#spread your light

[espiritogato]

It’s time to glow & spread your light. ✨

Always listen to your soul, It knows the way. 👣

[alysettenymphaneth]

Just in case you needed to hear it today: you’re so important. You matter. Your thoughts, feelings, and opinions matter. Thank you for existing and bringing your perspective and your light into this world. 🙏🏻💙♥️🌎🌟

(P.S. who else is excited for the Great Conjuction!!!? 🪐💫) (The Age of Aquarius ♒️)

[kickdrumheart68]

💜

[eatmorbananas]

January 09

“Beauty, Purpose, Nonviolence”–Daily Metta

“I cannot impose my personal faith on others, never on a national organization. I can but try to convince the nation of its beauty and its usefulness.”--Gandhi (Young India, 11-20-1924)

(This continues from the previous post, noting that we cannot force anyone to do anything as there is always a choice that individual must make amidst our shared broader context, i.e. life)

Perhaps Antoine de St. Exupery was influenced by Gandhi when he wrote, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”  It’s the same idea here. If you want to build a base of popular support for a movement, you don’t need to give people pithy placards or weapons, you give them a mirror in which to see their own beauty and purpose. We have such a mirror, but it’s often dusty. Nonviolence is what we use to wipe it clean.

(A nonviolent life is the mirror. i have experienced it through others and others have told me they experienced it through me. At Camp Arrowhead in Lewes, DE we call it ‘Spreading the light”. 

When we offer resistance to someone in a nonviolent manner, we are not rejecting them. We are holding them up to a higher standard, and making the conditions favorable for them to change — usually by changing ourselves in the bargain. In the process, both of us grow closer together. The person committed to nonviolence will strive to reflect the good in their opposition, knowing that in doing so, they are creating a new image of that person that is more worthy of them. We can trust that they long to see this image of themselves, and need the permission and purpose of living up to it.

(Whenever another human attacks me verbally or physically i simply forgive them in the moment. Once they notice that i am not ‘playing the same game of violence’ as they are, often unconsciously, they begin to speak with me and act toward me differently. I have practiced this since i was a child being called an Ethiopian in school because i was so skinny i ‘looked like those kids on the T.V.” As a young child there was a sever famine in Ethiopia which left millions to experience starvation, many of whom did not survive.

I understood that the children and family members poking fun was simply an emulation of what they were seeing on T.V. or reading in the papers. Thus i was never, to my recollection, angry or even frustrated with anyone who made fun of my appearance. To this day i still dont care when people poke fun at my appearance as i know its an emulation of evil rather than the fulfillment of love. My ability to forgive them leads them to stop poking fun at me, and hopefully other people throughout their everydaylives.

Yet, by the time i graduated high school, just barley i might add, none of the children i grew up with called me such monikers despite me weighing 100lbs on a heavy day. They voted me as ‘Most Down To Earth’ and it was by far the most important gift i recieved throught my k-12 schooling as it came from my fellow classmates, i.e. the people.)

In order to heed Gandhi’s wisdom to carry out this difficult task, we have to enlarge our view of what a human being is and what life is for. If we are only here to serve ourselves, if we have no ultimate responsibility to the planet, if other people are simply abstractions, then violence would make perfect sense. But who, having experienced a nonviolent moment, would still maintain this? That is the great mystery of this power–life itself reveals itself when we align our thought, speech, and action with its highest image.

Experiment in Non-violence

Consider the ways that you might show someone who is discouraged and “acting out” their beauty and purpose. (Listen to them, fully. Listen to them fully. Do not try to quell their values or thoughts. Simply listen and from there the next step particular to that moment will be revealed. For instance, when i moved into a space in 2014 one of my roomates would constantly joke about how i was eating cat food or fish food. I would calmly respond that i have celiac which was undiagnoised for decades. Throughout that time my body was ravaged by the autoimmune disorder. Once i discovered this ailment i had to transform the way i lived, specifically ate in order to head. After about ten times of doing this he stopped making fun of what and how i ate. Now he is very accommodating whenever we get together, meaning he does not make fun of people that eat differently than he does anymore. Which is wonderful!!!)

[itxylopez]

[itxylopez]

[kick-start-motivation]