Being Kind to Allah, Krishna, Buddha and Christ

Being Kind to Allah, Krishna, Buddha and Christ would be easy, right?  It would feel natural to honor and love whichever one was in alignment with our spiritual beliefs or with those of our family of origin.  What about Sophia, Quan Yin, White Buffalo Calf Woman or Innana?  Turning the clock back a few hundred or a few thousand years may challenge us a little, as it opens the door to the feminine expression of the Divine.  What if we go even farther and leave race and gender behind?  What if we were to soar into Rumi's poem about seeing our own selves as Divine? 

Behold the body, born of dust, 

how perfect it has become!  

Why should you fear its end?  

When were you ever made less by dying?  

When you pass beyond this human form, 

no doubt you will become an angel and soar through the heavens!  

But don't stop there.  

Even heavenly bodies grow old.  

Pass again from the heavenly realm and plunge into the ocean of Consciousness.  

Let the drop of water that is you become a hundred mighty seas.  

But do not think that the drop alone becomes the Ocean, 

the Ocean, too, becomes the drop!

Here we are talking about a whole new level of self love.  To see ourselves as a part of Divinity, as being an expression of God, Goddess, all that is, opening up to the idea of moving beyond our sense of separation from Divinity, this is almost too far for us to go just yet.  Can we love ourselves with the same fervor and passion as we have loved our human-like images of the Divine?  We can, and we must.  For when we have finally learned to be kind to ourselves, we will have learned how to love, honor and be kind to each other and to all.  We will have learned to see the God Source in everything. 

I have certainly seen Divine glance winking out from the deep seas of my horse's eyes or from the chrysalis as she splits and unfurls and spreads her wings to dry, even in lightning and thunder as they rage across the sky.  And, when we finally awaken to the truth of this we will have come to the understanding of Namaste, to see the Divinity in each other and in all.  We will have rounded the bend that is becoming known as the great turning of humanity away from war and destruction and into the golden Age of Peace, with Kindness, honoring and love for us all.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

Step Into the Magic of Your Right Brain

We live in a left brain dominant culture.  The half of our brain that is located in the left side of our heads holds the perception of the analytical, linear, sequential and time-bound aspects of our reality.  In this part of our brain our thoughts are filled with language and numbers, worries about the past and fears of the future.  Our left brains like established routines and well-known solutions to our problems.  Whereas, the thoughts in our right brain are much wider in scope.  Our right brain thinks in terms of the whole forest rather than just the tree.  The knowledge held in our right brains is way more astute in many ways, not only socially and emotionally but also psychically, being able to see the entire context, like the whole shoreline instead of just one grain of sand.

Dropping our left brain dominance and embracing the thoughts that we hold in our right brains has great implications for our collective and global good because our right brains are so much broader in  perception.  In the right brain it is all about 'We,' rather than 'Me.'  And, when we enter into the right brain, we stop all our busy little left brain internal chatter, it just goes away, even if for only a moment and we begin to move into a consciousness that embraces more than just ourselves. We see that we are vast and a part of everything.  Our right brains also hold the consciousness of peaceful euphoria and pure love.  This is how we think while we are in the right side of our brains.

It is our right brain awareness that we are striving for and practice achieving in meditation, but this quality of awareness can also happen spontaneously whenever we are taken with the beauty of something, find love, listen to a melody or move into the present moment.  In his book, Polishing the Mirror, Ram Dass says that love is the doorway to oneness with all things, to being in harmony with the entire Universe.  He says that this is what we all long for and that once we touch this state of pure being, you can never completely forget it.  He goes on to say that 'being here now,' which is the quality of our right brain awareness, is never more than a thought away.  One of my favorite ways to access my right brain is to step outside to listen for the song of a bird,  Here we find a calm, self-assured presence from which we can access the state of oneness with everything.  It is from this inner perspective that our inner guidance arises.  As Rumi said, "Everything in the Universe is Within, Ask all from yourself."  

In her epic journey into the right side of the brain, Jill Bolte Taylor, who wrote My Stroke of Insight, found the potential for a world full of beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that they could come to this space at any time.  She saw how we could all purposefully choose to step to the right side of our brains and find this beautiful peace.  This motivated her to take that long eight year journey of recovery from her stroke, so that she could share this, so that we could each see that all of us together, can embrace peace, which I personally feel is humanity's greatest desire.  

When we are in our right brains we know that 'All is Well, All of the Time.'  It is from this standpoint that we can connect with spirit.  It gives us access to our God Space or our Collective Love Consciousness.  This is how we can commune with angels and nature spirits or deceased loved ones.  It is our Higher Self, our Super conscious mind of compassion from whence we are totally interconnected with everyone and with everything through all time in the eternal moment of now.  It is this aspect of our awareness that lets us receive inspirations that bring us into harmony and joy.
When we are in our right brain consciousness, we find that we are spontaneously fulfilling all of our needs while serving The One.   This is our right brain.  And I think it is time that we all start regularly practicing the fine art of freeing ourselves to step into the magic of the right side of our brains.

© Josephine Laing, 2015

The Many Forms of Prayer

Rumi said, "There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth."  When we spend time doing sacred art, writing or reading spiritual poetry, or  joining with others in ecstatic dance, we are expressing just a few of those hundreds of ways.  Every moment of every day, every breath we take, every step we make can be a prayer.  Pilgrimages are prayers.  Mantras and chanting are prayers. Doing the rosary, taking a walk out in nature, our whole life is a prayer.  We come into this life with a breath, we go out with another.  Our words, our thoughts -- all of these are prayers.

To me, prayer is a celebration of the soul.  Whether we realize it or not, just being alive takes us there. We can pray in groups.  As we meet, as we dance and move together, we are in prayer.    We pray with our agreements.  Whenever we come together and join our thoughts as one, that is also a prayer.  It's good to pay heed to what we agree on. 

Sometimes on retreat we are blessed with the experience of silent meals.  These are just another opportunity to move into the depth of our experience and celebrate the many joys of life.  Sand paintings, mandalas, aboriginal forms of art -- these are also celebrations of life, and of soul, and of the nature of being.  They are prayers too. 

When we bring ourselves consciously to prayer, we open to a heightened sense of self.  Our heart opens, our mind aligns, and we stand in our truth and in our power.  From this place it's not just our mouth or our intellect, it's our whole being.  This is how we change our world, one of us at a time, changing what's inside of us changes what's outside of us and thus all around us.

Join me now in this little mantra as a group prayer.  This comes from the Buddhist tradition of Vipassanā and it is a Metta or Loving Kindness Meditation.  "May all beings be peaceful, may all beings be free from suffering, may all beings be happy, may all beings be free." 

© Josephine Laing, 2014