Happy Hallowe'en

Happy Hallowe'en,

Guys and Ghouls.

(image courtesy of pixabay.com)

A Beautiful Quote

     In order for the world to become more peaceful, people must become more peaceful.  Among mature people war would not be a problem -- it would be impossible.  In their immaturity people want, at the same time, peace and the things which make war.  However, people can mature just as children grow up.  It always comes back to the thing so many of us wish to avoid:  working to improve ourselves. 

(Peace Pilgrim, a woman who walked across the United States for twenty-eight years, starting in 1953 during the Korean War, to promote peace).

(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)

A Book for Our Times, Part 3

     The last couple of weeks I was describing the powerful, relevant book Dialogues with a Modern Mystic by Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek.  While they touch on many subjects, my ears (or eyes) perked up when I read a passage that touched on one of the themes of The Gemini Bond.  That is, that Twin Souls are symbolic of what must take place internally for us to evolve spiritually.  Here is how Mr. Harvey says it:

The Christian alchemists tell us that when in our being we have completed the sacred marriage of opposites, of the male and the female, the sun and the moon, the dark and the light, the conscious and the unconscious, we become a sacred androgyne-child, free of reason's madness and the ego's frivolous gloom, free of all conscious and unconscious barriers and definitions, mysterious and complete as reality itself and one with its mystery in the ground of our perfected being.

     That deserves some pondering, don't you think?

A Book for Our Times, Part 2

     Last week I was extolling the book Dialogues with a Modern Mystic by Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek.  Even though it was written over two and a half decades ago, its words seem like they were written for exactly our times.  Here is a quote that seems fitting, I'm sure you'll agree:

Aging narcissists, which is what we're ruled by, are very dangerous people.  As death approaches, their hunger for power and to prove their immortality gets more and more hysterical.  They're willing to sacrifice more and more people on the altar of their own vanity.  It's frightening to look at the majority of politicians and businessmen who rule the world because they are so clearly terrified.  Their terror of losing power, and of death, makes them engines of destruction.  Through this denial, they're even willing to institutionalize the death of the environment.  This is the final paradox of narcissism, that it is willing to go on engineering total destruction in order to keep going and not have to face the shock and pain of truth; it will press the atomic button to keep alive its fiction of invincibility.  It is as mad as that.

    See?  Written for our times. 

A Book for Our Times

     A couple of years ago, I was browsing through a lovely used book store and a book practically shouted at me to take it home.  Of course, being the obliging sort, I did so (of course, I paid for it first).

     And this is a book for our times.  Even though it was copyrighted in 1994, it was definitely meant for our current generation to read.  What is this book, you ask.  It's Dialogues with a Modern Mystic by Andrew Harvey and Mark Matousek.  You may know Andrew Harvey as one of the foremost writers and speakers on the mystic life, but Mark Matousek is also a deep-thinking modern mystic.

     The book takes the form of a series of conversations between the two men on various topics.  It starts out with Harvey, primarily, warning of the dark future that faces humanity if we do not return to our hearts and live with compassion, justice, and love.  It then touches on several topics, including fear and courage, death and deathlessness, work, visions, humility, grief, and humor.  It is a book to read slowly, savor, and contemplate.

     I think we need to heed the call within this book.  Let it be a guiding light in our path to building a better future for all of us.  Highly recommended.