"In the Middle East, a Jew donates a kidney to a sick Palestinian,
saving her precious life. In India, a woman feeds and washes those with
leprosy, because she sees that we are all expressions of the very same
consciousness and it brings her joy to live in this way, despite the
names that others call her. In San Francisco, a son holds his elderly
father’s hand, and suddenly forgiveness happens as if by magic,
unexpectedly, the weight and violence and resentment of a lifetime
falling away, as if it never happened at all.
What ‘news’ are we teaching our children? Are we teaching them that
they have been born into an essentially scary and bad and sick world,
and they should live in fear and hate? Do we teach them that violence is
inevitable, and ‘built into’ to their nature? Or do we teach them that
the murder and torture we see in the news every day stems from a deep
forgetting of who we are, a false and misguided belief in separation?
Are we teaching them to give up on their dreams because there are bad
people out there intent on stopping them? Are we teaching them to give
up on love, and give up on compassion, and give up on change, and give
up on humanity, and give up on joy, because of all the ‘news’? Are we
teaching them to focus on what is wrong with the world, to cling to the
‘negative’, to sing songs of defeat and disillusionment? Are we blinding
them to the ‘negative’ by focussing only on the ‘positive’? Or are we
teaching them to acknowledge the violence of the world, the pain of it,
but to see that all this sorrow is part of an infinitely vaster picture,
a picture where everything is interconnected and everything makes a
difference and everything is in balance and nothing is set in stone?
Don’t use the ‘news’ as an excuse to stop living your truth, even for
a moment. Don’t believe for a second that there is a force called
‘evil’ in the world with any power whatsoever to win over Life. Terror
cannot win, for it emerges from a gross misunderstanding of our nature.
We are only hurting ourselves, stabbing ourselves, blowing ourselves up,
and deep down, we know this and have always known. A wave can never be
separated from the ocean, or from any other wave, and beyond our
differences in opinion and belief, we are all movements of the One Life,
the true Power, beyond the worldly ‘power’ of guns and meat cleavers
dripping with blood. Teach your children the realities of the world,
yes, but, more importantly, teach them the realities of their hearts and
the hearts of those they call ‘others’. Let the current play of
violence actually serve to deepen your conviction in that timeless and
unshakeable gift of Presence that you have always known, and reconfirm
your intention to end all violence in yourself, to live as you know you
can live. Don’t allow the ‘news’, or at least the stories selectively
presented to you as the ‘news’, to distract you from Truth.
Keep your eyes on the prize."
