LISTEN TO RICHARD READ THIS ARTICLE
As I approach the certainty of mortality, as we all do, I also live in the mysterious forever of uncertainty. I know we humans rarely appreciate uncertainty as one of Love’s most subtle disguises. Mind is terrified of uncertainty and compulsively craves certainty. Would die for certainty. Would murder for certainty. Would take other people’s land for certainty. Would stack a Supreme Court for certainty. Would change judiciary laws for certainty. And can shamelessly mandate itself a new “Chosen People” charged with cleansing every Jew from Israel and ultimately bringing every religion under its divinely ordained wing for their version of unchanging, unchangeable certainty.
Every bit of it is madness, but some far more heinous. Uncertainty is an unresolvable existential reality and as such a spiritual issue. Certainty is unachievable and therefore security can never come by any mind-made belief systems, or force of arms, or accumulation of wealth, or twisting of God’s supposed will.
But some quests for certainty, like those pursued by democratic societies, though often misguided, are far more benign at least in the short term than others. (Global warming is an example of a far-from-benign long-term consequence.) Hamas and its ilk are altogether different. They are the expression of a recurring cancer within the soul of humanity. Cancer is transformation of the body without any natural cohering principle. Biological cancer destroys life and ultimately itself but when we confront it to kill it we find it is woven out of so much that is ourselves and that in trying to destroy it we inevitably damage healthy and essential parts of ourselves. Likewise with spiritual cancer, trying to destroy it we inevitably weaken and sadly kill innocent women, children, elderly, the disabled, and otherwise non-violent civilians. And herein is the grief.
I think that when faced with something so ugly and recurring the question to ask, as my wife frequently reminds: “What is mine to do?”
Sometimes it is resting in the broken heart and the anguish of helplessness.
Sometimes it is recognizing that many issues defy any simple resolution and that we must embrace the nebulous ambiguity of so much that we see and feel and do.
Sometimes it is caring for dogs made homeless by war.
Sometimes it is destabilizing populations and unintentionally killing innocent parts of ourselves to try to reach and eradicate the primary disease. For the soldiers who must do this and for those who lead you, my prayer is that you purge revenge and self-righteousness from your hearts. You are an instrument of spiritual chemotherapy, and you must grieve the unmeant damage you will inevitably inflict. But health cannot be restored by killer cells alone, though they be willing to die to save the larger body.
This morning in a vision I saw Israelis, mostly women, defying the authority of their own military counterparts and crossing borders into the territories in which the malignancy festers and from where it launched its brutal assault. They were bearing food and supplies for babies and children.
Viewing this vision, I saw that death might come to these brave souls. It could come “collaterally” by their own forces or be dealt by someone so mutated that it could seem wasteful or foolish to sacrifice one’s own life to the irredeemable. But at the risk of overdoing the metaphor, such souls who are willing to embrace mortality for the wellbeing of others are building the only immunity to spiritual cancer, a healthy Love system that encompasses more than love for me and mine.
Most of us will die in a way that does not evolve our own selfhood, that does not speak to God and say “Today, for Love, I am willing to renounce your most precious gift, this holy life. It is time You understand that Your creation has much to teach You.”
I think it is time to stop praying to God and start evolving God. God is after all our own construction. So let us evolve our construction. Let us teach God what Love is by our acts. I look at all the faiths and feel that God has become stagnant, and we are stagnant in our supplication, prayer, and praise. And sometimes more so in our non-worship. We don’t want to take responsibility for what we have created. It is ourselves we should be supplicating.
Nothing that happened in this past week is new. It is so tragically old. But only the certainty of our relationship with Love, of wanting for others what we want for ourselves, of being willing to lay down our lives for Love’ sake, will ever make our collective, spiritual body healthy enough to withstand the assault of the evil that ever-flows from diseased mutations of mind’s insatiable craving for certainty and its futile quest for security.
I invite you to join me in a prayer that we each live and die in such a way that we help our God grow to be worthy of His creation.
In service to Love,
Richard
Your full of shit! Burning babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beautiful and in net need to be heard
M+
Profound and deeply loving wisdom from you, dear beloved Richard. I’ll never forget my times with you.
I echo your words, Tamara.
To stand apart from concensus reality is the hardest task.
…today,for love I am willing to renounce your most precious gift ,this holy life…
I never before thought about this …my fear of death seems so strong…but this words are touching me very deep and are moving something in me.
Thank you Richard
Christina
Your metaphor of cancer and chemotherapy is pertinent. Thank you for your words
Hello Richard,
Thank you for sharing your feelings about such a difficult world context.
It seems to me that the more uncertainty and insecurity there is (climatic, political, economic and demographic crisis), the more others are perceived like a menace, and the more people need certainties to identify and cling to (comunitarism, flags, territories, ideologies, beliefs, religious dogmas…), like a dog clings to its bone…
It has already been so in the past and is still happening today, all the more that the benchmarks on which our institutions, political and social models were founded are about to collapse.
In such times, spirituality is hijacked from its true purpose, captured in dogmas and used to turn against people, acting like a cancer, as you rightly wrote.
What touches and strikes me more in all this is the way that this cancer-like reflex is happening on an individual level too.
Isn’t the personal level the only power of action we have ? Our only ‘authority’ (to quote your word). After all, don’t we have the God we deserve, at our image ?
Personnaly I feel this is the only thing I can do : to stop indentifying to circumstances, to abandon certainties about myself, the world and others, to stop proving that I’m right and the others are wrong. Nothing is good or bad in itself…
I find it so difficult to do, requiring constant vigilance. I’m not sure I can really give my life, but I can commit to letting everything that contributes to the cancer of this world die within me, little by little, time after time…
So yes, let’s pray that we can achieve this individually and collectively.
Caroline G.
Wow, You have really pulled this essay together beautifully with your comments. Thank you for this. Yes. I agree this is something we must be vigilant about within ourselves. Little by little, time after time, let us pray 🙏
Reminder of the higher teachings from the Bhagavad Gita: “For the soldiers who must do this and for those who lead you, my prayer is that you purge revenge and self-righteousness from your hearts. You are an instrument of spiritual chemotherapy, and you must grieve the unmeant damage you will inevitably inflict.” Amidst our self-created carnage and destruction, perfect teaching Richard!
Reminder of the higher teachings from the Bhagavad Gita: “For the soldiers who must do this and for those who lead you, my prayer is that you purge revenge and self-righteousness from your hearts. You are an instrument of spiritual chemotherapy, and you must grieve the unmeant damage you will inevitably inflict.” Amidst our self-created carnage and destruction, perfect teaching Richard!
Wow, some profound spiritual wisdom there, but also some profound political ignorance.
There’s been a brutal ethnic cleansing ongoing against the Palestinians for the past 70+ years, no accelerating into a genocide, and if you can’t see or acknowledge that, you won’t understand some very important dimensions of where the actual cancer is.
Mainstream corporate media are complicit in this crime against the Palestinians, so you won’t hear any of it there via those channels.
Seems to me you need to get yourself some new and more accurate sources of information.
Indeed, well said and thank you for posting.
Thank you Olga.
I have huge respect and appreciation for Richard and his work. I just find it unsettling that someone so awake spiritually can also seemingly be so asleep politically.
well said Goran. Hard to tell how much Richard knows about what is going down,but doesnt sound very politically savvy ,even though his heart is in the right place,for sure. But the part about making God worthy of his creation seems misguided to me,as it is we who need to be made worthy or grateful of Gods creation,as I see it.
This was my impression as well. I found bias and some ignorance about the original old political issues in this article. If we are judging the situation, need to see the whole picture from both sides and be truthful about our interpretation and observations!
I am deeply grateful for this opportunity to respond. Too much to mention…thank you RM. Your recent reissue of the ‘False Narrative’ video has become transformational for others. Brilliant.
To Katherine, I acknowledge our similar residence in the meta society via the “Open Door” (me since 1972).
I have a similar grasp of the focus of this message. It is critical to understand the political and social history of the region. Hebrews have been on site since Caananite times when their society and culture emerged. As they have evolved, the Hebrews have consistently had to fight for their existence in their ‘promised land’. It is a long list to date…
To equate Palestine with the history of Jewish oppression, diaspora, and fatal discrimination is to compare 70 years with 3,000 years. Muslims only conquered Palestine in the early 600’s CE. The land has been invaded and occupied extensively between different states since then.
If it were not for the Babylonian captivity there would be no Old Testament foundation for the Holy Bible and Holy Quran. There is a consistent behaviour set on the part of human persons directed at those who are ‘foundational’ (enslavement of the Greeks in Roman times). In that sense we are no better than barnyard chickens. We forget we are looking at others through an illusionary mirror, finding displeasure in our projections.
One of the consistent values in the Jewish context is ‘gifting’. One of the missing gifts in this context is ‘reverence’. How can anyone fault Guru Nanak, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Zoroaster…? All of them Awesome. Reverent Awe at what a human is capable of, talkin’ to Gawd and angels, lots of angels.
For those who live with Love in their hearts, this message makes profound sense. Unfortunately, many would reject it. It is so very sad to know that such hatred exists in the world and that the USA, the beacon of light of the new way, has been corrupted so much that there are many who also, here, fuel this hatred. We can pray, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and keep strong in our own hearts a deep desire for Peace on Earth. Thank you for your wisdom and guidance at this difficult time.
Absent a deep enough understanding of the entire situation, I invoke the Biblical injunction “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem”
I find it very difficult to comprehend how in the name of Love, one thinks it is ok to condemn and extinguish an entire people.
I would urge you to -from this heart of Love- look at the entire story. We are talking human beings here, with a name and a story. Not merely ‘cells’.
If in Moss’s home the USA, blacks were confined to 10% of the territory and only whites were permitted to settle in the remaining 90%, it would be considered White Supremacy. A slave revolt in these circumstances would be conveniently conceived by white supremacists as “ blacks wishing to purge whites from coast to coast in the land of America “.