Whispering Hope

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Whispering Hope

How noisy the world is.  If not the rumble of explosives or the crack of guns, it’s the yelling of the TV announcer and the snarling of the rap star.

There is little place left for a soft whisper, for a gentle suggestion, for a lucid thought.

How flimsy seem the remaining tattered threads of Nature.

How futile is the soft light of Wisdom. 

There is no place for the soft and delicate and gentle.  There is no welcome for that which longs to heal and nourish the soul, and anything slow and gradual is doomed to derision, drowned out by laughter. 

There is a terrible noise loosed in the world today, a noisome cabal of shallow connections, a raucous cacophony of demanding and consuming and doing and going, he who speaks loudest winning the debate, she who spends most earning approval, and the clanging rattle of first world bucket-lists obscures the cries of those

Hollow busyness

Hollow Busyness

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

“Hollow busyness”.  That is my new watchword summarizing modern United States society.  From the outside the “hollow busyness” always looks like so much substance. 

It always provides an answer to those inescapable questions “what did you do?”, “what are you doing?”, “what will you do?”, “what do you want to do?”, “what do you plan to do?”  Woe be to those in modern consumer society who confess they did nothing and have no plans for doing something!   

Outsiders cannot see past the perimeter of our lives into the hollowness at the core because of the obscuring surface whirlwind of activity, and we ourselves often as not are blinded by the dust and sand kicked up by our frantic busyness, our watering eyes unable to discern the relative merit and value of our frenetic activities, unaware of the real reasons for our tears.

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Terrifying Passage from the Garden to the Kingdom

Terrifying Passage from the Garden to the Kingdom

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Imagine what existence would be like without fear and pain.

Imagine human behavior in the absence of fear and pain.

I ask this with a broad, broad definition of fear and pain, including hunger, need, insecurity, loneliness, disapproval, survival, aging, dying.

Imagine walking into a life with none of that.  Imagine existence as pure consciousness, sharing life with other elements of consciousness, and entering that life with nothing driving you, only security and safety and embrace and love pulling you.

What would our existence be without something driving us?.....without cold and wind driving architecture, without social strictures and the need for acceptance driving our acceptable behavior, without hunger and war driving technology.

Upon erasure of the manifold motivations derived from fear and pain, we find remaining the distilled essence of humanity. 

STOP! (for a moment)

STOP! (For a Moment)

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

There is good reason mystics seclude themselves in monastic retreats. Though a functioning society cannot have all its members living in monastic retreats, without question any society in which people were encouraged to seek quiet, alone time with Self  and Source would be a healthier, happier, less violent, and more meaningfully productive society.  ("Self" being that non-ego, individual expression of a greater consciousness that is hard to explain to modern people)

The natural, contemplative opportunity of food gathering, field work, and careful craftsmanship has been banished from our lives, and a poverty of perpetual busyness assaults our senses and batters our souls. We have gradually lost the riches of quiet and healing solitude and lost the ability to be still.

We feel guilty and empty if we dare to be still with God and ourselves. All our contacts and connections never ask “what state of being did you attain today?” The question at the end of the day is “what did you do?”

When we do sit still, we have no thoughts of our own or awareness of the Self because

Apprenticed to God

Apprenticed to God

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Oh, to not be productive,  to be liberated from the need to be productive!....to live in a universe of no hunger, fear, or suffering, our potential for creation now liberated to create beauty and life, to explore, to find new ways to express the joy of Unity and to reach toward exciting new heights of Unity.

But it is here, in this world of Darwinian conflict and cruelty, that we learn to create.  Here the children of God are apprenticed to the Creator, learning to create, discovering what we can create, choosing what we will create.

Apprenticed to God,

given examples to inspire, given freedom to ignore them.

This material world pulls our strings of hunger and fears and lusts,

but even as we clumsily plod per those pulls of needs, aversions, and desires,

occasional sparks of creativity still hint at the potential for which we were created.

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Material Separation

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Material separation,

(Sorrow for the rich, warning to those who would follow)

Errands, floor space, moving, arranging, buying, maintaining, shopping………………….soon the time of life is gone, and the opportunity to build the eternal interaction reality of Love is also gone, as we race from object to object, thing to thing, physical chore to physical chore, all the while passing by each other, over and over.

Even in the brief conversations, they must be about the

things,

objects,

Crumbling Temples, Crumbling Lessons

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Crumbling temples, crumbling lessons

On the train leaving Roma (Rome)

In each of those temples we now see as ruins there had to be a last priest of that cult.  Someone had to face the reality that their center of worship, the center for a worldwide empire, the center of their life, was no more.  Did economic conditions or waning faith of the populace simply mean the priest could no longer make a living?  Was his faith mercenary in nature, and did the lack of paying clients provide opportunity to get out of that stinkin’ job and move on to something better?  Or did he grieve over society’s faithlessness, and mourn their consequent fate?

Was the end traumatic, a violent paroxysm of barbarian invaders, killing the last priest as he tried to shield the altar with