“By following through on conscious choices, we can rewire our responses toward love, trust, and patience. Neuroscience calls this ‘neuroplasticity.’”
~Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ
I watched a video by Jane Goodall this morning on YouTube called Mother Earth (https://youtu.be/48mxaQtbUdU) in which she spoke about the interdependency of all life on the planet. She spoke of how we, as a species have single-handedly in the last 100 years (my words) have managed to cause and continue to cause the mass extinction of many species of flora and fauna by not being the good stewards of the earth (again, my words) and have instead allowed or contributed to the destruction by either our direct participation or silence while it was allowed.
She spoke of how we have left a dire legacy to our children and the children of future generations.
Richard Rohr, in “The Universal Christ” speaks of how our brain can be rewired toward Love. It is my hope for the world and for humanity that the mindset of those who have the power in their hands to help all life thrive will come to the realization before it is too late to set aside their myopic views of this world and see beyond their coffers of riches reaped to understand their unconscious contributions to the imminent destruction of the planet, and know that their wildly excessive riches will turn their coffers into their coffins as well. If the planet dies, they die also.
There is no place to hide and without biodiversity, there is no future.
So, how do we change or reverse this trend or tendency? If we could learn too follow the tenets of the master teacher Jesus, the Christ Consciousness which he speaks to in “Love thy neighbor as thyself” could take us from triumphing over those who seem different from us to embracing all persons regardless of color, ethnicity, religion, politics or any other thing external to us. Our heart is the organ that can save us, if we but learn to control our ego, which keeps us separate from all of our good.
In doing so, we can begin to feel our connection with others and recognize the rights of everyone to a good and fruitful life. We must learn to live without the excesses we are used to. We need to stop promoting “Us before Them” and move into an “Us and them” or We’re all in this together” attitude.
Every religion in its purest, mystical form teaches that “Love is the Way.” This is the One commandment of Jesus, the gist of the teachings of Buddha, one of the core commandments of Judaism, and the basis of the teachings of Rumi and the other mystics of Islam. In addition, compassion is the “most fluently occurring word in the Quran.” In fact, at the center of the Muslim beliefs is the principle of “Oneness.”
If all this is really true, and in theory it is, then the only thing holding us back from embracing “LOVE” is “FEAR.” Fear of being less than! But, less than what?
If we are “LOVE,” we are not less than anything. We are then, what God is, and we have nothing to fear, only Joy to accept.
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Psalm 100:1 (a bible book common to all 3 major Western religions)
~revjim