After my knee surgery ten days ago, I drove for the first time to my church in Hollywood. It is a 15 mile drive on University Drive with 30 traffic lights. Every stop and go, put extra pressure on my knee and I was not looking forward to that. So prayed for all green lights...and dared to put my car on 'cruise control' after passing Southgate Blvd. "If I could get to Commercial Blvd without stopping, I would he thrilled," I said to myself. Yes!, I went through Commercial, and of course, the next light at Inverrary Blvd is going to be red. It has always turned red on me in the last 22 years I have driven this road. But it was green today...I thought my free ride will surely end at Oakland Park Blvd... but I could not believe I had green light there too...
The miracle of green lights kept happening,and guess what, after going through 20 green lights, I had to break the car for the first time at Broward Bvld. A stretch of 8 miles!!! It has never happened before in all my years of driving on that road. I spoke about it in my sermon yesterday, as proof of God (the Universe) taking care of us when we are in harmony with the Universe.
I posted this experience on facebook yesterday. Today, I received a message from a friend who works for the County: "As the saying goes, the Lord works in mysterious ways, so this month University Drive was one of the first 2 streets to get its signals synchronized (because you needed it now, Paul). See http://www.broward.org/Traffic/GreenLights/Pages/Default.aspx and look at the schedule!
The County website says:
"Broward County is improving traffic flow through our “Green Lights Program,” to coordinate traffic signals along our major streets. We will be re-timing our most frequently traveled roadways over the next several months according to the Green Lights Program schedule. Drivers traveling along streets where signal re-timing is in effect will experience fewer delays and more green lights. When you drive at the posted speed limit, you will you pass through more continuous green lights during your trip."
They just started the program this month, and University Drive was one of the first 2 street to get the benefit. I had the surgery this month. I needed it most this Sunday!! This is how My GOD works....
Be in harmony with the Universe..don't resist life, don't struggle, just go with the flow and and trust in the process and God will show up in what ever form and shape you need...
Monday, September 27, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
My Knee Surgery performed by 6 billion people...
Last week, Thurs, I had knee surgery. About six people were directly involved in my surgery that day; that means they played a direct role in my life, but about six billion were indirectly involved to make it all happen that day.
Now what do I mean by that? Let me explain. Early in the morning, I took a shower in the water that was supplied by the city of coral springs. I was thinking of the thousands of people who were involved in the harnessing, production, purification and channeling of that water supply to my house at that particular address. The people who manufactured the pipes that made that water flow safe. The companies that made the water purification chemicals. The people who made the hot water tank in my house; the technicians who installed it. When I think like that, the number of people involved in giving me a hot shower that morning, multiplies by thousands.
Remember, the the day has barely started, and millions are still going to be involved.
I was wearing a shirt that morning which was made in Bangladesh. The label said: Made in B; 100% cotton.” Usually nobody pays attention to these things; but I do, and it has a lot to do with the peace and joy I feel in life.
I thought of the thousands of people who were involved in making that shirt, starting with the poor villagers who produced the cotton, a grandmother who might have woven that cotton in into threads in a small factory in a remote village; Her emotions of fear, and hope or hopelessness have been woven into the threads that made my shirt which is now covering my body. I think of the people who made the machine that stitched my shirt together; the person who folded it, packed it, sealed and placed it on a truck to be exported to the United Sates. The fears, cares and energies of of all those people are part of the fabric I am wearing that day.
Then I think of the train that transported it to the nearest Airport in Bangladesh and off to a cargo plain bound for Arkansas, the headquarters of Walmart. And from there, it is unloaded, coded and re-routed into a truck that goes a 1000 miles to a Walmart in Coral Springs. Think of the thousands of employees whose joint effort made that shirt appear on a rack, and I pick it up, pay for it with a credit card, issued by a bank that has another ten thousand employees, who make sure that Walmart is paid on my behalf. You see the endless connections with people that make it all possible.
The day has barely begun, and I have not gotten to the Surgery Center yet; My wife drives me there in a car that has 2200 different parts. Those 2200 parts of the car have been touched by the energy, imagination, and efforts of another million people, not here, but somewhere in Japan.
Then there is the girl at the front desk, who registers me on a Dell Computer with 5000 parts, that was made in China..and now another billion Chinese people are getting involved in my life that day.
Then I am taken into the prep room, and I am surrounded by half a dozen people, nurses, anesthesiologist, my doctor, recovery room personnel. I am thinking of all the people who are connected to them by extension, their families, friends, the communities they belong to etc. Then they put me under, using this sedation medication that was manufactured in a medical lab in Nebraska, shipped via Fex Ex planes and a Fed Ex driver brings it to the facility. An unknown Fed Ex driver and all the people in his life have now gotten involved in my life.
And then there is this million dollar medical equipment with a zillion parts, lights, camera and laser beams that will make three holes on my knee, will probe the damaged area, and this doctor whom I have seen only twice in my entire life, will scrape it, repair it and and make it all right.
That morning, I was held tenderly and directly in the hands of six human beings, but I was indirectly supported and lovingly sustained by the energy of six billion people. That is how I experience God through my connectedness to people who are created in the image and likeness of God.
And the funny thing is that I was completely unconscious, lying down helplessly, totally at the mercy of a group of strangers. But the reality is that they are not strangers; they are strangers only in a superficial sense. In a deeper sense, on the level of the soul, they are my brothers and sisters, sharing my same humanity, and I know that they will never do anything to hurt me, but try their best to help.
This is just one scenario of a single human interaction. This happens in all of our lives, every day. You don't have to go into surgery to experience it. Where ever there is a human interaction or transaction, this scenario of connectedness and interdependence plays out all the time.
Even if you stay home all day and does not directly come into contact with any one, you are still connected to millions, through the clothes on your body, the TV you watch, the cell phone you use, the food you eat, etc. etc.
And that is my greatest argument for peace. We don't have peace in the world, because we think we are strangers to each other; that one person or one nation has nothing to do with the other; that we are in competition with each other; that other people are our enemies; that other religions are inferior to ours; that enemies need to be destroyed etc. etc.
That kind of separatist thinking will never bring peace in the world. That is why Mother Teresa who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 19 said it so powerfully: “If we have no peace, it is because, we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
So the way of peace is primarily, an inner process, a changing of our consciousness from the lowest level, which is the level of division, disunity and exclusion to the highest level, of inclusion, unity and wholeness.
So, the ultimate prescription for peace is AWARENESS. Awareness of our interconnection and interdependence!
Now what do I mean by that? Let me explain. Early in the morning, I took a shower in the water that was supplied by the city of coral springs. I was thinking of the thousands of people who were involved in the harnessing, production, purification and channeling of that water supply to my house at that particular address. The people who manufactured the pipes that made that water flow safe. The companies that made the water purification chemicals. The people who made the hot water tank in my house; the technicians who installed it. When I think like that, the number of people involved in giving me a hot shower that morning, multiplies by thousands.
Remember, the the day has barely started, and millions are still going to be involved.
I was wearing a shirt that morning which was made in Bangladesh. The label said: Made in B; 100% cotton.” Usually nobody pays attention to these things; but I do, and it has a lot to do with the peace and joy I feel in life.
I thought of the thousands of people who were involved in making that shirt, starting with the poor villagers who produced the cotton, a grandmother who might have woven that cotton in into threads in a small factory in a remote village; Her emotions of fear, and hope or hopelessness have been woven into the threads that made my shirt which is now covering my body. I think of the people who made the machine that stitched my shirt together; the person who folded it, packed it, sealed and placed it on a truck to be exported to the United Sates. The fears, cares and energies of of all those people are part of the fabric I am wearing that day.
Then I think of the train that transported it to the nearest Airport in Bangladesh and off to a cargo plain bound for Arkansas, the headquarters of Walmart. And from there, it is unloaded, coded and re-routed into a truck that goes a 1000 miles to a Walmart in Coral Springs. Think of the thousands of employees whose joint effort made that shirt appear on a rack, and I pick it up, pay for it with a credit card, issued by a bank that has another ten thousand employees, who make sure that Walmart is paid on my behalf. You see the endless connections with people that make it all possible.
The day has barely begun, and I have not gotten to the Surgery Center yet; My wife drives me there in a car that has 2200 different parts. Those 2200 parts of the car have been touched by the energy, imagination, and efforts of another million people, not here, but somewhere in Japan.
Then there is the girl at the front desk, who registers me on a Dell Computer with 5000 parts, that was made in China..and now another billion Chinese people are getting involved in my life that day.
Then I am taken into the prep room, and I am surrounded by half a dozen people, nurses, anesthesiologist, my doctor, recovery room personnel. I am thinking of all the people who are connected to them by extension, their families, friends, the communities they belong to etc. Then they put me under, using this sedation medication that was manufactured in a medical lab in Nebraska, shipped via Fex Ex planes and a Fed Ex driver brings it to the facility. An unknown Fed Ex driver and all the people in his life have now gotten involved in my life.
And then there is this million dollar medical equipment with a zillion parts, lights, camera and laser beams that will make three holes on my knee, will probe the damaged area, and this doctor whom I have seen only twice in my entire life, will scrape it, repair it and and make it all right.
That morning, I was held tenderly and directly in the hands of six human beings, but I was indirectly supported and lovingly sustained by the energy of six billion people. That is how I experience God through my connectedness to people who are created in the image and likeness of God.
And the funny thing is that I was completely unconscious, lying down helplessly, totally at the mercy of a group of strangers. But the reality is that they are not strangers; they are strangers only in a superficial sense. In a deeper sense, on the level of the soul, they are my brothers and sisters, sharing my same humanity, and I know that they will never do anything to hurt me, but try their best to help.
This is just one scenario of a single human interaction. This happens in all of our lives, every day. You don't have to go into surgery to experience it. Where ever there is a human interaction or transaction, this scenario of connectedness and interdependence plays out all the time.
Even if you stay home all day and does not directly come into contact with any one, you are still connected to millions, through the clothes on your body, the TV you watch, the cell phone you use, the food you eat, etc. etc.
And that is my greatest argument for peace. We don't have peace in the world, because we think we are strangers to each other; that one person or one nation has nothing to do with the other; that we are in competition with each other; that other people are our enemies; that other religions are inferior to ours; that enemies need to be destroyed etc. etc.
That kind of separatist thinking will never bring peace in the world. That is why Mother Teresa who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 19 said it so powerfully: “If we have no peace, it is because, we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
So the way of peace is primarily, an inner process, a changing of our consciousness from the lowest level, which is the level of division, disunity and exclusion to the highest level, of inclusion, unity and wholeness.
So, the ultimate prescription for peace is AWARENESS. Awareness of our interconnection and interdependence!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Peace IS the Way
This is the speech I delivered at American Heritage School in Plantation,celebrating International Day of Peace (Actual day is 9/21 but celebrated on 9/14)
I am delighted to be with you, this morning, such a vibrant group of young people, to celebrate International Day of Peace. I commend you and congratulate you for taking the time to reflect on the topic of peace because as former UN Sec. Gen. Boutros Boutros Ghali said, “Thinking about peace is already a powerful means to contribute to peace.”
I am passionate about peace, because I am a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi, one the greatest peacemakers of all time. Besides, I am also a follower of Jesus, the prince of Peace. I have been very active in a local organization called One Planet United which was started in Coral Springs a few years ago, by one of my friends Jack Bloomfield.
Wee have been celebrating World Peace Day since it was established by the UN in 1981. The Catholic Church has celebrated Peace Sunday for hundreds of years. Numerous attempts have been made to bring about peace in the middle east. In spite of all that, peace seems to be a mirage?
I am reminded of a story of a journalist assigned to the Jerusalem bureau of CNN. She had an apartment overlooking the wailing wall. Daily, she watched this old man vigorously praying in front of the wall. One day she asked him: “Every day I see you praying at the wall; how long have you done this and what are you praying for?
“I have come here daily for 25 years. I pray for peace between Arabs and Jews. I pray that all hatred in the world end and I pray for all children of God to live in peace and harmony. How does it make you feel that after all these years of praying, your prayers are not answered. The old man looked at her sadly and said: “It is like talking to a wall.”
World Peace seems like such an impossible dream. In the past four decades America's war habit has led us into Iraq. Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, and Cambodia not to mention the more covert military operations into places like Laos, Nicaragua and Colombia.
These are examples of a nation at war with other nations. But there are wars within our nation itself that is going on right now; it is not a military conflict using tanks, bombs and weapons, and there may not be any visible wounds or bleeding bodies; but the conflict is real.
I am talking specifically about the huge conflict going on within our country about the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. It has bitterly divided our nation. The groups that support the mosque and oppose it are going at each other with such vitriolic force that the wounds they create are much more serious than any weapon could ever inflict.
I am not bringing this up to make you disheartened in your efforts to work for peace. I am saying this to invite you to approach peacemaking with a whole new attitude. Because, traditional methods of achieving peace have failed. You know why? Because, our primary focus was to create peace out there, in the community, in the nation, in the middle east, in the world. It has not worked so far and it will not work, because we are operating from a basic fallacy, and that is peace is something that is out there.
The greatest threat to world peace is not nuclear weapons; but nuclear hearts filled with hatred, jealousy and anger. And how do we develop such a heart? It is developed in our mental laboratory using a pervasive substance called ignorance, and the product that is created is called SEPARATION ILLUSION.
So, if the cause of all the conflict in the world is the misguided belief that we are separate from each other, the solution to that problem is believing that we are all CONNECTED: that the apparent separation between religions, races and nations are just an illusion.
Mother Teresa who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 19 said it so powerfully: “If we have no peace, it is because, we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
MK Gandhi a great champion of peach and nonviolence understood that we cannot create peace without being peaceful and that is why he said; “There is no way to peace, peace is the way. It compliments another saying of Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world.
So the way of peace is primarily, an inner process, a changing of our consciousness about the unity of humanity. So today, I invite to raise your consciousness to a higher level. From the lowest level, which is the level division, disunity and exclusion to the highest level, of inclusion, unity and wholeness.
I like to share with you a story about how I try operate from this higher level of consciousness.
I work as a hospice chaplain. There are 25 chaplains on our team and we have monthly meetings. Every time a new chaplain joins our team, we introduce ourselves. In the interest of time, we just say our name and denomination. So we began introducing ourselves as Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, United Methodist, Baptist, Southern Baptist, United Church of Christ, Disunited Church of Christ, no I just made that up.... You know there are over a 2000 different Christian denominations. Somebody called them, abominations, but that is a different story. So when my turn came, I just said, My name is Paul and I am a human being.
Everyone chuckled; at the end of the meeting, the new chaplain took me aside and said that he was intrigued by my introduction. I told him that I was not trying to be a wise guy. I had thought about it and deeply reflected on it. I really don’t like labels because, labels divide people and put them inseparate camps.
I consciously try to use language that unites rather than divide us. So if I say I am an American which I am by citizenship, I am connected to 300 million people. If I say I an Indian which I am by birth, I am connected to 1.2 billion people. If I say I am Christian, which I am by baptism, I am connected to about 2.7 billion people. I want to acknowledge my connection to the six billion people on this planet and human being is the only label that will fit that bill.
As a matter of fact, my connection is not just to the people, but to the animals, plants, the planets and the whole universe.
Last year, I was watching CNN and there was this story about a national geographic study called the Genographic Project. It is titled: The greatest Journey ever told: the trail of our DNA.
New DNA studies show that all humans descended from an African ancestor who lived about 60 thousand years ago. Population geneticist, Dr. Spencer Wells who is leading this study said: “The human genetic code or genome is 99.9 percent identical throughout the world. What is left, .1% is the DNA responsible for our individual differences; the color of our skin, race, religion etc.”
I fell out of my chair when I heard that. I had thought that 50 percent of the DNA account for similarities and 50 percent for our differences. That is what my friends thought. When I told them about this study, their jaws dropped, their eyes popped out, and they told me: “You cannot be serious.” I told them that I read this in the National Geographic and not the National Inquirer.
I have no intention to prove to you today that we are all connected. It is like gravity; whether you agree or not, it is the reality.
The fact of the matter is that we are the same genetically, 99.9 percent. Only .1 percent of our genes account for our differences. All the anger and jealousy is about the .1 percent? All our divisions and acrimony, is about the .1percent? All our prejudices and fighting, hatred, killings,terrorism and war
are about the .1 percent?
Mind boggling right? It is happening because we are not conscious of our basic identity as human beings and our connectedness to each other. It is happening, because, most of the time, we are just sleep walking through life.
In the Disney movie Lion King one and Half, Timor, a meerkat, leaves home to find a life for himself.On the way, he meets Rafiki, the wise baboon, who asks him where he was going. Timon tells the baboon “I am looking for a life without worries.” The monkey said: “So you are looking for hakuna matada”: Rafiki gave Timon this advice: “If you are looking for a life without worries, look beyond what you see”
All of us are looking for a life without worries; a peaceful life, a harmonious world, a united planet,but it seems to elude us all the time. Looking beyond what we see can be a beneficial exercise in achieving that goal.
We often live superficial lives, at the level of our five senses. The world around us is experienced and interpreted using our five senses. However, our senses can be very deceptive. For example, the senses tell us that the earth is flat, but that is not true; our eyes tell us that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but when we look beyond what we see, we know that the sun neither rises nor sets.
It is the same with our view of people. On the physical level, people look different: different colors,different races, different religions, different languages, different sexual orientation, but on the level of the soul, they are all the same, members of one human family, each one intimately connected to the destinies and dreams of the other.
You have seen birth announcements on mail boxes. When a child is born you see a balloon tied to a mail box and it will say: “It’s a Boy” or “It is a Girl.” It never says: “It is a white American Catholic Boy” or a “Brown Mexican Methodist Girl”: A week after we are born, we get the birth certificate, it is our first label of nationality, a few months later, we get a baptism certificate which gives the
second label of religion, Later we acquire labels such as conservative, liberal, republican, democrat,etc. Some labels may be necessary for civic purposes, but they should have no place in our enterprise called life.
Few months ago, I received a phone call from a company doing a survey. At the end of the survey, the caller told me that for demographic purposes, she needed three pieces of information: my age, sex and race. And I said: I am 50 years old, I am male and I am human. There was this silence for a moment; And she said: “I only have boxes for White, Black, Asian or Other. I have to put you in one of those boxes.” And I said: “I don’t want to be in a box.” Always remember that God did not create separate boxes; God created the universe.
That is what each one of us need to start saying: “I don’t want to be in a any box created by our limited consciousness and narrow minds”: According to Neal Donald Walsch,all our problems are due to our desire to be in separate boxes:
“Every sadness of the human heart, every indignity of the human condition, every tragedy of the human experience, can be attributed to one human decision: the decision to separate ourselves from each other; all of our rage, all of our disappointments, all of our bitterness, has found its birth, in the death of our greatest joy: the joy of being one.”
Always think of you FIRST as a human being.
I like to conclude by extending to you the traditional Indian greeting, Namaste. Namaste is a Sanskrit word which means: “I bow to the divinity within you”.
Today, I invite you to dream of a world in which the divinity within you is always affirmed and the divinity in others is never denied.
Let your greeting, both now and forever be, Namaste!
I am delighted to be with you, this morning, such a vibrant group of young people, to celebrate International Day of Peace. I commend you and congratulate you for taking the time to reflect on the topic of peace because as former UN Sec. Gen. Boutros Boutros Ghali said, “Thinking about peace is already a powerful means to contribute to peace.”
I am passionate about peace, because I am a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi, one the greatest peacemakers of all time. Besides, I am also a follower of Jesus, the prince of Peace. I have been very active in a local organization called One Planet United which was started in Coral Springs a few years ago, by one of my friends Jack Bloomfield.
Wee have been celebrating World Peace Day since it was established by the UN in 1981. The Catholic Church has celebrated Peace Sunday for hundreds of years. Numerous attempts have been made to bring about peace in the middle east. In spite of all that, peace seems to be a mirage?
I am reminded of a story of a journalist assigned to the Jerusalem bureau of CNN. She had an apartment overlooking the wailing wall. Daily, she watched this old man vigorously praying in front of the wall. One day she asked him: “Every day I see you praying at the wall; how long have you done this and what are you praying for?
“I have come here daily for 25 years. I pray for peace between Arabs and Jews. I pray that all hatred in the world end and I pray for all children of God to live in peace and harmony. How does it make you feel that after all these years of praying, your prayers are not answered. The old man looked at her sadly and said: “It is like talking to a wall.”
World Peace seems like such an impossible dream. In the past four decades America's war habit has led us into Iraq. Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, and Cambodia not to mention the more covert military operations into places like Laos, Nicaragua and Colombia.
These are examples of a nation at war with other nations. But there are wars within our nation itself that is going on right now; it is not a military conflict using tanks, bombs and weapons, and there may not be any visible wounds or bleeding bodies; but the conflict is real.
I am talking specifically about the huge conflict going on within our country about the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. It has bitterly divided our nation. The groups that support the mosque and oppose it are going at each other with such vitriolic force that the wounds they create are much more serious than any weapon could ever inflict.
I am not bringing this up to make you disheartened in your efforts to work for peace. I am saying this to invite you to approach peacemaking with a whole new attitude. Because, traditional methods of achieving peace have failed. You know why? Because, our primary focus was to create peace out there, in the community, in the nation, in the middle east, in the world. It has not worked so far and it will not work, because we are operating from a basic fallacy, and that is peace is something that is out there.
The greatest threat to world peace is not nuclear weapons; but nuclear hearts filled with hatred, jealousy and anger. And how do we develop such a heart? It is developed in our mental laboratory using a pervasive substance called ignorance, and the product that is created is called SEPARATION ILLUSION.
So, if the cause of all the conflict in the world is the misguided belief that we are separate from each other, the solution to that problem is believing that we are all CONNECTED: that the apparent separation between religions, races and nations are just an illusion.
Mother Teresa who won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 19 said it so powerfully: “If we have no peace, it is because, we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
MK Gandhi a great champion of peach and nonviolence understood that we cannot create peace without being peaceful and that is why he said; “There is no way to peace, peace is the way. It compliments another saying of Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world.
So the way of peace is primarily, an inner process, a changing of our consciousness about the unity of humanity. So today, I invite to raise your consciousness to a higher level. From the lowest level, which is the level division, disunity and exclusion to the highest level, of inclusion, unity and wholeness.
I like to share with you a story about how I try operate from this higher level of consciousness.
I work as a hospice chaplain. There are 25 chaplains on our team and we have monthly meetings. Every time a new chaplain joins our team, we introduce ourselves. In the interest of time, we just say our name and denomination. So we began introducing ourselves as Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, United Methodist, Baptist, Southern Baptist, United Church of Christ, Disunited Church of Christ, no I just made that up.... You know there are over a 2000 different Christian denominations. Somebody called them, abominations, but that is a different story. So when my turn came, I just said, My name is Paul and I am a human being.
Everyone chuckled; at the end of the meeting, the new chaplain took me aside and said that he was intrigued by my introduction. I told him that I was not trying to be a wise guy. I had thought about it and deeply reflected on it. I really don’t like labels because, labels divide people and put them inseparate camps.
I consciously try to use language that unites rather than divide us. So if I say I am an American which I am by citizenship, I am connected to 300 million people. If I say I an Indian which I am by birth, I am connected to 1.2 billion people. If I say I am Christian, which I am by baptism, I am connected to about 2.7 billion people. I want to acknowledge my connection to the six billion people on this planet and human being is the only label that will fit that bill.
As a matter of fact, my connection is not just to the people, but to the animals, plants, the planets and the whole universe.
Last year, I was watching CNN and there was this story about a national geographic study called the Genographic Project. It is titled: The greatest Journey ever told: the trail of our DNA.
New DNA studies show that all humans descended from an African ancestor who lived about 60 thousand years ago. Population geneticist, Dr. Spencer Wells who is leading this study said: “The human genetic code or genome is 99.9 percent identical throughout the world. What is left, .1% is the DNA responsible for our individual differences; the color of our skin, race, religion etc.”
I fell out of my chair when I heard that. I had thought that 50 percent of the DNA account for similarities and 50 percent for our differences. That is what my friends thought. When I told them about this study, their jaws dropped, their eyes popped out, and they told me: “You cannot be serious.” I told them that I read this in the National Geographic and not the National Inquirer.
I have no intention to prove to you today that we are all connected. It is like gravity; whether you agree or not, it is the reality.
The fact of the matter is that we are the same genetically, 99.9 percent. Only .1 percent of our genes account for our differences. All the anger and jealousy is about the .1 percent? All our divisions and acrimony, is about the .1percent? All our prejudices and fighting, hatred, killings,terrorism and war
are about the .1 percent?
Mind boggling right? It is happening because we are not conscious of our basic identity as human beings and our connectedness to each other. It is happening, because, most of the time, we are just sleep walking through life.
In the Disney movie Lion King one and Half, Timor, a meerkat, leaves home to find a life for himself.On the way, he meets Rafiki, the wise baboon, who asks him where he was going. Timon tells the baboon “I am looking for a life without worries.” The monkey said: “So you are looking for hakuna matada”: Rafiki gave Timon this advice: “If you are looking for a life without worries, look beyond what you see”
All of us are looking for a life without worries; a peaceful life, a harmonious world, a united planet,but it seems to elude us all the time. Looking beyond what we see can be a beneficial exercise in achieving that goal.
We often live superficial lives, at the level of our five senses. The world around us is experienced and interpreted using our five senses. However, our senses can be very deceptive. For example, the senses tell us that the earth is flat, but that is not true; our eyes tell us that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, but when we look beyond what we see, we know that the sun neither rises nor sets.
It is the same with our view of people. On the physical level, people look different: different colors,different races, different religions, different languages, different sexual orientation, but on the level of the soul, they are all the same, members of one human family, each one intimately connected to the destinies and dreams of the other.
You have seen birth announcements on mail boxes. When a child is born you see a balloon tied to a mail box and it will say: “It’s a Boy” or “It is a Girl.” It never says: “It is a white American Catholic Boy” or a “Brown Mexican Methodist Girl”: A week after we are born, we get the birth certificate, it is our first label of nationality, a few months later, we get a baptism certificate which gives the
second label of religion, Later we acquire labels such as conservative, liberal, republican, democrat,etc. Some labels may be necessary for civic purposes, but they should have no place in our enterprise called life.
Few months ago, I received a phone call from a company doing a survey. At the end of the survey, the caller told me that for demographic purposes, she needed three pieces of information: my age, sex and race. And I said: I am 50 years old, I am male and I am human. There was this silence for a moment; And she said: “I only have boxes for White, Black, Asian or Other. I have to put you in one of those boxes.” And I said: “I don’t want to be in a box.” Always remember that God did not create separate boxes; God created the universe.
That is what each one of us need to start saying: “I don’t want to be in a any box created by our limited consciousness and narrow minds”: According to Neal Donald Walsch,all our problems are due to our desire to be in separate boxes:
“Every sadness of the human heart, every indignity of the human condition, every tragedy of the human experience, can be attributed to one human decision: the decision to separate ourselves from each other; all of our rage, all of our disappointments, all of our bitterness, has found its birth, in the death of our greatest joy: the joy of being one.”
Always think of you FIRST as a human being.
I like to conclude by extending to you the traditional Indian greeting, Namaste. Namaste is a Sanskrit word which means: “I bow to the divinity within you”.
Today, I invite you to dream of a world in which the divinity within you is always affirmed and the divinity in others is never denied.
Let your greeting, both now and forever be, Namaste!
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