CONTINUUM ~ OVERVIEW

 

 

Released 7th December 2012

At the end of 2011, we filmed a short documentary called OVERVIEW about astronauts’ experiences in space, due for release in the last quarter of 2012. The film is both a stand-alone short film and a prelude to CONTINUUM, introducing many of the key ideas expanded upon in the feature documentary.
SYNOPSIS

Astronauts who have seen the Earth from space have often described the ‘overview effect’ as an experience that has transformed their perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it, and enabled them to perceive it as our shared home, without boundaries between nations or species.

OVERVIEW is a short film that will explore this perspective through interviews with astronauts who have experienced the overview effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for humanity as a whole, and especially its relevance to how we meet the tremendous challenges facing our planet at this time.
FEATURING

• EDGAR MITCHELL – Apollo 14 astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
• RON GARAN – ISS astronaut and founder of humanitarian organisation Fragile Oasis
• NICOLE STOTT – Shuttle and ISS astronaut and member of Fragile Oasis
• JEFF HOFFMAN – Shuttle astronaut and senior lecturer at MIT
• SHANE KIMBROUGH – Shuttle/ISS astronaut and Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army
• FRANK WHITE – space theorist and author of the book ‘The Overview Effect’
• DAVID LOY- philosopher and author
• DAVID BEAVER – philosopher and co-founder of The Overview Institute

Urgent Message from Mother by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.

“Gather the women, save the world” is a message from Mother Earth, Mother Goddess, Mother archetype, delivered by author Jean Shinoda Bolen. The words evoke an intuitive recognition, a wisdom whose time has come. Women as a gender, not every woman but women generally, have a wisdom that is needed. This is a call from the Sacred Feminine to bring the feminine principle which most women and some men embody into consciousness and culture. When there is a critical mass and the tipping point is reached, gender balance ends patriarchy, and peace becomes possible.

In its original edition, this culmination of Jean Shinoda Bolen’s life’s work sold over 25,000 copies. Now in paperback for the first time Urgent Message from Mother is a call to action for all the women of the world. This unique combination of visionary thinking and practical how-to seeks to galvanize the power of women acting together in order to save our world. Bolen outlines the lessons we can learn from the women’s movement, draws on Jungian psychology and the sacred feminine, and gives powerful examples of women coming together all over the globe and making a significant impact.

Click Here To Listen to Jean Shinoda Bolen talking on a phone line about Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World. (13 min. 54 sec.)

Click Here To Browse Inside

Urgent Message from Mother:
Interview with Jean Shinoda Bolen
By James Conti

Jean Bolen, MD, is the acclaimed author of nine previous books, including The Millionth Circle and Crones Don’t Whine. An internationally renowned Jungian analyst, she is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF . Join Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, at East West Books in Mountain View.

There is no mincing of words in Jean Bolen’s newest book Urgent Message from Mother. Her subtitle gives us the message itself: Gather the Women, Save the World. American women, Jean notes, have twice changed their world, thereby effecting major change in the world as a whole. The women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century led to political equality, and the feminist movement launched in the 1960s has brought about a significant shift in the personal, social and economic status of women. Jean now sees a third women’s movement emerging, whose agenda is clear, crucial and unequivocal: to save our planet from the patriarchal power games that have set us on a path of disaster. Wherever there is conflict, she writes, a commitment to cooperation must prevail. Gather the women.

James Conti: Jean, you have written in no uncertain terms that the world needs Mother—the Sacred Feminine—to set things right, because so much is out of balance.

Jean Bolen: Yes. As Bishop Desmond Tutu has said, men have been running the world and have pretty much made a mess of it. Basically it’s the compassion element that’s been missing. It’s really time for the feminine principle now, for connected reconciliation and forgiveness.

The goddess has been a primary theme in your work, and now in this book you’ve added an accelerated activism to it. The word’”urgent” in the title speaks volumes in itself. Living as we do in the shadow of potential self-destruction, is this new women’s movement a case of now or never?

Well, I think so. I think there’s about a 20-year window of opportunity for change. When the United States and the Soviet Union called off the nuclear arms race, it felt as if the danger of destroying the planet was over, and now it’s like it’s metastasized. So, there’s that on one hand. On the other hand there’s a generation of women who have never existed in history before. It’s the most empowered generation of women ever. These women are getting together in groups and really accomplishing things. These groups, or circles, have the potential to reach critical mass. Maybe that will be at the millionth circle. It’s what Malcolm Gladwell calls “the tipping point.” When a tipping point happens in a culture, the culture changes.

Your book cites a number of stories of courage and cooperation that demonstrate the power of your millionth circle idea. Please say more about the concept.

When it comes to changing the world, conventional wisdom says, “Who do you think you are?” But if you do your part, no matter what circle you belong to, there is movement towards critical mass. Gladwell’s notion of a tipping point comes out of epidemiology. It explains how a latent virus like AIDS can progress geometrically until it reaches epidemic proportions. An idea can spread in the same way. Circles of people who support an idea give birth to more circles. The millionth circle.

I was struck by your observation of a deeply rooted difference between men and women. In stressful situations, men have been conditioned to “fight or flee,” whereas women are inclined to “tend and befriend.” This is quite revealing of the world’s current state, isn’t it?

Yes. It is women’s way to take care of people. That’s the kind of energy that is needed whenever there is conflict. When we look at the really troubled spots in the world, there aren’t women involved in the negotiations. In Northern Ireland, it was the presence of women and their involvement that brought about the Belfast Accord. In South Africa too, the old way was conflict retaliation instead of resolution. It took really good men like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to unite the country. Compassion and connection grew out of who they are.

Jean, you end your book with a discussion guide, and in it you ask a number of compelling questions. Are you hopeful that we will answer them with a commitment to action?

I have an optimistic sense that both men and women have reached a point of feeling that something really has to change. This is a book for everyone, but mainly I think there are two groups of women who will hear and heed the message. One is the young activist women who get it. They’re not buying into consumerism. They want to do something to make a difference, and they’ve got the energy to do it. The other is my age group. There are something like 50 million women in the U.S. who are over 50 now, a huge number of whom have a real sense of gratitude for what the women’s movement has done for them. They’re looking for what I call an assignment….

Your contemporary Ram Dass, has been admired lovingly as a man of “fierce grace.” It seems that your life, Jean, could be aptly described as one of “fierce compassion.” True?

(Laughing) Thank you. Yes. I mean, compassion is what is motivating me to do what I’m doing now.

Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity, an acausal principle, connects the ego to the larger archetypal self. This connection is like the ancient Chinese concept of the Tao in that it cannot be rationally understood. Jean Shinoda Bolen suggests that the images of the ancient dieties represent powerful projections of the psyche.

From a psychological perspective, all of the gods can be viewed as suffering from dysfunctional relationships and character disorders. By studying the myths of the gods, we can learn much about ourselves. It is by facing the truth of our lives that we can die to our past ways and enter into a new order of being.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., a Jungian analyst, is author of The Tao of Psychology, Goddesses in Every Woman, Gods in Every Man and The Ring of Power. She is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

Listening to God ~ Global Spirit

Throughout history, the “mystical path” or the spiritual approach of achieving “direct contact” with the Divine has resulted in powerful spiritual experiences. While often bordering on the ineffable, some of these mystical experiences have actually led to the founding of a world religion, or spawned some of the most profound ecstatic poetry ever written.

For some thousand years, mystical practices have been a small but vital part of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and other faiths and native traditions. Yet those following the mystical path have so often been persecuted, being perceived as threatening to the power of the established religious orthodoxy. It has often been said that true mystics often have more in common with each other than with the more scripture-based adherents from within their own religions, and this Global Spirit program delightfully underscores that truth.

In this Global Spirit program, host Phil Cousineau joins Brother David Steindl-Rast, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man and Maata Lynn Barron to shed light on some of the common attributes of those who yearn for and reach, however momentarily, what they describe as a direct experience of God or the Divine. From the ancient Jewish Kabbalah and Islamic Sufi practices, to the spiritual illumination and epiphanies experienced through monastic contemplation, “The Mystical Experience” explores both experiential and analytical approaches to this rich subject.

Satish Kumar – Reverential Ecology

Keynsham Transition in Bristol UK hosted this inspiring talk by Satish Kumar on reverential ecology, a must see for those interested in how to relate to our planet.

Snippet taken from Resurgence article; “Satish Kumar is a former monk and long-term peace and environment activist. He has been quietly setting the Global Agenda for change for over 50 years. He was just nine when he left his family home to join the wandering Jains and 18 when he decided he could achieve more back in the world, campaigning for land reform in India and working to turn Gandhi’s vision of a renewed India and a peaceful world into reality.”

An overview of reverential ecology can be found here:

http://www.reverentialecology.org/kyoto_interview.htm

Planting the Seeds for Change ~ Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is one of the world’s most powerful voices for global environmental justice and cultural and ecological diversity. She is the founding director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi. Vandana Shiva is also the author of numerous books including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. Series: “Walter H. Capps Center Series”

The Language of the Sacred Trees A new book by A T Mann

Trees are essential to our outer and inner lives. They create the oxygen we breathe; we burn their bodies as fuel; and they provide our houses, furniture and the very pages of our books. Trees are also central images, symbols and manifestations of life itself. We love their solidity, their immovable beauty and grandeur, as well as the shelter they provide us.

Early humanity recognized the sacred in natural places: initially in the sky and earth, but they also found representations of the divine in trees in ancient times before language, myth and religion. Legends of a “World Tree” abound in almost all early cultures, such as the Tree of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life of the Hebrew mystical Kabbalah, the sacred oak groves of the Druids and the apple trees sacred to Venus in the Garden of the Hesperides. The Yggdrasil world ash tree in Norse myth rises up from the centre of the earth, its branches forming the heavens of the gods and its roots striking down into hell where a serpent is entwined at the world’s dark core. This tree represents the fate of the world and determines the welfare of the universe. Beneath it is the Well of Fate where the three female “fates” spin the courses of men’s lives.

Robert Graves wrote about the Celtic peoples who created a tree alphabet based on their twelve sacred trees, while yews and oak groves were places of worship for the Druids and later the church.
For the Greeks, the goddess Daphne turned into the laurel, which was sacred to Apollo. Sacred groves of ash and oak trees existed at sites like the holy place to the healing god Aesculapius at Epidaurus and to Athena on the Acropolis in her city of Athens.

Branches arch out into the sky and gigantic roots dig deeply into the ground, as trees symbolize the integration of heaven and earth, above and below. Early Chaldean myths mention a tree at the centre of the world, the tapestry of which revolves to describe creation. Although such images of the world tree might seem fanciful to us, they express the need of early humanity to identify and worship living symbolic connections between earth and heaven.

The tree is a powerful metaphor expressed in ancient mythologies and the early religions, from the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha achieved Nirvana to the wooden cross upon which Christ was crucified. The Tibetan Buddhist Guru Rinpoche, also called Padmasambhava, was born emerging on a lotus from a lake and his initiates meditate on the refuge tree to remind themselves of their teaching lineage.

Phenomena of nature and qualities of humanity come together in trees just as they played a central role in Eden. Rain comes through holes in the fabric of the world tree and majestic trees are ways by which we can ascend to heaven. The various levels of the tree’s growth symbolize hierarchies and therefore places where men and their souls exist, in what later morphed into the idea of a family tree. It is as though the universe is a giant tree-house wherein humanity, the angels, the gods and devils all live, their domains determined by their various levels, all connected as a vast, eternal living organism. There are medieval paintings that show just this quality inherent in trees.

The psychologist Carl Jung worked with and revered tree symbolism because he found trees abounded in significant dreams as a symbol of growth, of wisdom, aging and corporeality. Trees have a major place in alchemy, often having nymphs that symbolize their magical aspects. The Ents In the “Lord of the Rings” are gigantic moving trees, under which live the trolls and elves that populate our fairy tales and children’s stories — their role is to surround and mysteriously guide those humans who can hear them.

Trees are the longest lived and oldest living being on earth. Some Californian trees have been alive since before the Pyramids were built, in Gethsemane are trees that witnessed the crucifixion and in Sri Lanka trees that were alive in the time of the Buddha. Ancient trees dating from 760 AD in central France are symbols of peace and justice for rural people. Cedars of the Lord still rise above Lebanon in the Middle East. Giant trees in the Amazon are so high that entire self-contained plant and animal eco-systems exist in their branches.

In our modern world we must learn to respect and husband our trees as a cornerstone of new, emerging ecological visions, partially because they consume greenhouse gasses and transform them into the oxygen we breathe. We must carefully restore their sacredness as a matter of urgency and reverse our wholesale rape of their habitat on all continents that continue to this day. Trees are central to our ecological visions of the future.

This book will celebrate the beauty of trees, their infinite variety, their inspiration, their emotional significance, their spiritual heritage and their sheer independence. It will marry evocative images with the poetry and literature and spiritual texts that best describe their ineffable spirit.

“There rose a tree. O pure transcendence!
O Orpheus sings! O high tree of the ear.
And all was still. Yet in the stillness
new beginning, summoning, change
sprang forth.” — Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

“What quietness, at the hub of things!
Beneath the tree of my life, the last river,
Surrounds an island where there rises
In the mists, a cube of grey rock,
A Fortress, the Capital of the Worlds.”
— Poem by Noël Pierre in Jung “Alchemical Studies.”

“I part the out-thrusting branches, and come in beneath the blessed and the blessing trees.”
— Woods by Wendell Berry

“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees, and flowers, and clouds and stars.” — Martin Luther

“Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.” — Twelfth Century Zen Master & Gardener Ikkyu Sojun

About the Author
A. T. Mann is an architect, author, and astrologer. He graduated from the Cornell University College of Architecture, practiced in New York City and Rome, and won a Progressive Architecture design citation in 1970. He has written or co-written 20 books (translated into many languages), including Sacred Landscapes (with Lynn Davis), Mandala Astrological Tarot, Sacred Architecture, Sacred Sexuality, and the 2011 Mandala Calendar. Mann has lived and lectured around the world, and has taught at the Danish Design School, the Netherlands Design Institute, and Manchester Metropolitan University. His website is atmann.net.

Namaste

May we all be One, One family, One
NAMASTE

Music 1: Marcomé, Dawn’s Spirit
Music 2: Marcomé, Breathe

http://marcome.com

Images: Google/Photobucket
We Honor the Unknown Artists

©2010 Humanity Healing. Partial Rights Reserved.

Beyond Environment: Falling Back in Love with Mother Earth by Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh explains to Joe Confino why mindfulness and a spiritual revolution rather than economics is needed to protect nature and limit climate change

Thich Nhat Hanh has been practising meditation and mindfulness for 70 years and radiates an extraordinary sense of calm and peace. This is a man who on a fundamental level walks his talk, and whom Buddhists revere as a Bodhisattva; seeking the highest level of being in order to help others. Ever since being caught up in the horrors of the Vietnam war, the 86-year-old monk has committed his life to reconciling conflict and in 1967 Martin Luther King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, saying “his ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.” So it seems only natural that in recent years he has turned his attention towards not only addressing peoples’ disharmonious relationships with each other, but also with the planet on which all our lives depend.

Thich, as he is known to his many thousands of followers, sees the lack of meaning and connection in peoples’ lives as being the cause of our addiction to consumerism and that it is vital we recognise and respond to the stress we are putting on Earth if civilisation is to survive. What Buddhism offers, he says, is the recognition that we all suffer and the way to overcome that pain is to directly confront it, rather than seeking to hide or bypass it through our obsession with shopping, entertainment, work or the beautification of our bodies. The craving for fame, wealth, power and sex serves to create only the illusion of happiness and Thich ends up exacerbating feelings of disconnection and emptiness. Thich refers to a billionaire chief executive of one of America’s largest companies, who came to one of his meditation courses and talked of his suffering, worries and doubts, of thinking everyone was coming to take advantage of him and that he had no friends.

In an interview at his home and retreat centre in Plum Village, near Bordeaux, Thich outlines how a spiritual revolution is needed if we are going to confront the multitude of environmental challenges. While many experts point to the enormous complexity and difficulty in addressing issues ranging from the destruction of ecosystems to the loss of millions of species, Thay sees a Gordian Knot that needs slicing through with a single strike of a sharp blade.

Move beyond concept of the “environment”
He believes we need to move beyond talking about the environment, as this leads people to experience themselves and Earth as two separate entities and to see the planet in terms only of what it can do for them. Change is possible only if there is a recognition that people and planet are ultimately one and the same.

“You carry Mother Earth within you,” says Thich. “She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life. Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing. So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Not to cut the tree not to pollute the water, that is not enough.”

Putting an economic value on nature is not enough
They says the current vogue in economic and business circles that the best way to protect the planet is by putting an economic value on nature is akin to putting a plaster on a gaping wound. “I don’t think it will work,” he says. “We need a real awakening, enlightenment, to change our way of thinking and seeing things.”

Rather than placing a price tag of our forests and coral reefs, Thich says change will happen on a fundamental level only if we fall back in love with the planet:

“The Earth cannot be described either by the notion of matter or mind, which are just ideas, two faces of the same reality. That pine tree is not just matter as it possesses a sense of knowing. A dust particle is not just matter since each of its atoms has intelligence and is a living reality.

When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born. We want to be connected. That is the meaning of love, to be at one. When you love someone you want to say I need you, I take refuge in you. You do anything for the benefit of the Earth and the Earth will do anything for your wellbeing.”

In the world of business, Thich gives the example of Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of outdoor clothing company Patagonia, who combined developing a successful business with the practice of mindfulness and compassion: “It’s possible to make money in a way that is not destructive, that promotes more social justice and more understanding and lessens the suffering that exists all around us,” says Thay. “Looking deeply, we see that it’s possible to work in the corporate world in a way that brings a lot of happiness both to other people and to us … our work has meaning.”

Thich, who has written more than 100 books, suggests that the lost connection with Earth’s natural rhythm is behind many modern sicknesses and that, in a similar way to our psychological pattern of blaming our mother and father for our unhappiness, there is an even more hidden unconscious dynamic of blaming Mother Earth. In a new essay, Intimate Conversation with Mother Earth, he writes: “Some of us resent you for giving birth to them, causing them to endure suffering, because they are not yet able to understand and appreciate you.”

How mindfulness can reconnect people to Mother Earth
He points to increasing evidence that mindfulness can help people to reconnect by slowing down and appreciating all the gifts that the Earth can offer.

“Many people suffer deeply and they do not know they suffer. They try to cover up the suffering by being busy. Many people get sick today because they get alienated from Mother Earth. The practice of mindfulness helps us to touch Mother Earth inside of the body and this practice can help heal people. So the healing of the people should go together with the healing of the Earth and this is the insight and it is possible for anyone to practice.

This kind of enlightenment is very crucial to a collective awakening. In Buddhism we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the Earth is in danger and living species are in danger.”

Thich gives the example of something as simple and ordinary as drinking a cup of tea. This can help transform a person’s life if he or she were truly to devote their attention to it. “When I am mindful, I enjoy my tea more,” says Thay as he pours himself a cup and slowly savours the first sip. “I am fully present in the here and now, not carried away by my sorrow, my fear, my projects, the past and the future. I am here available to life. When I drink tea this is a wonderful moment. You do not need a lot of power or fame or money to be happy. Mindfulness can help you to be happy in the here and now. Every moment can be a happy moment. Set an example and help people to do the same. Take a few minutes in order to experiment to see the truth.”

The need to deal with ones own anger to be an effective social activist

Thich has over many years developed the notion of applied Buddhism underpinned by a set of ethical practices known as the five mindfulness trainings, which are very clear on the importance of tackling social injustice. However, if social and environmental activists are to be effective, Thich says they must first deal with their own anger. Only if people discover compassion for themselves will they be able to confront those they hold accountable for polluting our seas and cutting down our forests.

“In Buddhism we speak of collective action. Sometimes something wrong is going on in the world and we think it is the other people who are doing it and we are not doing it. But you are part of the wrongdoing by the way you live your life. If you are able to understand that, not only you suffer but the other person suffers, that is also an insight.

When you see the other person suffer you will not want to punish or blame but help that person to suffer less. If you are burdened with anger, fear, ignorance and you suffer too much, you cannot help another person. If you suffer less you are lighter more smiling, pleasant to be with, and in a position to help the person.

Activists have to have a spiritual practice in order to help them to suffer less, to nourish the happiness and to handle the suffering so they will be effective in helping the world. With anger and frustration you cannot do much.”

Touching the “ultimate dimension”

Key to Thich’s teaching is the importance of understanding that while we need to live and operate in a dualistic world, it is also vital to understand that our peace and happiness lie in the recognition of the ultimate dimension: “If we are able to touch deeply the historical dimension – through a leaf, a flower, a pebble, a beam of light, a mountain, a river, a bird, or our own body – we touch at the same time the ultimate dimension. The ultimate dimension cannot be described as personal or impersonal, material or spiritual, object or subject of cognition – we say only that it is always shining, and shining on itself.

“Touching the ultimate dimension, we feel happy and comfortable, like the birds enjoying the blue sky, or the deer enjoying the green fields. We know that we do not have to look for the ultimate outside of ourselves – it is available within us, in this very moment.”

While Thich believes there is a way of creating a more harmonious relationship between humanity and the planet, he also recognises that there is a very real risk that we will continue on our destructive path and that civilisation may collapse. He says all we need to do is see how nature has responded to other species that have got out of control:

“When the need to survive is replaced with greed and pride, there is violence, which always brings about unnecessary devastation. We have learned the lesson that when we perpetrate violence towards our own and other species, we are violent towards ourselves; and when we know how to protect all beings, we are protecting ourselves.”

Remaining optimistic despite risk of impending catastrophe

In Greek mythology, when Pandora opened the gift of a box, all the evils were released into the world. The one remaining item was “hope”. Thich is clear that maintaining optimism is essential if we are to find a way of avoiding devastating climate change and the enormous social upheavals that will result. However, he is not naïve and recognises that powerful forces are steadily pushing us further towards the edge of the precipice. In his best-selling book on the environment, The World we Have, he writes:

“We have constructed a system we can’t control. It imposes itself on us, and we become its slaves and victims. We have created a society in which the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, and in which we are so caught up in our own immediate problems that we cannot afford to be aware of what is going on with the rest of the human family or our planet Earth. In my mind I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over a few seeds of grain, unaware that in a few hours they will all be killed.”

Reverence Thyself First: Where the Sacred Journey Begins ~ Dennis Merritt Jones

“By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.” — Albert Schweitzer

Where I live in Southern California we are blessed with year-around weather that encourages growth of just about anything planted in the ground. With the recent rains and 75-degree days there is a preponderance of green showing up everywhere. As I sat peacefully in my meditation garden this morning, my eyes were drawn to some weeds that were beginning to pop up among my beautiful lilies and bamboo. My first inclination was to pull them out because I didn’t want weeds to encroach upon and spoil the “perfectly groomed sacred space” I had dedicated to my meditation practices.

Thankfully, before I could act, that ever-present quite voice within gently whispered, “Be still and know, this too is sacred.” So I sat with the weeds and invited them to be my teacher. What was it I could learn about myself and life from the intrusion of a few errant weeds in my meditation garden? Emerson was on to something when he said that a weed was a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. Perspective is everything. In an instant, what had, one moment earlier, been perceived as an inconvenient, unsightly nuisance instantly became another opportunity to practice reverence.

It was then that I recalled something I heard Dr. William Hornaday share long ago regarding reverence. He told the story of how Ernest Holmes, the author of The Science of Mind, would, on occasion, dine with a vase of weeds on his dining room table. What great insight and wisdom he had. He considered it a beautiful reminder that the creative intelligence of life flows equally through every living thing, and that the only real difference between a weed and a rose was the value we choose to place upon one over the other. Of course we can extend the same premise to every form of life, from snails, to whales, and everything in between, including you and me and every human being on this planet.

Reverence is the act of seeing through the form and recognizing and honoring the divine presence at its center, as well as its circumference. In other words, to see the sacred in a weed can be a spiritual experience if we are willing to look beyond form and see the divine essence therein. No less true, to see the sacred in ourselves can, likewise, be a spiritual experience; in either case, the only thing required of us is to deepen our perception by dropping our judgments. Our judgements are the primary thing that separate us from the awareness of our oneness with all of life.

The practice of reverence is how we transcend our judgments, which sets us free from the tyranny of the ego-self, which thrives on fear and separation by labeling everything and everyone as good or bad, desirable or undesirable, right or wrong, and so on. When it comes to how we tend to place other people in these categories, Swami Vivekananda spoke with great elegance to the issue of reverence when he said: “The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.”

Is it easy to rise to Vivekananda’s high call to practice reverence with every human being? It’s fairly easy with those people we love, like and respect. However, it can be a bit more challenging with many others, especially if they hold core values and beliefs that differ from our own. Between the pending presidential election and a war-torn world, we don’t have to look too far for ample opportunities to begin practicing reverence outside the circle of our comfort zone. While it may sound very idealistic, can you imagine a would where reverence was practiced by more and more people? Maybe so, maybe not, but there is nothing to say it can’t start with you and me.

The takeaway for me is this: While we may prefer roses over weeds, it doesn’t mean one is more sacred than the other; the Divine imbues itself equally in all living things, which includes each of us. What value shall we place on all that our eyes gaze upon today? Where might we begin the conscious practice of reverence? The ancient philosopher Pythagoras offers us the perfect place to start: “Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself.”

In other words, above and beyond all appearances, opinions and circumstances, know there is a light, a sacred presence, within you. Recognize it, honor it, and revere it, and it will set you free to love the world. A spiritual experience awaits you in every moment of this day if you have eyes to see and it begins in the mirror. Reverence thyself first, remembering, as within — so without, and your life shall become the sacred journey you came here to have.