our destiny, a vital part in our  search for spiritual meaning for ourselves as individuals, for ourselves  as humanity, and for ourselves as spiritual pilgrims searching for the  stars. The greatest and most profound spiritual Truths are not to be  found only in our individual quests, they are to be found in everything,  and that includes everything about how everything works and evolves and  unfolds on both are planet and out there in the stars. And we are part  of that unfoldment. Part of the spiritual awakening of the entire  universe.

The physicist and the mystic delve deep;

Observing and affecting what is observed.

Both are deep into the uncertainty

Of the deepest truths.

***

Planet Earth and the Moon seen from space.

THE RHYTHMS OF THE STARS, AND THE RHYTHMS OF OUR MOTHER EARTH

Suspended in the velvet blackness of space, our precious Mother Earth, our Gaia, is a beacon of life and hope and conscious purpose in the Cosmic emptiness. Its beauty is staggering. It is a jewel set amidst the stars and other planets. It is our physical, and for the time being our spiritual, home. We are connected to Her, we belong to Her, in so many ways we are Her.

Whether  astrology works or not, and I suspect that it is all far more  complicated than astrologers would have it; and is intimately linked  with the ONENESS of the ALL, which transcends our human-based  mathematics, geometry and logic. Our present being and our immediate and  ultimate destinies are connected with everything, are in fact in a real, profound and universal sense EVERYTHING. Everything  is connected and so everything affects everything else to a greater or  lesser degree. At the same time, we must also take into account all the  rhythms of Gaia, of the planet that is our home. Even if our planet  Earth was mere dead geology, we will only thrive on it when we live as  if it really is alive and in a real sense conscious. It is only a small  step to understanding that it is indeed alive and conscious and deeply  aware of us, and is deeply aware what we do to each other and what we do  to our ‘it’ to our Gaia, to our Mother Earth. The spiritual awakening  of humanity is undoubtedly occurring now in our time. We are so aware  now of how we are all globally connected, and we are equally aware now  of our responsibilities towards our environment, to all the plants and  living creatures: to our Mother Earth, to our Holy Gaia. This is the  sacred and mystical threshold of our Pilgrimage of the Ages: our  recognising that we are responsible for our planet, and for all that  dwell with us on our planet. Our spiritual unfoldment, the unfoldment of  our ultimate spiritual destiny – that which gives true meaning to our  existence – is found within our relationship with our Mother earth, and  is revealed in this profoundly spiritual and sacred time when at last we  reach out to our Mother Earth, not to grasp its treasures, but to  become ONE with our Mother Earth and to be part of our Mother Earth’s,  our planet’s, our Holy Gaia’s healing. Pointers to our spiritual destiny  is to be found in our recognition at last of our responsibility towards  our Mother Earth. And then will at last come the time when that  recognition of culpability and responsibility will give way to that  moment when we no longer seek to redress the balance with regards to how  we despoiled our Mother Earth, doing so in order to save ourselves, but  will instead address our culpability and responsibility out of LOVE for  our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia. True, wholesome, and holy change comes  only through love. And many are already there, and over time more shall  follow. Thus shall we and our beautiful planet be healed, and thus  shall we truly be riding the sacred and mystical way to the stars that  are our spiritual destiny. It is not just the environment and our planet  that we must save. It is ourselves. And our salvation will come through  our love for ALL – that ALL including our Mother Earth. Thus is our  spiritual and ultimately sacred awakening and unfolding made manifest.

If we really are influenced

By the rhythms of the stars,

We must accept that also

We are influenced by the rhythms

Of our Mother Earth.

***

A church and a mosque, with Nordic and African people.

THE INSECURITIES OF RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND RACIAL BIGOTRY

We see the steeple of a beautiful Christian church, and the domes and minarets of a beautiful Islamic mosque. At the same time, we see a northern European couple and an African couple. These images represent the key divisions in our world: our divisions with regard to our religious observances, and our divisions with regard to how we identify racially. Yet, this is an image of peace and reconciliation. This is an image that shows that there is a deep unity in our lives that must always transcend our divisions.

The fundamentalist notion that only Christianity is correct, is a latter-day aspect of the notion that only the white European’s culture etc is any good. It is a lingering manifestation of that corrosive superiority complex that has contaminated the world for so long. And this is not unique to the Western world. It is a notion that at various times has infected nearly all the various peoples of our planet. Perhaps it is responsible for most of our ills. Certainly, it is an attitude that our religions, be they of the west or the east, the south or the north, must overcome within themselves. Likewise, all our various races and all our various colours of our skins. These are crucial issues, and the time has come now, in the twenty-first century to at last address them. This we have to do. At the most mundane of levels we are increasingly aware that we live in a global village. People of other faiths and races live in our neighbourhoods and indeed next door to us. And if we had our eyes half open, we would see that ‘they are good’. This is the great spiritual purpose of our time, to at last live the Truth that we are ONE with each other, that ALL is ONE. We can make no true spiritual progress unless we live by that Truth. Indeed, we can make no social or political progress unless we live by that Truth. Our planet, our Mother Earth is sacred and holy. We are not superior to our Mother Earth, we are ONE with our Mother Earth and must love Her and care for Her. Our sacred quest, humanity’s great spiritual pilgrimage is to take us past all the terrible doors of separation and exclusivity. Instead, our sacred quest, our great spiritual pilgrimage, is to take us through the doorway, the sacred portal of inclusivity, to where ALL belongs to ALL. This spiritual awakening is happening now. At times it is painful, but it is certainly happening. We are not this race, or that race: we are the Human Race. And likewise, we must cease to identify or validate our own faiths in terms of our opposition to their faiths. We cannot judge people by the colour of their skins, we must judge them by the lives they lead. Likewise, we cannot judge those of other religions by the beliefs they subscribe to, we must judge them by the lives they lead. It is said in the New Testament, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me’. But when someone of a very different faith, or of no faith at all, reaches out to someone in love and compassion, can we not say that Christ is within that person, regardless of their faith? Our sacred and spiritual way is not to be found in what we believe, it is to be found in the life we lead. This is the sacred and spiritual and profoundly mystical path for us all. It is a path that can never be defined, or even reviled, by the colour of our skin or the scripture we hold most dear. Our destiny, the true meaning of our lives here and now, is to be found in racial and religious inclusivity. ALL is ONE. That is the test of our times, and it is the great spiritual hope and promise of our time. ALL is ONE.   

Fundamentalists who think 

Only their own religions are true, 

Are as insecure as racists who think 

Only their own ethnic groups have worth. 

***

A girl’s face stares out from a litter-strewn beach.

WE MUST CLEANSE THE PHYSICAL AND THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT

A deeply spiritual woman, calm and perhaps at peace, except for her eyes, that express sadness and horror as she contemplates what we have done to our beautiful Planet Earth, to our Gaia. She stares out from the sands of a beach that is littered with all the detritus of our so-called civilised lives. The beach is filthy with all our discarded stuff. This is a deeply spiritual woman who knows what must be done, but whose eyes betray her doubts as to whether humanity will actually do what must be done.

Our  awareness at last of what we have done to our planet, to our precious  Mother Earth, to our Holy Gaia, and our awareness at last that we are  responsible for this, and must make ourselves responsible for healing  our environment, for creating the possibilities for our natural  environment to flourish and be healed, is a vital moment in humanity’s  spiritual journey, in humanity’s sacred pilgrimage to ONENESS with ALL.  We cannot always peer into our souls. We cannot always sense the state  of anyone’s soul; by peering at his or her face: though often we do  carry the spiritual state of ourselves on our face and do carry the  truth of our souls deep in our eyes. But our environment, the state of  our sacred Mother Earth displays the state of our collective souls in  full view. And too often what we see in terms of our environment, and  thereby in terms of our inner spiritual selves, is not good.  Sir  Christopher Wren was laid to rest on 5 March 1723 in the south-east  corner of the crypt of St Paul's cathedral in London which he designed  and built. The Latin inscription on a plain stone plaque in the crypt  ends with a profound statement which translates as follows: ‘Reader, if  you seek his monument, look around you’.  Reader, if you seek a monument  to the spiritual state of humanity, we would say, ‘look around you’.  Our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia, OUR HOME has been despoiled. She is the  living, or we might say ‘dying’ proof of what we spiritual pilgrims  have become. We are nothing except scavengers on the face of our planet,  unless we accept our spiritual and sacred duty towards each other and  towards our Mother Earth. Sadly, we imagine that we are better off if we  pursue material gain at almost any cost. But if the inmost secrets of  our souls revealed in what we are doing to our Mother Earth, then we  must become self-aware at last, and must seek not only reconciliation  with each other and with the flora and fauna of our once beautiful  Mother Earth, but must also seek some sort of redemption. What we truly  are is revealed in the state of our lands and seas. If we seek to heal  ourselves, then we must seek to heal our Mother Earth’s environment. If  we seek to give spiritual meaning to our lives, then we must accept that  our Mother Earth, our Holy Gaia, is sacred, and must be ONE with our  spiritual meaning, that indeed the stare of our planet is a profound and  spiritually significant manifestation of the actual state of our souls.  Our sacred and spiritual quest is forever a moral quest. Every test  requires us to leave light and healing in our wake, not darkness and  despoilation. ‘Man and woman, know thyself’, is what we have always been  told. So this is the truth of us at this time in our sacred pilgrimage:  Man and woman, look upon your Mother Earth, upon your beaches and seas,  upon your fields and your mountains: and know thyself, and hang your  heads in shame.

It is not only the physical environment

That must be cleansed.

It is also the environment of mind,

Which is linked,

And which is US

***

 

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