Credentials

Credentials are excuses for dismissing the thoughts and ideas of those who have none. By extension, those who have credentials dictate “accepted” knowledge. Thus, the more we narrow our criteria for credible credentials, the more information is dismissed without consideration. More pointedly, it is the institution(s) which give “credentials” that control “accepted” knowledge.

Further, the type of credentials one has, and how the “credentials” were obtained, is often of negligible consequence to the concerned population [e. g. Honorary Degrees; and the assumed credentials of men-in-power; and those who are “in the money,” and thus are said to be “influential” as a result.] Rare examples exist where “credentials” are granted to those who are highly influential to a specific or general population, such as persons of spiritual ascension; or one who has accumulated recognition for spiritual or social or political achievement (often posthumously).

An unapologetic critique of this condition is necessary for civilization to advance in profound ways that assumes the attrition of knowledge to be inclusive of the population as a whole.

No man is an island – by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

— John Donne

The Power of Emptiness – by Elijah Crow

The “void” or “ psychological emptiness” is a strange phenomenon,
It appears spontaneously, in the pause between two thoughts,
As the old thought ends its course and disappears,
Its end is the gate, natural silence ensues.

Insist in being with it, as much as you can,
The mind is completely silent, we are attentive – a clear consciousness,
All meanings, boundaries disappear – us and the Infinite are “One”;
Practically, we have a new mind – always fresh.

Being in the pause – I become infinite!
It separates two worlds. I leave the limited world
And enter Boundlessness, through total melting;
The whole being is calm – a constant sparkle.

There is no time, no space – just everlasting Eternity;
I move in direct contact with life, in a permanent present.
I am Pure Energy, without motivations,
The simplicity of existence integrates us completely.

We really encounter Life only through this “now”,
Free from the old, we are able to embrace the new.
All this beauty vanishes, when another thought appears,
It comes from the knowing mind – an old recording.

Let it play its game, do not oppose any resistance,
Encounter it as it is, without any purpose,
It will certainly disappear, and “emptiness” ensues again,
Another opportunity to encounter it practically.

We find the real meaning of Life through this “void”,
It is a boundary line between the two worlds:
On the one side the limited, where the “ego” is the master.
On the other, the Infinite, where Love is the master.

Emptiness also separates Light from the darkness,
The permanent chaos through struggle, contradictions and conflicts,
From the harmonious being, equilibrium and joy;
The whole egocentrism perishes, by encountering the void.

Peace, divine order becomes our nature
It changes our way of being, without effort or will,
Only through this psychological void, we become honest and humane,
The Purity of the Energy – makes titans out of pigmies .

Let this “psychological emptiness” be your guide,
In everything you encounter on your spiritual path.
If it is not the starting point, we easily get deceived,
Only through emptiness – we become Love!

Serving is Different From Helping and Fixing – by Rachel Naomi Remen

Awakin.org

–by Rachel Naomi Remen (Mar 18, 2013)

In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how can I serve?

Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I’m attentive to what’s going on inside of me when I’m helping, I find that I’m always helping someone who’s not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don’t serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals.

Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very different things.

Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and collaborating with.

There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing. Fixing is a form of judgment. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that can easily become a moral distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This is Mother Teresa’s basic message. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.

—Rachel Naomi Remen, adapted from a transcript in the Noetic Sciences Review

Beyond the Conflict of Inner Forces (Cherokee Story)

Awakin.org (Feb 04, 2013)

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life:

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.”It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?”

You might heard the story ends like this: The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

In the Cherokee world, however, the story ends this way:

The old Cherokee simply replied, “If you feed them right, they both win.” and the story goes on:

“You see, if I only choose to feed the white wolf, the black one will be hiding around every corner waiting for me to become distracted or weak and jump to get the attention he craves. He will always be angry and always fighting the white wolf. But if I acknowledge him, he is happy and the white wolf is happy and we all win. For the black wolf has many qualities – tenacity, courage, fearlessness, strong-willed and great strategic thinking – that I have need of at times and that the white wolf lacks. But the white wolf has compassion, caring, strength and the ability to recognize what is in the best interest of all.

“You see, son, the white wolf needs the black wolf at his side. To feed only one would starve the other and they will become uncontrollable. To feed and care for both means they will serve you well and do nothing that is not a part of something greater, something good, something of life. Feed them both and there will be no more internal struggle for your attention. And when there is no battle inside, you can listen to the voices of deeper knowing that will guide you in choosing what is right in every circumstance. Peace, my son, is the Cherokee mission in life. A man or a woman who has peace inside has everything. A man or a woman who is pulled apart by the war inside him or her has nothing.

“How you choose to interact with the opposing forces within you will determine your life. Starve one or the other or guide them both.”

–Cherokee Story

Stop Shooting Arrows – by Thanissaro Bhikku

by Thanissaro Bhikku

Awakin.org

The Buddha compares pain with being shot by arrows. Physical pain is like being shot with one arrow, but then on top of that you shoot yourself with another arrow, the anguish you build up around the pain, is totally optional. When you’ve got a body, there are going to be pains. Even the Buddha had physical pains after his Awakening, but the difference is that he knew how not to shoot himself with those unnecessary second, third, fourth, and fifth arrows. And as it turns out, those are the ones that really hurt. Those are the ones causing the problems.

But you can’t just go marching in and say to yourself, “Okay, you! Out! Stop! Stop shooting arrows!” You’ve got to learn to see where the dividing line is between the physical pain and the mental pain. You do that by experimenting with the breath, experimenting with the labels you put on the pain, asking yourself questions about the pain — and sometimes the strange questions are the ones that ferret out the strange attitudes you’ve built up around the pain. For instance, you can ask, “What shape does the pain have?” It sounds like a strange question, but when you pursue it you find that your imagination has actually given the pain a shape. What happens when you don’t give it a shape? How does the pain move around? Is it moving around on its own or is it moving around because you’re pushing it around? These are things you have to learn through experiment. It’s only through experimentation that things begin to divide out on their own. In other words if you go in with preconceived notions, “The dividing line has to be here, or there,” it turns out that that’s not the case at all. You’re forcing your ignorance onto the pain which, of course, just makes it worse.

So you’ve got to learn how to experiment. How do changes in the breathing change the pain? How do changes in your concept of the pain change the pain? How about changes in your concept of how the mind relates to the body: Is the mind in the body? Is the body in the mind? Where in the body is the mind? These may seem like strange questions, but you begin to realize that the mind on an unarticulated level actually does think in those terms. And a lot of our basic assumptions of where the center of our awareness is, where the pain is in relation to that center, and how it affects that center: These play an important role in how we experience the pain and how we make ourselves suffer unnecessarily from it. So you have to experiment and test things.

Self-Acceptance – By Rev. Marcy Ellen

What Does the Mirror Show You?

By Rev. Marcy Ellen

OMTimes

Accepting one’s self fully is the first step in creating a New World that is steeped in love verses fear. The problem, although we may perceive it to be “out there” in the external world, really lies within each of us. Whenever we act out from the ego in anger or frustration the source of that anger or frustration is merely the result of our own self-denial. When we do not accept portions of ourselves because we don’t see them or because we don’t want to see them, then we do not have full self-acceptance which means we cannot love ourselves fully.

The physical world is a mirror. When you see and call attention to the faults in other people the reason that these faults seem obvious to you in the first place is because the universe is reflecting back to you a part of yourself that you refuse to see and therefore cannot accept. It does this because nature’s first order of business is evolution. In order for you to evolve spiritually or any other way you must first recognize the things that need evolving.

If you are judgemental, for example, but you do not recognize that flaw in yourself then the universe will reflect that quality back to you through other people. You will begin to see that quality highlighted in others until you have a self-reflecting “ah-ha” moment (as Oprah calls it) and realize, “whoa, wait a second. Maybe I’m judgemental.” When you have this “ah-ha” moment a few things immediately begin to happen. One is that now you have begun the process of accepting a part of yourself that you have been denying for some time so you are taking one more step towards being whole. The second is that once you accept this quality in yourself your awareness alone begins to transform this quality. You don’t have to DO anything to change. Evolution is always happening. You just have to be AWARE so that you can ALLOW it to happen through you. The third thing is that with self-acceptance comes self-love which is so important. If we do not have 100% self-love then we cannot extend 100% love outwardly to others in the world.

Think of self-love as the oxygen mask that pops out of the overhead compartment in an airplane when oxygen levels are dangerously low. Having self-love is akin to putting your oxygen mask on first before you assist others with theirs. Once you are fully receiving the amount of oxygen required for your health and survival then you are in a good place to assist others. If you run around trying to help others before putting your own mask on, not only will you NOT be any help to others but you will have created a situation that is detrimental to yourself as well.When you accept only certain things about yourself, then you cannot love yourself fully. If you only accept 50% of yourself but the other 50% you just don’t want to see or accept it would be like having an oxygen mask with an obstruction in the middle of the breathing tube. If you have the mask on but you are only receiving 50% of the available oxygen you may be more useful than someone who has no oxygen mask, but imagine how much more help you could give if you were breathing in 100% of the oxygen supply.When we accept ourselves fully then we are giving ourselves 100% of our love. We are breathing in all of the available oxygen. Now we can be confident that our abilities to share love with others will never be compromised. Everything must begin within us. When we fully love and accept ourselves, what we find is an outcome full of love and acceptance of those around us.

Your outside world is a reflection of your inside world. If you don’t like the reflection, change the person standing in front of the mirror. In order to ALLOW change to happen you must first ACCEPT all the parts that need changing. Then evolution will naturally happen through you.

Rev. Marcy Ellen is a spiritual channel, Reiki Master, radio host, and an author with a Master of Divinity Degree from the University of Metaphysical Sciences. She and her two children reside in Colorado. www.revmarcyellen.com