Mankind's Truest Moral Test - The Spirit of Unconscious Cruelty

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. ―  Albert Einstein, New York Post, 28 November 1972


"Animals have a profound capacity to open the hearts of humans, no matter how tightly closed or locked the human heart may be. Even when the humans are abusing or caging the animals, they still remain capable of loving." ―  Leslie Temple-Thurston


The moment we become happy and joyous, we feel like sharing and celebrating...only in a blissful state of consciousness, do we respect other life forms...what Albert Schweitzer called REVERENCE FOR LIFE!! life is invaluable...and we have no right in messing with nature with her magnificent splendour, which she is kind enough to share with us!!


I feel strongly, that this ‘love’ of animals requires recognizing that they have value independently of us. They don’t exist just to be useful to us. They have value for themselves and for the divine. Our treatment of them should respect the value God has given them in creating them. We humans have a duty to LOVE animals, just as we have a duty to love our fellow humans. The best way to learn to value our fellow animal creatures is to learn to be one with them, to recover the sense, so powerful that our own sense of being one is part of the oneness of the whole creation. 


 WISE WORDS from one of our ancestors... "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated... I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man" ―  Mahatma Gandhi


Animals are the bridge between us and the beauty of all that is natural. They show us what's missing in our lives, and how to love ourselves more completely and unconditionally. They connect us back to who we are, and to the purpose of why we're here. All creatures, they are a sacred part in our lives! The unconditional love we receive from our animals can never be replaced by humans. They accept and trust completely. Their spirit is one with ours. We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Isn't it so easy for us to not want to  reason with them. It would be a disturbing, unnerving, diminishing experience; it would bring about all manner of awkwardness and guilt to us! Our actions and states of mind DO matter, because we're so deeply innerconnected with one another and, our fellow creatures. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being Love is the supreme creative act.


A heart of COMPASSION, builds character! Mankind's truest moral test, its fundamental test (which is deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. The wonder of principals and metaphysical Laws of creation, is to Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. 



 Do we stop and think that All animals  have the same core emotion systems in the brain as we, the people  do? When our pet animal at home,  express their feelings they pour out like water from a spout. We can share our emotions with them, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds. Emotions are the glue that binds. The beauty of their emotions are raw, unfiltered, and uncontrolled. Their joy is the purest and most contagious of joys and their grief the deepest and most devastating. Their passions bring us to our knees in delight and sorrow. Do they not teach us of hope; They are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being, providing us with an endless supply of smiles and the certainty of unwavering companionship. That is a divine gift to us, so clearly proven!


Animals are born who they are! They live with greater peace than we, people do. One of Henry Beston's quote, stating  some simplest form of truth, how beautifully said!  “We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.” They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet.




Why do many of us  pride our self on our superiority to the animals? Our instinct to both exalt and control them? Caging their life in the garden of captives? They are without sin, while we, with all our greatness, we defile the earth wherever we appear and leave an ignoble trail behind us -  for almost every one of us! “The wild things of this earth are not ours to do with as we please. They have been given to us in trust, and we must account for them to the generation which will come after us and audit our accounts.” ― William T. Hornaday. Our world with  all its living things, is a wide place where we are stumbling like children whom need to learn to walk, where we have to learn to see.  Our world's vastness at least reminds us how tiny we are, and how much we don't yet understand. We are mere babes in the universe, all brothers and sisters in the nursery together, unconsciously humming and welcoming  darkness. --Can our daily choices be a reflection of our deepest values? And may we use our voices to speak for those who need us most?  those who have no voice, those who have no choice? -- -- Take a moment to consider this statement.



What kind of humanity do we embrace? Are we grounded to the values of our spirit? Do we have it in us to make the behaviour and attitude changes necessary to change our destructive course? Our human ingenuity has a way of outrunning our human conscience, and some things we do only because we can - forgetting to ask whether we should. There is no question in my mind, that perhaps in the past, people thought they needed to enslave animals and people to survive, and that the cruelty involved in it was somehow allowed them. It's obviously not necessary for us today,  and the sooner we can awaken from the thrall of the obsolete mythos that we are predatory by nature, the sooner we'll be able to evolve spiritually and with a kaleidoscopic possibility, discover and fulfill our purpose on this earth.

LIGHT from within

 To be godly like, a light 

That shines from within

A lamp or torch to be

Like a magnificent star

Assenting in your heart.

A touch of - g r a c e . .

Only if there is a light

And truly from within

True beauty revealed

Splitting the sky in two

Letting the face of God

Magnificently shine through.

©Angie Karan Krezos

The power in SILENCE

S i l e n c e - has an energy which is quite powerful. It's power helps us think and act or slow our mind down and focus inward. Is the way to understand more about our self, people and hence the world around us. Silence is an amazing and probably really “forgotten” tool and a healing one at that… 

SILENCE... our Greatest Source of Personal Power. How many of us can sit down into our silent garden and truly listen to silence and learn from it? and when we do, do we realize, it has a quality and a dimension all on its own? I call it A Source Of Great Strength, and it is! In observance, have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or when surrounded with people at a place... that moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house, you fall deeply in that state of silence? How amazing and most eloquently peaceful! Quiet is peace... Tranquility... Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. And Silence is pushing the off button.


 Silence is same as that of a star. It's twinkle as remote and candid, a constellation of stillness and tranquility charged with essences. A substance of great comfort. How much better to sit alone, be still... BE your self, BY your self, and in that moment of silence you see things as they are; in their most purest and bare forms? An ultimate weapon of soul power!


We are most powerful when we are most silent. I believe, If we are not in touch with our own belovedness - that stillness within us - that space that we come to remember our spirit, then we cannot touch the sacredness of others. When we take the opportunity to take the time to unearth the mysteries and lessons that exist within, we begin to realize the power of that muteness beauty, it is healing, spiritual, and so divine. The importance of cultivating and incorporating silence to our daily life can make a big difference. It is the most simplest things we take for granted that can bring peace and joy to us. Take time to hear a bird chirp or listen to the wind. Sit on the beach for hours and listen to the waves breaking on the shore. The quieter we become, the more we can hear. 

Silence is golden; like a self discovery. 

Feed, nourish and grow that silence. 


I say, silence and stillness are my teachers.

~The Journey to ourselves~

 

 

We are always under reconstruction! Only through pain can we learn the hard lessons... The importance is to keep in mind that the sun always shines after the storm... and the best day is when we finally realize that we do not control the day. Letting go is good. Be in the moment. Life does whatever is necessary to mold us into shape and prepare us for greatness. It does not always look or feel this way. Instead, what we experience in life seems difficult, painful, unnecessary. When we truly recognize that there is a master plan, we can welcome any tool that comes to prepare us to behold our perfect place. If we desire to blossom like a rose in the garden, then we must learn the art of adjusting with the thorns… Difficulties will make us shine. Keep pushing through, and SHINE.

Keep pushing through! Fine tune your resonance and awaken the divine within. Become one with what life wants, and release worry and stress and shine your vibrant being as part of the formless and eternal one. Energize yourself, forgive others who have hurt you, and attract more of what you want in life. Shine your light and the universe will shine a light that guides you to a better place.

 During our journey of change, growth and development, we grow and activate the best part of us which is our soul and spirit - our potential to become all that we are meant to BE. Just as an acorn contains the potential of a mighty oak tree, so are each of us the “seeds” of our unique full potential. Life is no longer complicated when we know WHO WE ARE and the struggle of searching, seeking, looking for answers, makes the path so much easier to finding them.

 Our experiences are where we find our strength and move forward…Sometimes the HARDEST lessons to learn are the ones our soul needs most! I truly believe, that we can't feel real joy unless we have felt heartache. The same as everything else in life. Unless we experience the opposite of what is not comfortable-the obstacles of life and its suffering, we cannot find or actually appreciate comfort and joy when it comes. Chuck Palahniuk once said, “The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. Some pain, whether it be emotional or physical,  is necessary.  Everything in life is two-sided. Do we await Summer with an open heart an arms when it is shivering with cold in winter? It's these hard times that pave the path to greatness. Yes, pain does feel like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against our face when we are spreading our wings and flying through the air! Happiness and real joy, is not the absence of problems, heartache or pain, it's the ABILITY to deal with them, and grow. Our character and wisdom are sculpted over time.  They come with loss, lessons, and triumphs. Our best stories in life, come from overcoming our greatest struggles. One thing that yoga, and especially Pilates has taught me, is that pain and bliss exist in the same space. However, if we release the pain then all we are left with is bliss. We can’t expect to feel pleasure without ever feeling pain, joy without ever feeling sorrow, confidence without ever feeling fearful, hope without ever feeling uncertain, etc.  There is no such thing as a one-sided coin in life, with which we can buy a pain-free, trouble-free life.

As Maya Angelou says in her famous quote, : “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” Life... is a journey... a spiritual journey, a path of spirit and soul. We are all on this path – in our unique ways, each one of us seeking that certain something – be it healing, guidance, empowerment, balance or happiness. Everything that we will come across, the good and the bad, there may be challenges, growth, healing or peace within. But remember, this path is the one where your soul moves forward. Take time out and smell the roses... giving you reprieve and nourishment. Take care of yourself and use self - compassion liberally. Put your energy where it matters. You'll be glad you did. Walk humbly with love and grace and may your journey be one that gives you the creativity and freedom to sustain a healthy and fulfilling road ahead!