Coast to Coast Bully Walk/ National Pit Bull Awareness Day - Eastern Mas...

CHOOSING A WIDER LENS

Everyone sees the world through their own lens.  In other words everyone sees the world around them from their own perspective that is based on their own culture and on their own upbringing at times but usually always according to their own personal experiences.  Few of us are ever told, taught or asked to consider the 'bigger picture' that is life on planet earth and The Universe but are typically led into seeing everything around us through the lens that is 'I', meaning perhaps from a place of our own ego.  Throughout human history it seems that for the most part we humans have become accustomed to unconsciously making ourselves the center of the universe and everything going on around us is considered on it's benefits and/or disadvantages to ourselves.  Oddly enough a 'sense of self' is rarely a part of it even though so much of the teachings as we grow up being about us, what is best for us, what isn't good for us and what serves us the best.  So we see the world only through the eyes of our experience and how everything we see in the world affects us.  

Some may call it human nature and some may not agree that it's our nature but for most of us we grow up seeing only the small little world that surrounds us where everything that happens either involves us or affects us in some way.  There are some however who choose to think beyond the small and by comparison insignificant little world that was created around us at birth and that we continue through life to live in and relate to.  Some choose to view the world with a much wider lens and thank goodness for those humans who stretch beyond themselves, their own intimate circle and who yearn to experience the world around them as if it were their own little intimate world.

The value of looking at the world through a wider lens is beyond measure because when we choose to do so we learn very quickly that first of all nearly every other human being on earth shares the same dreams, the same aspirations to succeed in life and the same desires for themselves and their progeny.  We all, whether we want to admit it or not, have the same exact 'needs' in life.  'Needs' meaning those basic things that no human being can survive without; things like shelter, water, food and relationships that nurture us and give us a soft place to fall when the rigors of life become too much for us.  Therefore we are all of the same mind, cut from the same cloth and have the same basic needs no matter our gender, our ethnic origin, our national affiliation, our religious affiliation and our sexual orientation.  When one chooses to only view life through that small, finely focused lens of 'self' and our own intimate small world we can't see how truly similar we are to every other human on earth and we may even grow to fear or be wary of those who are different than we are in skin color, in ethnic origin, in religious affiliation, in national affiliation and in sexual orientation.  

Our inability to view the world around us through a wider lens can cause us not only to fear but to hate and to seek to destroy those who are no like us, who don't look like us and who don't have a culture like we do.  But when we choose to widen that lens to encompass the human race regardless of our differences so much changes.  In fact EVERYTHING changes because we are truly thinking, feeling, reacting and living as a human being among other human beings.  With a wider lens we tend to see that the divisions that our ancestors have made and we continue to honor are only divisions created by ideas and are not real, honest and true divisions.  With a wider lens we begin to see the beauty in others and begin to embrace all of those delicious and exciting differences that so many others have based their divisions on.  As we widen our ideas about and vision of the world to encompass all of humanity we stop seeing divisions and start seeing the similarities that can bind us one to the other.  All of a sudden those state lines and country borders don't seem to mean as much to as as they once did and we begin to realize that whatever divisions that have been created over time are creations of fear, of power over others and of pride and ego that may have served us at one time but no longer serve us.

There has got to be a point in the evolution of humankind where we are going to stop being patriots of our country and start being proud citizens of the planet earth. At some point we are going to evolve enough to understand that all of those divisions that so many have held so dear and have honored for so many millennia have brought us much more pain and suffering than they ever have of peace, harmony and prosperity.  We must evolve and we will but not if some of us don't start right now.  Sure many in the world aren't ready to think in these terms and most definitely are not ready to begin to live life as one world, a whole human specie, but we can't wait for them but must make our own way.  So to that end those of us who are awake to this and aware of what needs to change in order to evolve to a new world order as one humanity must begin today and we must begin by living this every day in our own little worlds as if we are indeed in 'the world' in it's entirety.  If we don't live it it will never happen and we all know we want it to happen so we must live it today.

Let us begin to see ourselves as the astronauts see us from the International Space Station and that is as ONE world and ONE people moving through The Universe throughout the infinite that IS...

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE POWER OF HATE

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: THE POWER OF HATE: Was talking to someone yesterday, a friend, who stated that they 'hated' someone. Without a single thought I immediately responde...

THE POWER OF HATE

Was talking to someone yesterday, a friend, who stated that they 'hated' someone. Without a single thought I immediately responded with, "I don't hate anyone, no matter who they are or what they've done," and the moment I spoke this I realized just how true it is. I truly do not hate anyone, not even people who the majority of others believe deserve to be hated.

I can remember back when I used to 'hate' a lot of people. I hated pretty girls/women, I hated rich people, I hated hateful people, I hated people who exert their power over the helpless, I hated most politicians, I hated so many people from different walks of life and I even hated my childhood. I just hated at random believing all the while that somehow my hate of them would affect them in some way so that they would know they were hated and would feel badly as a result or would somehow be punished by it. I can't honestly say exactly when I made the conscious decision to stop hating people, hating situations, hating things I could not control; maybe it just happened when I stopped viewing myself as a powerless, helpless victim in life and stopped shirking responsibility for my own thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Maybe it was when I stopped blaming the people and the things around me for how I felt about them.

About ten years ago or so I truly grasped what a powerful emotion hatred is as well as how damaging it can be, most especially to the person harboring that hatred, and I made a conscious decision to stop using the word 'hate' in my vocabulary. I realized just how easily and how often I made the comment about just about everything whether important or trivial that I hated it. I hated the weather, I hated the bills I owed, I hated a movie, I hated what someone was wearing, I hated how someone looked, I hated the traffic...mainly I 'hated' just about everything and verbally confirmed that hatred so many times in a single day that I really couldn't count all the times I said that I 'hated' something. Maybe I felt as if hate wasn't that bad and it's okay to feel hatred for things, for people, for situations, etc. because it's just a part of being human, right? OR maybe it was that I realized that it was a 'learned' response to things that I wasn't comfortable with from growing up in a society, and maybe even a home, where hating was accepted and flowed through life as if hating things was a normal part of life for everyone everywhere.

We've all seen hatred and many of us have experienced the power of hatred in our lives. We've been hated or maybe we've hated someone else and always it seems to the detriment of our own selves. When we are the victim of hatred of course it's detrimental to us. Sometimes we don't even understand 'why' we are hated by someone else or what we may have possibly done to earn their hatred and sometimes we know exactly why someone hates us. Regardless, many of us have felt the pain of being hated or even disliked by another human being. I guess then that would beg the question why any of us who have felt the weight and the pain of being hated by someone else would ever choose to inflict that same thing on another living human being. What a conundrum that is but apparently not one that many people consider in their lifetimes considering how many decent, loving, caring and seemingly aware and awake people express hatred toward things or people almost on a daily basis.

So is it inherently 'wrong' to hate? I'm sure that many people, especially those who express hatred for other people and things in their lives, would say that it's not inherently wrong and that in fact it's just a natural human emotion that everyone experiences. But perhaps what those who feel hatred is natural and is acceptable to harbor within ourselves are neglecting to admit is the power of hatred to destroy us; to destroy the people we or others hate, to support systematic hatred on an institutional level, to drive peoples to wage war on the other groups of people who are objects of their hatred, to limit how successful certain people can be in life, to drive some people with extreme hatred for others to subjugate them and even kill them as if their lives are not of any value simply because those hated are the object of the haters hatred (as if the victims are the sole cause of the hate waged against them). When one reflects, if one chooses to do so honestly, one can very quickly and easily see the weight of hatred on our world throughout history and today. One also must admit, if they choose to be honest with themselves, that as a emotion hatred carries quite a bit of 'energy' with it and that when we ourselves choose to feel and experience the emotion of hatred that we are adding to the weight and the force of the cumulative hatred being felt and expressed in the world today.

So, there's a 'payoff' for everything that we human beings do. There's no feeling we feel, no thoughts or words we choose to have and express, there's no action that we take or thing that we do that doesn't give us some sort of payoff on an emotional level. The payoff for everyone is going to be different based on who we are but still there's some sort of payoff, be it self-satisfaction or validation or to prove something to someone or to just make us feel superior or good in some way. Maybe my payoff for hating in the past was to help myself feel superior and just a bit maybe because back then I felt powerless in a way and felt that hating those or that which I felt powerless about was a great defense against them or it. But when I got honest with myself and really took a look at the kind of human being that I wanted to be in this life I realized that hate just wasn't a part of it; hate couldn't make me stronger, hate couldn't destroy my enemies, hate couldn't change a single thing and hate couldn't comfort me. That is why I stopped hating and saying I hate things; even if I really didn't hate something but just used that word out of habit and because so many other people use it.

In the end hate is not just a 'word' people use to express their discomfort or disgust with something or someone. Hate is an emotion and ALL emotions carry weight and power in them adding to the collective energy that flows through everything that happens in the world. What kind of contribution do we want to make to the energy of the world? What kind of energy do we want to add to the energy of the rest of life on planet earth? Do we 'really' hate all the things that we say we hate or do we just use the word because it's easy, it's there, everyone else uses it and it's a habit? Then IF we really DO hate even half of the things that we say we hate how does it affect the object of our hatred, if at all, and how does it make us feel about our place in the world or our own personal security, our own happiness?

In closing I'd just like to share a thought about hate. Carrie Fisher, the actress (Princess Leia of Star Wars), expressed her thoughts about resentment many years ago that still hangs around today and is embraced by many as the rock solid truth. Although her reference was 'resentment' we all have to acknowledge that hatred is truly a form of resentment toward another person or a thing so I think her sentiment holds true and applies to hate. The sentiment goes like this:

“Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FINDING HUMANITY

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FINDING HUMANITY: Most, if not all of us, understand what and who humanity is.  At least we understand the meaning of the word. Humanity according to the Mir...

FINDING HUMANITY

Most, if not all of us, understand what and who humanity is.  At least we understand the meaning of the word. Humanity according to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary is by definition:

‘the quality or state of being human; the quality of being kind to other people or to animals and/or all people.’

Not wanting to focus on the negative for long we still need to mention that today, based on what most of us believe is going on in the world around us, it feels a whole lot like very few grasp the meaning of humanity or want to be a part of humanity that contributes in a positive way.  There is war, poverty, human slavery, terrorism, tyranny, oppression, racism and truly hateful people in the world today plus more.  Yet if we choose to look away from what is presented to us by the news media and look away from the actuality of some of the isolated, but still quite devastating, events happening in the world today we can if we choose see something bigger and much more positive than today’s most common world view.  To look away doesn’t mean that we deny negative things are happening or that we don’t care but looking away, even if for a brief time, helps us get a better grasp on what really is going on in the majority of the world and can serve to renew our commitment to being a positive force in the world.  The weight of the negativity, the struggle, the hatred, the battle over power and wealth can get to some people and it can poison their soul.  We’ve all seen it in others and have known others who are unable to step back and see the entire world and not just the bits of it that are in turmoil where life is suffering and suffering is life. We’ve seen how cynical, how shut off from others and how hopeless they can get and most of us don’t want to be ‘that way’ so we keep on keeping on trying to keep it all in perspective.

Perhaps the answer is for those of us who are awake, aware and who truly do want to make a positive impact on the world, on humanity, to come together as ONE adding our own individual gifts and power to something bigger than ourselves.  It may not require ‘official’ organizations or groups to assemble those of us who want the world to be a better place for all but it does require us to act locally while we are thinking globally.  It requires us each to support everyone around us, even strangers, with our kindness and our compassion; even if it’s only shown to others through a smile, a nod of the head and/or a kind word.  Giving that which we all seek, being treated with kindness and compassion by others, isn’t difficult. In fact it’s really as easy as falling off of a log because it truly comes naturally to every living being; even those human beings who are filled with hatred, a lust for power and wealth and who defend themselves by hating and harming others before they can be mistreated or harmed. 

It is within us ALL to be kind and compassionate whether we want to acknowledge it or not.  But if we don’t believe it’s there or if we believe that it is either beyond our capability or will be difficult to cultivate within ourselves then we can’t access that most human part of ourselves.  You’ll find a lot of people, some professional, who say that it’s ‘human nature’ to be cruel, to be ultra-competitive, to exert our will over others and more but I will never believe that to be true.  I refuse to accept that ‘excuse’ for behaving in negative ways because once we get in touch with our true inner selves we can easily access our ‘humanity’.  The layers we build over our lifetimes are often protective in nature and we feel that they serve us, and serve us well, because they protect us from being hurt by others. But the ‘worst’ thing that could ever happen to any of us is NOT to get our feelings hurt by another person or persons. The ‘worst’ thing that can happen to us is to deny ourselves the experience of being a caring, compassionate, empathetic and giving person to our fellow humans, because to deny that all of this exists within ourselves is to deny our own humanity.  When we lose our humanity we lose the ability to connect to others in ways that bring us much more blessings than trials.  When we lose our humanity we are adrift in a cold, dark Universe that brings us nothing but pain anyhow so why not choose to be that which we know this world needs a whole lot more of? 

In this Infinite Universe that we live in and were created by there is infinite possibility for every one of us and if we choose to join together to explore those possibilities, against all odds, then we can build a world where many fewer humans suffer at the hands of other humans.  I truly believe that it IS possible to love our way out of the dark and into the light; not just for ourselves but for all.  We are currently existing according to a certain paradigm and the paradigm will continue as it is until the pendulum is swung and TOGETHER we cause a paradigm shift. 

There are, I believe, infinitely more decent human beings who are aware and awake, if not open to being aware and awake, that we share our planet with than many of us believe there are. Thus I have great hope that if we begin to join together, support one another and love one another as the brothers and sisters that we truly are (by virtue of our shared DNA) we can affect a paradigm shift that will change everything.  We may never live in a world where there is zero poverty or zero racism or zero hostility or zero subjugation of one group of people by another but we most certainly can, I believe, create a world together where there is more peace and love and kindness and generosity and compassion and mutual support than there is all of those negative things we want to put an end to in our lifetimes.

We can do this but we must come together with others who feel the same as we do so we can begin to shift that paradigm away from all the pain and suffering to a world where there is true equality for all along with the ability to pursue life and liberty for ourselves.  A world where love is the norm and hatred is extremely rare...

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FEAR PROFITS A MAN NOTHING

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: FEAR PROFITS A MAN NOTHING: While the quote I used for this blog is a quote from a film, '13th Warrior' released in 1999 based on Michael Crichton's book ...

FEAR PROFITS A MAN NOTHING

While the quote I used for this blog is a quote from a film, '13th Warrior' released in 1999 based on Michael Crichton's book 'The Eaters of the Dead', it still echoes in my mind frequently as I go through this life. It resonated with me the first moment I heard it spoken to Anthony Banderas who played the role of the Arab emissary, Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, by his Viking buddy when they were about to be attacked by a horde of bloodthirsty seemingly supernatural and indefeatable killers who were cannibals predating on the Viking people.  I immediately grasped the meaning of 'fear profits a man nothing' and it has stuck with me all these years.

The full line in the film verbatim is, "Go and hide in a hole if you wish, but you won't live one instant longer. Your fate is fixed. Fear profits a man nothing," and it says a LOT in my personal opinion.  When we think about all of the times that fear of failure, fear of what may lie ahead, fear of what we may lose and fear of defeat has dictated our next step in life we need to be cognizant of the power of our fears and how they may have limited or saved us. Of course whenever we chose a new or different path or choose to play it safe on our path in this life we can only ever know the outcome from that specific choice and can never know what outcome may have been had we chosen differently.  But we can at least acknowledge when fear has dictated our choices and how we may have ended up in a different place with a different outcome had we chosen to face our fear rather than be ruled by it.

Facing our fears.  For some, and perhaps many, facing our fears is tantamount to jumping off a hundred story building knowing that certain death is the only possible outcome.  Fear is a very powerful emotion.  We all have instinctual fear that has evolved over the millennia of our evolution as human beings that has kept us safe and has ensured the continuation of our specie.  Those fears such as fear of fire, fear of heights, fear of wild animals and maybe even fear of the unknown all are there for a reason and should always be heeded to a point but not allowed to overcome our common sense of what is truly dangerous to us or what is a real and present threat to our very lives. If humankind had allowed all of these instinctual fears to govern us exploration would never happen, innovation would never happen; there would be no airplanes, no rockets, no tall buildings and we would have killed off all the wild animals that we live among long ago and all completely out of fear.  Fear is a powerful emotion that can drive us or can simply guide us through this life.  

Sadly some among us have learned to be driven by our fears and not all of those fears are reasonable in nature but are fears encouraged in us by those who would profit from our fear and by those who seek to control us through our fear.  Unfortunately around the world today, but most especially here in the United States, fear is being used as a control mechanism for the masses. Just turn on the television and watch a few minutes of any news report or watch a political candidate's speech or see a commercial for some drug that will help us avoid any pain and/or suffering or see a commercial telling us we should be afraid not to fit in/not to be accepted based on our appearance or watch a sermon instilling the fear of eternal damnation in us if we do not worship a certain deity and you will see how the attempt to instill fear in us is being used to make a profit for those at the top by controlling how we view the world around us and what fears we 'should' have about the present and/or our future.  

Today there is an entire political campaign being run for the highest office in the land based on people's fears; not all of which are reasonable fears or are fears of things that are likely to ever happen.  But for some among us just the idea that there is something, that we can't control, that may happen or that there are people, that we can't control, that may want to harm us is enough to cause us to put our trust in someone who is literally controlling us through our fears and often enough is instructing us on exactly what we should be afraid of. I don't believe however, because I have a basic faith in humanity, that enough of these easily influenced fearful people among us exist to elect this candidate into office but that doesn't mean that we can't look at how this candidate's supporters are being controlled and the power of suggestion that controls them.  Therefore it is incumbent upon all of us who are aware and awake not to allow ourselves to become fearful ourselves of what these fearful masses might help someone accomplish in our country, which also has an effect on what happens in the world.  We must adhere to the belief that common sense will prevail.

I have found in my personal life that had been controlled by truly limiting and daunting phobias since childhood that the ONLY way to overcome the intense fears that fueled my phobias was to force myself to face them.  I suppose one could say that courage is involved and I suppose it is, but I would never view myself as any more courageous of a human than the rest of humanity.  When one holds a fear deep within themselves the fear itself seems to be the driving force.  I realized long ago that the object(s) of our fears isn't what causes the fear but it is our chosen way of seeing that object and the danger we attribute to it that is the true basis of our fears.  In other words it's really all in our heads, those fears that drive our phobias.  Our interpretation of what 'might' happen or 'might' be true in association with the object of our fear is what keeps us from dealing with it.  The fear itself is the phobia while the object of our fear is innocuous and although it may actually be dangerous in some ways isn't what really truly drives that phobia.  So in the end as former president Franklin D. Roosevelt said so long ago, "The only thing to fear, is fear itself," which seems to turn out to be quite true and quite relevant to everyone.

How I overcame the phobias I'd had since childhood was to force myself to gather up the courage to face each fear.  It started with my phobia of snakes when I decided when my son was born that I didn't want to limit him as my mother had limited us kids due to her snake phobia so I started to learn about them.  Funny thing was that the more I learned about snakes, the role they play in the environment and their nature as creatures the less I feared them and the more I admired them.  It took a while but after forcing myself to learn about these amazing reptiles I found them to incredibly beautiful, useful and truly amazing creatures.  To date I have overcome my fear, a fear that in my younger years wouldn't even allow me to 'look' at a photo of a snake on the printed page or watch one on television, to the point where earlier this year on a vacation in Mexico I held my very first snake.  The feeling of accomplishment and of being free from this lifelong phobia was transformative.  I don't recall feeling more proud of myself before nor of feeling better about being alive than the moment I held that beautiful creature in my hand and embraced the beauty of this animal that years ago I would quite literally have left the area to avoid being near. 

My phobia of the dark I also overcame by forcing myself to be in the dark and reminding myself that there is nothing in the dark that wasn't there in the light.  Today I walk through the darkened halls and rooms in our home smiling to myself as the pride of what I have overcome, on my own, wells up inside of me.

I don't share to brag but only to demonstrate that as powerful as our fears can be and as much as they can control our lives and the decisions we make in life that we have the power to overcome those fears.  All it takes is a bit of courage and the determination to do it; to overcome that which instilled extreme fear within ourselves but that which does not bring us joy or success or pleasure or evolution of our own selves as human beings.  

As with all other things it begins with an idea, an idea in our head that we no longer want to be controlled by fear but that we want to explore the world around us and our inner selves beyond the limits that our fears create for us.  So coming around full circle perhaps it is necessary for us all to learn the ease with which we can overcome our fears and that when we allow our fears to govern our thoughts, our emotions, our decisions and our actions we are not meeting our full potential as human beings. In essence we need to accept and embrace that 'fear profits a man, or a woman, nothing'! 

While those who now blindly choose fear to govern their emotions, their prejudices, their hatreds, who they associate with and their daily lives may live among us it is absolutely our responsibility to NOT allow our fears to govern us in similar ways.  It's up to us to be stronger than that and to come together in an agreement that we will NOT allow fear to govern us but will go forth together in exploration of this world, and The Universe, we live in so that humanity can grow and evolve into what we who are awake and aware faithfully  and passionately believe it can be; a place of equality for all, justice for all, prosperity for all and freedom for all.

Namaste and remember to face your fears; we all have the courage to do so, we simply must trust ourselves because we are all much stronger than we believe we are.

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: GETTING TO KNOW YOU

CITIZENS OF PLANET EARTH UNITE: GETTING TO KNOW YOU: This is my first entry into this new blog titled 'Citizens of the Planet Earth Unite'.  I am starting this blog at the urging of ...

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

This is my first entry into this new blog titled 'Citizens of the Planet Earth Unite'.  I am starting this blog at the urging of a Facebook friend to write and to share some of my ideas with the world.  He did not mean to say that 'I' have something to share but that how I choose to view the world, humanity, is shared by many others and it's incumbent upon me to verbalize it.

And so here we go.  

In today's social-political climate in the United States it feels difficult to maintain any faith that all will end well.  The current presidential election has shown how divided this country really is in a very public and real way.  There appears to be a lot of anger, a lot of angst, a lot of fear and a lot of unfettered emotions raging between us Americans that is being aired for the entire world to see on social media and in the news media.  The amount of fear fueled hatred that is being expressed by many as they heatedly discuss the candidate of their personal choice is very disheartening and is also a bit daunting. 

In so many ways the people of this country have evolved when compared to the past where racism, sexism, xenophobia and white male dominance ruled our country without question and without being challenged.  It has historically been a Caucasian, Christian man's world and in some ways it still is but things have improved for some segments of society in some ways.  In spite of the 'little' improvement that has taken place there is much work to be done if we are to ever become the world leader and magnificent country that so many of us passionately claim that we are.  To be clear this country, America, is a great country BUT not the greatest because if this world is to evolve into a place where all can thrive and live in peace we have got to stop quantifying how great one country is compared to others.  This unrelenting need to prove to the rest of the world that we here in America are the best of the best of all people's on planet earth has run it's course.  Today we are viewed, no doubt, as being arrogant, feeling that we are above common courtesy and/or morality, greedy and unable to come together as one country that truly believes in liberty and justice for all. Some may take these words as 'America bashing' however anyone with any intelligence or common sense can tell you that you can't change what you don't acknowledge; so to me acknowledging our arrogance, our greed, our propensity for xenophobia and racist driven views is the first step to coming together in a more productive, accepting, inviting and leader-like way.

There is much wisdom in the world, both past and present, that all citizens of the world can embrace and embody in our everyday lives.  One of the wisest and most change inspiring quotes comes from Mahatma Gandhi a great leader who literally helped free his fellow Indian people from British subjugation and rule; who accomplished such a great and daunting task through peaceful protest but mostly through UNITY.  Gandhi gave us many wise, wonderful and very useful words that today still carry power and grace in them.  One of the most quoted phrases from Gandhi, 'Be the change that you wish to see in the world', is claimed by some to have been paraphrased from this actual statement attributed to him, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.”  In my mind it really doesn't matter what the actual words were but what the overall sentiment behind them is.  When I read both statements they make equal sense and bear equal weight in value and worthiness of adopting as a way of being oneself.

In a nutshell when it all comes down to it, in my personal opinion, it is incumbent upon every single one of us to 'be the change' that we want to see in our world, in our country, in our community, in our social circle and in our family.  The understandable angst and trepidation that we may each feel when faced with some of the heinous, horrific and completely nonsensical events that have occurred around the world cannot force us to feel as if we are surrounded by hateful, racist, sexist, xenophobic and dangerous people.  We must come to terms with the fact that what we see, or even what we experience, in the world today is not all that is happening in the world today and therefore we can't allow ourselves to be overwhelmed or lose our faith in humanity.

We are ALL human beings.  We ALL share the same DNA.  We ALL share the same origin.

We who are 'aware' and who are 'awake' cannot be dragged down into a cesspool of hatred, mistrust and xenophobia.  We who are aware and awake have a responsibility to the rest of the world.  We must live as loudly and as unwaveringly as we possibly can in that we MUST be 'more' accepting of others, we MUST be 'more' loving of others, we MUST be 'more' compassionate, we MUST be 'more' tolerant of the beliefs of others, we Must be 'more' accepting of those who are different than ourselves and perhaps most of all we MUST be 'MORE' willing to ignore the hatred, the racism and the xenophobia that now exists in the world because the more we give it our attention the more power we are giving it.

WE can out-love, out-trust and out-unite those who choose isolationism over unity of humankind.  So please in your daily lives remember to not be drawn into hatred or disharmony but instead love and treat thy neighbor as you would have your neighbor love and treat you and your family.  Peace is possible; but it will never exist in actuality if we don't believe it and live it.

Namaste my fellow citizens of planet earth may your day be as wonderful and as loving as you are.