~*~*~SuNsHiNe~*~*~

If someone should hurt you
And say a thing unkind,
Remember what I write you,
And keep these thoughts in mind.

For everyone who makes you cry,
There are three who make you smile.
And a smile will last a long, long time,
But a tear just a little while.

Don't let someone who hates the world
Cause you to hate it too.
Behind the clouds is a golden sun,
And a sky that's full of blue.

If someone said a thing that's cruel,
Don't let it get to you,
Your achievements are greatly numbered,
And your faults are very few.

So if a certain person
Should act a certain way,
Think of those who love you
And don't let it spoil your day.

by Ruth Carter-Bourdon

If life seems at its lowest ebb,
Because a day's gone wrong.
Let not your heart be troubled,
For a new day soon will dawn

And we can never be quite sure,
Just what it has in store.
Since each one is so different,
Than the one just gone before

As it penetrates the darkness,
With its soft and tranquil beams.
It calms even the most restless soul,
And brings new hopes and dreams

So when a days been troubled,
And the night is dark and long.
Lift up your fallen spirits,
For a new day soon will dawn

There is a lot of darkness , disharmony and suffering in our world today, a lot of injustice, and violence. And what we must realize is that we are the reason behind all this. Indeed , the state of much of our outer world is created by the fact that many of us live very split and discombobulated inner lives;

 many of us are stuck in very unhealthy conflicts, fixated in great sadness, despair and anger, all of which is continually seeping out of us and contaminating our society. I therefore believe that if we wish to move forward and create a better world, we need a lot of healing of our past. And here, a very integral part of this process of letting go of the past, lies in our ability to forgive. Indeed, we must never underestimate just how many conflicts and how much suffering still persists, because so many of us are so rigid and unyielding and not only have very little idea about how to forgive but also wholly fail to recognize the importance of it. Evidence of the importance of forgiveness lies in the fact that all spiritual traditions give it a central place.

One of the main reasons why it is not easy to is because deep wounding can bind us in a perverse way to the source of our pain, resulting in our remaining very fixated in and therefore attached to, our suffering. And essentially , what forgiveness asks of us, is that we learn to let go.

 Let us imagine that something terrible will have happened to us, say, that we will have been betrayed, abused or tortured in some way, or that those we love are stolen from us. What we will tend to feel is great outrage, the sense that something very precious and sacred to us and that gives our lives meaning, will have been stolen from us. And here the outrage, together with all the suffering accompanying it, can become the new meaning to fill our void! Forgetting that we turn into what we hate, the sense of having been wronged can create in us the illusion of our own purity.

 In our minds, we become all good, and those whom we feel will have hurt or betrayed us, all bad. Thus we may feel justified in giving vent to our destructive tendencies we are now allowed, in return, to rape , pillage, torture, abuse and try to destroy those we perceive as our destroyers .

To forgive them would deny us this luxury! Such scenarios can be further exacerbated by the fact that many of us can carry deep wounds that seem unconnected with anything that would appear to have happened to us personally.

 Many report carrying deep cellular memories of ancestral, racial or religious violence relating to incidents they have no personal knowledge of. And many of these old enmities are surfacing powerfully at this moment because we are living at a very special time i believe a new culture of love is currently wanting to emerge and is doing its very best to break through into our awareness.

 Put another way, we are all living at a time of great spiritual awakening, where much spiritual light is now emerging on our planet. And one of the effects of spiritual light is to expose or illumine for us, the dark and cobwebby areas that obscure it, not only inside each of us personally, but also within humanity collectively and within our world globally. So, given these many challenges, how then, do we forgive?

 Here, the first thing to bear in mind is that situations requiring forgiveness always involve conflict and that conflict can never be solved at the level that it exists at. It can only be solved at a higher level of consciousness, at a level where oppositions begin to converge as opposed to fight. To forgive, then, whether it be ourselves, another person, another race or a nation, or whatever, what is essential is that we be in a place of being able to raise our awareness to a level higher than that in which the original perceived wounding occurred.

 So long as we still remain caught in our old dramas, no resolution is possible. The bigger our egos, the harder it is to forgive and the less we will be motivated to want to do so! I maintain, then, that in order to forgive, we have to be able to open our hearts, for it is essentially only with our hearts that we can experience our true self worth.

 I believe that the more open our hearts are, the more we are able to access the kind of wisdom that enables us to understand what lies behind why certain painful things will have taken place. It is only inside our hearts that we discover the wherewithal to let bygones be bygones, the humility to give up our self righteousness, the compassion and the generosity of spirit to love those who have hurt us, together with the spiritual intelligence to understand how forgiveness brings freedom. When our hearts begin to open, we only want justice and truth; everyone increasingly becomes our brother and sister and less and less is there the space to have enemies , for we are no longer interested in exacting revenge.

 The more open our hearts are, therefore, the stronger we are and therefore, the greater are our possibilities for forgiveness. Indeed, inside our inner hearts exists a veritable alchemical laboratory whose fire not only allows us to transmute and burn up our grief, but also empowers us recognize the deeper purpose behind why certain things happen as they do, even if those things are painful and terrible.

I believe all these perspectives are necessary if genuine forgiveness is to take place. One might say at this stage: “It is all very well saying all this. but how can our hearts open in such circumstances?” Surely, the effect of our wounding is to keep them crushed and closed. Surely, to experience courage and strength and self esteem in such instances, is not possible! While I agree that this can sometimes be the case, it is not always so with everyone. We remember that in the act of forgiving those who may have hurt us, we not only help re-humanise them, but we also do the same for ourselves.

To forgive, then, is an important part of our own transformational process. It is also a significant form of service. And one powerful way of helping activate this space is to make a daily practice of seeking to behave in a loving and generous-spirited way towards everyone we encounter. I have met people who were so practiced at this, that one could say of them that their very presence radiated the spirit of forgiveness.

However, please remember that the cultivation of such presence cannot and does not, happen overnight and we must be patient and learn to live gradually into our forgiveness. While we will begin our journey calling out to it, searching for it, we may end it by the spirit of forgiveness drawing us ever closer into its own heart. http://www.alliwantispeace.com/

Was it on the moon bathed sands
or under the weeping willow’s wings
on sheets of thousand count bliss
or in a dream, another time?

I have beheld the beauty of you
followed the pathways to your soul
gazed softly into your eyes
and shared countless tales without a word
of the earth, the sky, the animals within
we have spoken in the cries of the wolf
and heard the longings of the soul
we have spoken in the thunder of the storm
and manifest the desires of the heart
to feel
to live
to be refreshed in your crystal rivers
my spirit ascends into your endless skies
and gently rains down upon the dreamers
eyes full with the glowing moon
blend with the tears of broken hearts
penetrate deep into the aching flesh
mingle in the blood
the rivers of our intent and dreams
flow to the source
where all is made real

Was it a yesterday
or some tomorrow yet to come
I saw on moist, emerald hills
the imprints of you and I?

 David S. Bell 2005

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

by Stanley Kunitz’s