Joy brings more light into our lives. No matter the circumstances you have drawn into your life, pay attention when you catch yourself smiling and enjoying the small stuff. As we learn to focus on the simple pleasures already happening, the easier it is to let go of allowing the unpleasant [...]]]> By Suzanne E. Harrill

Joy brings more light into our lives. No matter the circumstances you have drawn into your life, pay attention when you catch yourself smiling and enjoying the small stuff. As we learn to focus on the simple pleasures already happening, the easier it is to let go of allowing the unpleasant things to spoil our day. It lightens us every time we enjoy a flower or sunset, hug a loved one, say hi to a smiling neighbor, pet our dog or cat, or make eye contact with a child at the grocery store. This joy in the moment transfers to building a positive mindset, which affects how we live our day. Let us remember that improving our attitude not only helps us enjoy our life, it also positively impacts our relationships.

We all know the only thing we have control over in life is our inner world. Our thoughts and attitudes color all that happens to us. It even influences those around us. Learning to enjoy our life more and boosting our feelings of inner worth and value are both an inside job, nobody can give this to us. The more we appreciate the small things that make us happy and nourish us, the more it helps upgrade our thoughts, self-talk, and the words moving out of our mouths spoken to others.

As we spend more time noticing the small things that make us smile, it affects our overall well-being, adding more joy, love, and peace to our lives. This in turn boosts our self-esteem and enjoyment of our day. As we remind ourselves often that we are responsible for what we experience in our own world, we pay attention to what we like, who we like to spend time with, and what activities bring us pleasure. This shift to an internal locus of control supports conscious living, which improves the quality of our own lives, even when those around us have not “gotten” it yet. The more we stay in our place of inner peace the less others affect us negatively. Focus on your joy and watch our loved ones change while around us.

Studies show that it is not the outer events that shape our stress level or enjoyment of life, it is our beliefs, opinions, perceptions, and interpretations of these events that affect us. Recently, I sat next to a young woman who was totally stressed out by her airplane travel experiences. Talking on her cell phone to her husband about her misfortunes before take-off, got her more agitated by the minute. Next, she called a friend for sympathy and explained her story all over again and in great detail. As we waited to take off and taxied down the runway, the young woman mentioned some of her woes to me.

Clearly I saw my younger self in this woman. I know I have done similar things in times past, getting caught up in the drama and not being able to let it go and be in the present moment. With my current awareness, it was easy for me to see how this woman was setting herself up for more stress later in the day because she was perpetuating her negative feelings and letting them dominate how she felt.

I decided to interject that we were really lucky not to be in Europe at the moment, as all the airports were closed because of the Iceland volcano erupting. This did make her pause for a moment as she shifted outside of her limited perspective. We imagined how tired and frustrated those people must be. What about the children traveling? We continued talking about how hard that must be on the parents. Next, we wondered if there was enough food at the airport and how lucky we were at the moment. This woman had young children who were not traveling with her. It seemed she caught the implications that her day would have been even more challenging if her children were along.

I admit, it was easier to be in an objective frame of mind observing another when an irritating day had not come my way. I did make a mental note to remember this woman, however, as an example of how not to handle stress in my future. I want to pay attention to my attitude the next time an unpleasant experience finds its way onto my path and stop my negative ruminating so I can move beyond the negative-feeling experience.
I noticed that our conversation appeared to have a positive impact on the young woman sitting next to me; she smiled as we got up and left the plane. It reminded me that others are impacted by our response to them. People see their reflection in us as if we were a mirror.

Build your reserve of happy memories when you move outside your comfort zone, whether it is traveling, going Christmas shopping at a crowed mall, spending time with teenagers, or watching your grandchildren for extended periods of time. Notice the small stuff. Look back on today and list as many things as you can that made you smile or feel happy inside. Better yet, when tomorrow gets here, visualize yourself noticing more things that give you enjoyment: the smell of your bath soap, the flavor of your coffee or tea, the colors you choose to wear, or saying hello to a friend on email.

Remember that one? Did you ever see little children playing in a sandbox or on the beach? They create wonderful castles, great monuments, roads and aqueducts between cities in their sandbox. They create their own worlds of sand.

But then with glee and hand-clapping, they kick their castles to dust, destroy their [...]]]> By Vidya Ishaya

Remember that one? Did you ever see little children playing in a sandbox or on the beach? They create wonderful castles, great monuments, roads and aqueducts between cities in their sandbox. They create their own worlds of sand.

But then with glee and hand-clapping, they kick their castles to dust, destroy their roads, eliminate their aqueducts and start all over again with nothing but a blank pile of sand, happily creating another universe.

Can you imagine a child stressing out because the sand palace starts to erode as the waves come to chip away at it? Well, maybe a little. But how long does she hold onto it? Does she start building a wave blocker? When the rain comes, does she design a roof to protect her creation? Does a child imagine he’s safe if a building stands, but becomes fearful for his own existence if the building starts falling?

No. Children don’t try to hold on to anything. They let whatever happens happen. Yes, they are the creators of their play universe, but they’re the maintainers and also the destroyers of their creation, all in great fun, pleasure and enjoyment.

What is the Difference
Between the Outlook of a Child and That of an Adult?

As adults, we’ve been taught just how important and significant it is to hold on to our creations and never let them deteriorate. It’s great to build a house or an organization, but it’s not great when it starts to change (and it’s especially bad when there’s a threat of dissolution.) The more we can hold onto “exactly the way things should be,” then we’re sure we’re safe and secure. And very happy, right?

Well, not exactly. What we actually see and experience is that the more we hold on, the more we try to keep things exactly as they are, as they’ve always been, the more we suffer. Because it is the nature of the universe (and everything in it) to be created, maintained for a while, and then destroyed. Everything! But this does not have to be a source of suffering. Not at all!

The truth is – you create your world around you. And you maintain it. And you destroy it. Consider the body you reside in. You imagine that you have to keep it safe at all times, to prevent it from being injured or destroyed at all costs. The keyword here is “imagine.” We imagine that we know the truth. We imagine that we know what’s going on all around us when the real truth is something different than we imagine.

In truth, we create our body, we maintain it for awhile, and then we choose to leave it, exactly at the perfect moment according to a choice we made long ago. And this is precisely what is happening to everything else in our universe.

When you let go, and experience the world as a child experiences the sandbox, then you are open to the Truth: what is real never ends. The reality is that you are eternally the master of creation – and destruction. You create, you enjoy your creation for awhile and then you dissolve it, so that you can do it all over again. Forever.

Why? Does Nothing Matter? Isn’t Anything Significant?

Look at what was on the earth 10,000 years ago. Look at what’s here now. Imagine what will be here 10,000 years from now. All totally different, all totally changed. What does that mean about all the things we hold dear, all that has such importance to us? Do we just give up in frustration because the world is meaningless and nothing matters?

No. Of course not. We once again become as little children and see the joy, the beauty, the fun in what we’ve created right now. And then we let it all go, in glee, like the child who destroys his sand castle with a bucket of water. Because we know we can create again, always fresh, always new, with a burst of excitement and enjoyment.

What it all comes down to is: what do you choose? Do you choose to hold on tightly to everything exactly as it always has been, experiencing stress, sorrow and frustration when everything begins to change, as it must? Or do you choose to live life from a place of joy and laughter, happily accepting everything as it unfolds in front of you, whether it looks like creation or destruction?

It really is just a simple choice, and everyone is making the choice, in every moment. What do you choose?

You can see more of the play of Vidya Ishaya at www.awakeningpath.com

By Suzanne E. Harrill

Writing is a good way to get to know yourself, solve your problems, lower your stress level, and balance yourself emotionally. If you are new to this, buy a notebook to begin keeping a journal, not a diary, a journal. What is the difference? A diary reports events and [...]]]>

By Suzanne E. Harrill

Writing is a good way to get to know yourself, solve your problems, lower your stress level, and balance yourself emotionally. If you are new to this, buy a notebook to begin keeping a journal, not a diary, a journal. What is the difference? A diary reports events and usually makes sense if another were going to read it. A journal, on the other hand, is about your emotional reactions to people and events, insights you have in understanding yourself, lists of your needs, wants, values, and goals. You can write about your dreams, both daydreams and dreams during sleep, giving your feelings and your hunches free range to explore meaning for you. A journal is a good place to record your guiding beliefs and patterns of behavior that keep you stuck, and your rewrites. It might include letters to people who have hurt you, even if it happened years ago. Sometimes these letters are written only to help you express and process your feelings. Wait a couple of days if you choose to mail a letter to make sure it feels right.

Time stops emotionally when you have an emotional trauma and a part of you gets stuck. Writing out your angry, hurt, and sad feelings helps move those frozen emotional parts of you, to bring the light of understanding with new clarity and interpretations from your aware, adult self, and to integrate these experiences. If you have a fight with a family member, use your journal writing to sort out your feelings and to make sense out of your reactions. Then you may decide to write that person a letter to open communication and share where you are without being as emotional. Once you begin writing and expressing yourself, you may discover it reminds you of a similar pattern with one of your parents or it may repeat some of your parents’ dance with each other. You may not even have realized this, but journal writing can help you stumble upon other earlier issues that fuel the reactions you are having with this person in your present.

Journals are not for others to read and do not make sense to anyone else. In fact, they are personal and need to be kept out of reach of the curious in your households. If you feel your privacy will not be honored, then mail what you write to a friend, therapist, or understanding family member. I have worked with a few people who find writing leaves them too open and vulnerable. So they write down insights and process their experiences and then destroy what they have written to avoid any risk of being hurt by another invading their privacy.

Write in your journal a minimum of 20 or 30 minutes a day. This may sound like a big commitment to those of you who have never experienced the healing effects of journal writing. Try it for a month or two before you judge this process. Forget any memories of school and needing to write in complete sentences, neatly, or with correct spelling. Just express yourself. Over time you will get the feel of it. If you walk or exercise your physical body daily it becomes a habit; so does expressing yourself in your journal. It is especially helpful to write during times of rapid growth and healing, high stress, holidays, anniversaries of painful events, or when irritated with work or a family member. One tip that helps motivate me is to have many different colored ink pens, and then I choose the color that I feel like writing with each time. It is amazing how easy it is to write some of your issues in purple, while others respond to green or orange.

Journal writing is a process, and awareness grows in this process. One or two days of writing usually does not help you as much as the richness found in a series of writings. Here you see bigger patterns, deeper themes, and many more details. Many people resist writing, possibly because it reminds them of the pressures of being in school. For journaling you don’t need to worry about spelling, writing in complete sentences, or grammar. Just express yourself. Until you try it for a while, it is difficult to understand the benefits of writing down your thoughts and feelings. The most remarkable thing for me is that insights sometimes pop out of my unconscious and onto my paper, and often I had no idea these ideas were there. Use the following questions and suggestions to get you started. Once you have answered them go back and do it again. New information always come forward.

Journal Questions for Self-Discovery

Describe your parents. How are you alike and how are you different from each? What are the most significant traits, guiding beliefs, or patterns of behavior that you learned from each of your parents? Which of these do you like and which do you dislike? What did you learn from each parent about money, anger, prosperity, communication, relationships? (This question alone could keep you writing for many days).

List what you like and dislike about your own character traits. Take one characteristic that you wish to change. Write every thought, feeling, and memory you have related to this trait. What blocks you from moving this trait in a positive direction? What are some baby steps you can take to improve this trait? Describe how you will look, act, and feel when you have transformed this trait in yourself. Take a moment each day to feel and visualize this updated trait in yourself as if it is already true. Continue with more of your traits that you wish to transform.

What motivates you in life? Where do you feel your passion?

Write about your most developed and least developed part of yourself — physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. What things do you need to do to balance yourself?

Write about the people who are/were mentors or role models for you? Begin in childhood. Who did you admire and why? What have you learned from each of them? What do you like about each? Which of their values, characteristics, behaviors, and beliefs do you choose to emulate?

Think about the most exciting future you can imagine. Write a story about your future as if you are writing a novel or movie with you as the main character. Make it the way you really dream of and move beyond your current script.

Write about the most negative thought or feeling you have about yourself. Write some healing affirmations to reflect what you now know is true.

Get in touch with some of your fears, like fear of rejection, abandonment, not being perfect, or not being good or smart enough. Write about each. When do you remember first having them? What events trigger them today? How do you see yourself healing these? Create some affirmations.

Write about significant emotional events that have influenced your life.

List your needs, wants, and goals.

List your values and rank order them. Notice which ones are your biggest motivators.

List ten guiding beliefs. Rewrite the limiting ones.

Write a letter to someone you are angry with, hurt by, resentful towards, or unable to forgive. You do not have to mail the letter unless your inner guidance directs you to do this.

Record your dreams. Include how you feel about each dream and what you think each may mean. Look for themes and patterns in your dreams over a period of time.

Who were the people and situations that influenced your self-esteem in the past? Write about your positive and negative feeling experiences. What does your inner guidance tell you to do about healing the past?

Write about conditional and unconditional love. What did you experience and learn from your family of origin? from your religious teachings? from the media? Who do you love unconditionally? Discuss.

List things that you do, or want to start doing to nurture yourself.

Write a letter at the beginning of each year or on your birthday, expressing all that you want to experience and accomplish in the next year. Open your letter the following year and see how well you did. Notice whether you had unreal expectations of time, either allowing too much or too little time to do what you say you wanted to accomplish, create, and experience.

By Dr. Joe Vitale

I had lunch with a dear friend the other day. While I enjoyed the company and the food, I left feeling a little depressed.

When I thought about it, I realized my friend was brilliant at dismissing every book, concept, guru, self-help method, or healing approach he had read [...]]]>

By Dr. Joe Vitale

I had lunch with a dear friend the other day. While I enjoyed the company and the food, I left feeling a little depressed.

When I thought about it, I realized my friend was brilliant at dismissing every book, concept, guru, self-help method, or healing approach he had read or heard about.

He was not directly negative or purposely critical. He sincerely wanted something that would work in his life. But he was unconsciously dismissing everything that came his way.

At one point I told him about a guru I had studied over two decades ago. I told him that people said, “My guru was obviously enlightened. He radiated it.”

My friend cut in saying, “I’m sure there are people who saw that guru and didn’t think he was any smarter than a paper bag.”

Well, my friend is right.

But my friend is also unhappy.

I think there’s a lesson here. When we dismiss people and ideas because the entire world doesn’t agree with them, we get to be right. But we also get to stay empty inside. By dismissing what could work, we dismiss our own growth. We dismiss what’s possible.

It doesn’t matter if the book you read and love is loved by anyone else. It doesn’t matter if the teacher you admire is admired by anyone else. It doesn’t matter if the healing method that worked for you doesn’t work for everyone.

What matters is you. Your happiness. Your health. Your healing. Your well-being.

Truth is, no method works for everyone. No teacher is right for everyone. No book is going to inspire everyone.

It all comes from within. You are the first and final authority on your life.

Rather than dismissing what is possible so you can be right, what can you accept so you can grow?

Dismissing is often a way to deflect the messages. It’s a self-defense mechanism. If you dismiss the book, idea, or method offered to you, you get to be right — and stay right where you’re at.

Every successful person I know has accepted new tools into their lives over the years, spent thousands of dollars on personal growth and self-study, and never regretted any of it.

The key is not dismissing, but digesting.

For example, Nerissa and I had dinner with friends recently. One friend was complaining about her job. >From her perspective, there was no way out of the misery she felt at her place of work. Bad boss. Bad hours. Bad pay. You name it, it was bad.

Later we were joined by other friends. As “chance” would have it, one of the new friends had connections with where our complaining friend worked. He gave our unhappy friend a name, and said he could help her resolve her issues. He went on to say that this connection was a supervisor, head of many departments, and could probably resolve whatever was wrong.

I was stunned. So was Nerissa. We were seeing magic happen right before our eyes.

But what did our unhappy friend do with her new lead and new hope?

She dismissed it.

She didn’t write down the name or the numbr, or show any signs that something wonderful had just occured.

Do you see how this works?

Sometimes we can self-sabotage the things we say we want. We simply dismiss the good.

Let me end this with another example:

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail about a new audioprogram about dissolving illusions. I read the piece but dismissed it. I figured it was simply stuff I had already heard before and probably even recorded elsewhere myself.

Then today I got another mailing, this time from a different source, but selling the exact same audiopogram. I read it over closely. I thought, “This is interesting, but I bet there’s little new in it.” I then placed the mailing aside.

An hour or so later, as I was reviewing this very article you’re reading right now, I suddenly realized that I was doing the very thing I am warning you not to do: I was dismissing an opportunity to learn.

I dug out the mailing, filled out the order form, and dropped it in the mail. The audios are on the way.

The point is not that you buy everything that comes your way, but that you don’t dismiss everything that comes your way. Sometimes a dismissal is a mask. It’s your self-sabotage at work, keeping you where you’re at. To grow, you must allow.

Again, you are the final authority on your life. Tune in to yourself and do what’s right for you. And as you do this, be alert to those times when you may be dismissing the next gift to come your way.

Let your guard down, and let life in.

Dr. Joe Vitale is author of way too many books to list here, including the #1 best-selling books “Attractor Factor” and “Spiritual Marketing,” the best-selling e-book “Hypnotic Writing,” and the best-selling Nightingale-Conant audioprogram, “The Power of Outrageous Marketing.” His latest books are the best-selling “The Greatest Money-Making Secret in History” and “Adventures Within.” He’s being called “The Buddha of the Internet.” Sign up for his monthly ezine and see many articles by him athttp://www.MrFire.com

By Tim Bellows

I read the news story about the bombing of a great holy shrine or temple in Iraq. About the revenge, close to civil war in that alarmed country. Remember that story? I thought of how a major statue of Buddha was destroyed a few years back – and how humans [...]]]>

By Tim Bellows

I read the news story about the bombing of a great holy shrine or temple in Iraq. About the revenge, close to civil war in that alarmed country. Remember that story? I thought of how a major statue of Buddha was destroyed a few years back – and how humans can become so angry as to commit ugly acts, causing more anger-revenge. Seems that even cruel thoughts come back to taint and injure us. Round and round goes the wheel of tit for tat.

To me, the point is to get off that wheel. To look for life to teach us love and love only. Jesus said to love our enemies. Rudyard Kipling got into the act too:

“Teach us delight in simple things,
And mirth that has no bitter springs;
Forgiveness free of evil done,
And love to all men ‘neath the sun!”

And check this out, from The Buddha’s Words on Kindness (Metta Sutta):

So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

[http://dharma.ncf.ca/introduction/sutras/metta-sutra.html]

That is, not born on the world’s wheel of revenge, anger, and graceless thoughts.

Here’s Hawthorne who has one of is characters think over his art of painting:

“O glorious Art!” thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trod the street, “thou art the image of the Creator’s own. The innumerable forms, that wander in nothingness, start into being at thy beck. The dead live again. Thou recallest them to their old scenes, and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. . . .”

(http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/pp.html)

Let me sort through this last excerpt, hoping to clarify it: A glorious art will be the image of the Creator’s art. Apparently such an art can access those “forms, that wander in nothingness.” These must be higher forms, the formless forms, suggesting pure spirit beyond the entertainments of language. Can the highest of the arts bring what’s “immortal” to us on this rough-edged world where temples are blown up, animals are treated cruelly, and people mock and abuse others?

We also have the Mother Theresas, the Jane Goodalls and the Schweitzers among us! I say let’s study and concentrate on them and soak in some of their example. Most medical people study disease in the west. Bizarre! To find health, study those who are healthy. What are they doing with food, exercise, or spiritual contemplation? We could study what we see as the highest, best, and most beautiful: the planet would gain in spiritual consciousness, despite the outer negatives that will never be totally eliminated. After all, things must always be in a balance. Yet life demands that we – and all world-members – be whole, taking in and acknowledging “good” and “evil.” Wasn’t there a saying, “Bless those who curse you”? Yes. . . . I found it: “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (The Christian Bible. Luke 6:28).

Tim Bellows

Tim is a writing teacher, poet and photographer devoted to wilderness, contemplative travels, and the divine and quirky ways of words. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he’s published work in over 200 literary journals, in Sunlight from Another Day, Poems In & Out of the Body (see Amazon.com), and in A Racing Up the Sky (Eclectic Press). His poems appear inDesert Wood, an Anthology of Nevada Poets and in Wild Stars (Starry Puddle Press).

He teaches writing at Sierra College in Northern California. Tim edits an e-newsletter, LIGHTSHIP NEWS, a strong focus on the spiritual dimensions of poetry, innovative thought, and crucial tips for writers. Email star999@sbcglobal.net to sign on.

By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day [...]]]> By Rev. Martin Luther King

By 1967, King had become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 — a year to the day before he was murdered — King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King

4 April 1967
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate — leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission — a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the “Vietcong” or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators — our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change — especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy — and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us — not their fellow Vietnamese –the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go — primarily women and children and the aged.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them — mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force — the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

Now there is little left to build on — save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front — that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the north” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them — the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.

This Madness Must Cease
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary.

Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

The People Are Important
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept — so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force — has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter — but beautiful — struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ’tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.

An ancient Chinese blessing wishes recipients, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, we now have the answer to that prayer. Actually, all times are interesting, just in different ways.

During the last week and month the economy seems to be at the top of most people’s list of [...]]]> By Alan Cohen

An ancient Chinese blessing wishes recipients, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, we now have the answer to that prayer. Actually, all times are interesting, just in different ways.

During the last week and month the economy seems to be at the top of most people’s list of urgent issues to think and talk about.  Today the U.S. government is issuing a new policy to deal with the economic upsets of late. Below are some suggestions on how to get to a better feeling place about the economy, and generate practical results for yourself and others.

Here is my six-point plan. I am not an economist, and frankly I don’t understand all of the complexities of the current market. I do, however, understand the relationship between thought, belief, feeling, attitude, expectation, identity, and practical prosperity. So here is my six-point plan, which will surely work if you apply it:

1. Vision. A visionary sees and remembers the Big Picture in the face of current appearances to the contrary. The Big Picture of life is utter abundance. There are vast resources, economic and otherwise, for those who recognize and claim them. A visionary thrives under all conditions. There are always people who do well in difficult economic20times, as well as those who flounder in prosperous times. It is not the economy at large that determines your well being; it is the consciousness you hold in relation to it. So you have the power to create a prosperous personal economy ¨C and as you do, you will uplift the economy at large. The two greatest achievements of the twentieth century — the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building — were funded and built at the height of the great depression. Some individuals with a broad perspective were not limited by the prevalent beliefs of the masses. There are, and will be, people who prosper now and in the near future. I know people whose businesses are booming now. So can yours, and by your example you can manifest abundance that will inspire others and help them in material ways.

2. Trust. When human affairs appear to falter, the hand of the divine becomes very real and practical. A Higher Power is currently running the universe far more intelligently and successfully than even the best economists. The more you stay connected to that Higher Power, the richer will be your inner peace and your ability to make healthy, productive decisions.

In a Greek myth, the King of Crete sent Theseus through the labyrinth to kill or be killed by the dreaded monster Minotaur. The king’s daughter Ariadne fell in love with Theseus and gave him a thread that he let unwind on his way into the labyrinth, which guided him out once he slayed the monster. Whenever you feel trapped or lost in the labyrinth of worldly life, your strongest move is to take hold of the thread of your connection to Spirit, hold firm to it, and let it lead you back to well-being. One of Dr. Wayne Dyer’s books is entitled, There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, and no advice could be more appropriate than the economic situation we face at the moment.

3. Reframe. The Chinese written symbol for “crisis” is a combination of two other symbols: “Danger” and “Opportunity.” Yes, there is a danger in our current position. And yes, there is an opportunity. Perhaps we are receiving a wake-up call to live within our means rather than leverage ourselves and our institutions beyond a healthy level. Or we are being invited to recognize that money does not make us rich, or its temporary absence of restriction make us poor. Perhaps this situation will influence the upcoming election in a way that will help us in the long run. Maybe there is a natural balancing occurring that will make our economy stronger. I cannot say exactly how this crisis will serve, but I do know that whenever I have faced and handled the experience of crisis in my personal life, I have been moved to make decisions that have made improved my world. *A Course in Miracles* tells us that “All change is good,” and this should be no exception.

4. Reset Priorities. In an episode of the popular television series, “Fantasy Island”, called, “The Luckiest Man in the World,” a gambler achieved his fantasy to create an unstoppable winning streak. True to form, Mr. Roark arranged for the man’s young son to visit him at the same time. When the gambler became hypnotized by winning, he distanced himself from his son, and the boy was about to leave him. Finally the father realized he *is* the luckiest man in the world — not for his gambling winnings, but for his family. When money seems tight, we have a window of insight to recognize how rich we are, no matter how much we have in the bank. If many of us use this time to grow closer to our families, homes, nature, activities that truly bring us joy, ourselves, and our Higher Power, this upheaval will have served us well.

5. Circulate. Keep moving your energy, financially and otherwise. The brilliant metaphysician Florence Scovel Shinn noted, “All disease is due to congestion and all healing is due to circulation.” This dynamic applies impeccably to an economic congestion. When people are afraid to spend money, there is less money in circulation; then people grow afraid to spend, and the cycle goes on. The dynamics shift when consumers act not from a sense of lack or fear, but from abundance and faith. So now would be a great time to spend your money. When you do, you affirm that you have enough and you keep the circulation moving — not just from you, but to you. If you don’t have money to spend, or would rather not, then circulate your energy in other ways. Express your creativity, volunteer, paint, play music, journal, and do anything to move energy rather than let it stagnate. (Pressing buttons on the remote control to watch talking heads discuss the economy does not qualify as circulating energy.)

6. Milk Every Moment. It would be easy to think that you will be able to relax and enjoy your life as soon as the current crisis is averted or offset. But that’s the carrot at the end of the stick — the one that you never get to bite. Either life is rewarding now, or it never will be. From the sense of the ego, or small self, if it’s not the economy you have to wait to handle, it’s something else. So now would be perfect opportunity to practice enjoying your day, regardless of what money is doing. Stop and chat with the clerk in the supermarket, play with your kids, call someone you love, walk in the park, or tinker with your hobby. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for — don’t miss it!

Everything will work out. It always does. Be of good cheer. Be uplifted and be an uplifter, and your contribution to the economy, financial and spiritual, will be paramount.

By Suzanne E. Harril

Suffering is part of the human condition. We can’t avoid it. Have you noticed that some people suffer more even with the same or less dramatic issues than others? Those that suffer less have made a shift in perspective away from victimhood to seeing a larger picture. They practice [...]]]>

By Suzanne E. Harril

Suffering is part of the human condition. We can’t avoid it. Have you noticed that some people suffer more even with the same or less dramatic issues than others? Those that suffer less have made a shift in perspective away from victimhood to seeing a larger picture. They practice expanding their awareness to include knowing themselves, their real needs, and learning to meet them. Let me share a part of my early journey to illustrate this shift in consciousness necessary to shrink the amount of suffering you experience. Included are some insights I learned recently at a retreat.

Looking back, I was an avid seeker of Truth when I was young. I didn’t define myself as such, I was just curious about many things – the mysteries of life, human behavior, and solutions to problems. My natural curiosity sparked my interest in understanding what made humans tick, how to have good relationships, and how to communicate well. I wanted to move past the pain I saw in my parent’s personalities and relationship. Their pain motivated me to look beyond the boundaries of my family-of-origin to seek information that would make my life different. When I had children, I looked for information to understand them as individuals, to learn how to work with their personalities, and how they interacted with mine.

During my early childhood, I was nauseated much of the time, which I grew to understand to be partly the result of being very sensitive. I could feel my mother’s anger and frustration at her own life and relationship with my dad. I suffered if she suffered, as I had no emotional boundaries – developing healthy boundaries is one of my many lessons to understand in this school of life. In my youth, I pondered my life and knew that I wanted to be happier than what I observed from my parents. I was trained to be a victim – of others and life. Part of my journey was to learn how to release being a victim of my own suffering which was based on many faulty beliefs and behavioral patterns learned from my conditioning. It is a continual process of becoming more self-aware.

A young couple, parents of a baby with multiple physical challenges, introduced me to a new way of thinking. They showed me how to reinterpret suffering. In our brief encounter, they catapulted me on a new path for my life and I am grateful for the gift the three of them gave me.

How did I meet this couple? One summer, before we had children, my husband and I were invited to a friend of a friend’s lake house. Being in my early 20’s that sounded like a fun weekend; sleeping on the shag carped living room floor in a sleeping bag was no problem. Also invited were the young couple with a six-month old baby boy, who was so cute and smiled a lot. This baby had four birth defects, one of which was that all the ribs were grown together as one solid rib on each side. When I learned this and had a look of horror and shock on my face, they quietly told me it was okay and that they were at peace with his problems. As I relaxed, they told me about contacting the Association for Research and Enlightenment, A.R.E. for short, in Virginia Beach, that continues the teachings of Edgar Casey who was clairvoyant. Even though Edgar Casey was no longer alive, the association has thousands of readings he did for other people. The association allows others to research their own health issues by going through the readings. When I returned home I bought and read, There Is a River, to learn more about this man.  Edgar Casey was a devout Christian who had the ability to fall “asleep” while meditating on a person with a physical ailment and then begin talking about what he or she needed for healing. Many people achieved results.

The young couple went on to explain about a soul reading they recently had about their child and were learning to understood some of the lessons about the baby’s current birth conditions. They were learning about themselves as well. This fascinated me, as I had never ever had a discussion on topics like these. It was not only the topics we discussed that caught my interest, I was amazed at the peace this young couple had about their child who would have an early death. Why weren’t they suffering and depressed as I would in this situation? I continued reading many of the Casey books, which expanded my horizons, and gave me much to ponder. Many more books and teachers with alternative philosophies found their way onto my path.

Fast-forward 35 years where the search paid off and a new way of life has manifested for me. I still am attracted to teachings that make me grow. One such teacher is a guru in southern India, Bhagavan, who started the Oneness University. Some of his teachings have positively impacted me. Let us look at his ideas about suffering, which may speak to you also. He says there are three types of suffering physical, psychological, and existential or spiritual. Physical suffering occurs when the needs of the physical body are not met. This dominates many of us and can keep us from dealing the other two types of suffering that all people experience whether they know it or not. He teaches that there are six basic psychological needs, which need to be met or there is psychological suffering.

1. the need for certainty and stability

2. the need for variety

3. the need for significance

4. the need for love

5. the need for growth

6. the need to make a contribution

The third type of suffering is suffering for no reason. It is an empty feeling. It is part of the human condition to feel separate and alienation – from others and from God. To fill this void, we do spiritual practices, like prayer and meditation, to deepen a personal connection to All That Is and to experience oneness with others and all of life.

In conclusion, it is possible to suffer less than others. It depends on knowing ourselves, our real needs and getting them met. It requires practices of deepening our connection to the Greater Whole and experiencing Oneness with All.