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Everyone has the option to say no — no, I don’t want to learn. No, I don’t want to work that hard. No, I won’t love that person. We were created with free will; saying no is a natural part of our development. But eventually, we begin to realize that saying no doesn’t usually bring us joy. We yearn for true happiness, and to find true happiness we must first stop saying no and say yes to growth opportunities.
One of the greatest challenges in leading a spiritual life is simply being willing to try. Willingness requires that we step out of our comfort zone of limitations into new possibilities and allow new understanding to come through our experiences. Spiritual growth is about change. If we are not willing to have new experiences, or we are afraid of change, spiritual growth is impossible. Being willing is one of the greatest spiritual challenges, but it is also the secret to the greatest spiritual blessings. The disciples who followed Jesus left old ideas and habits behind and they discovered their true identity and their highest potential, all because they were willing.
Meeting life with willingness requires enthusiasm, courage, good humor, humility, and a sense of adventure. It also means that we recognize the presence of God in every circumstance. Every life challenge shrinks when we are willing to take it on. If we encourage willingness in children, they will discover infinite possibilities in life and the infinite presence of spirit through every opportunity.

When we exclude others, we refuse to relate to realities different than our own, and we keep our experience defined in a way that is comfortable and familiar. If we want children to be inclusive, we have to help them redefine their experiences in a broader way. For instance, if older children exclude a younger child from a ball game because she can’t catch the ball, we can guide them to give her a special job that makes her feel part of the game. Finding a way to include her will expand their limited thinking. Scolding them for excluding her will most likely make them resentful, which leads to closing the heart.
Accepting and coping with outward differences is an important step toward opening the heart to others. But to really include others in our reality, we must understand that despite apparent differences, there is only one self, one spirit, and one true reality, underlying all that is. The more children experience their own spiritual nature, the more they will recognize the one spirit in all.

When we are not grateful to the giver of our blessings, we develop insensitivity and an attitude of entitlement. This shuts us out of the divine flow and keeps us distant from grace. In contrast, expressing gratitude opens our hearts and invites more blessings into our lives. Cultivating an attitude of thanksgiving for all we receive is the surest way to awaken awareness to God’s presence in every moment.

Jesus taught that we should love everyone, even our enemies. In this age of multi-media information, we are made aware of all the reasons people can be difficult to love; loving everyone appears even more daunting than it must have two thousand years ago. However, if we remember that universal divine love exists within and flows throughout all creation, it becomes clear that our part is not to make ourselves love, but to allow love to flow through us at every opportunity. Every moment is an opportunity.
Jesus was a pure channel for universal love; love flowed through him without interruption or corruption. The power of that pure love could be felt by all who opened their heart to the experience, and we can experience it as well if we open our hearts to the possibility.

In the last lesson about living courageously, the emphasis was on discovering the courage that exists within our divine nature. The Easter story of Jesus shows how courage in the face of ignorance and fear is ultimately an expression of true selfless love. His appearance in Jerusalem despite the threats against him was not a grand gesture to show how brave he was but a selfless act of friendship and love. His life was an expression of love for all people, and he lived each day as a messenger of that light. Considering his personal safety would have been an ego affirmation, which he strongly rejected when Peter expressed fear for his teacher’s life.

Like all spiritual and religious celebrations, Easter can be experienced and understood on many levels. In the cycles of nature, we see examples of renewed life: animals being born, trees sprouting leaves, and flowers bursting with color in the spring. Our hearts respond with deep yearning for inner renewal as well. Springtime rituals in the northern hemisphere have always been a way to welcome the awakening life energy of the earth and the return of light, but they are also symbolic of the inner awakening that all souls experience. In the southern hemisphere, Easter is celebrated in the fall and is a time to celebrate the fall harvest and the gathering of family and friends.
A Christian scholar, the Venerable Bede (672–735 AD), first asserted that Easter was named after Eostre, the great mother goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring, eastre. Pagan festivals associated with birth, the renewal of life, fertility, and sunrise date back to long before Christianity. Pagan religions in the Mediterranean area are recorded as having a major seasonal day of religious celebration at or following the Spring Equinox. Many of the present-day customs of Easter have their origins in these festivals.

Judeo/Christian/Islamic belief will be forced to adjust to the reality of an ecologically disintegrating planet with humans on it searching not for solutions restricted to their past, but built on new ideas within a thought process reaching beyond. This is not to say that all Abrahamic thought will die. Many ancient texts and beliefs will find value. However, a new world-wide cosmic realism will be taking hold. Past religious belief in all three of the religions of Abraham will be made to measure its value against a new form of thought that encompasses the nonlinearity of all matter and non-matter in the context of human/planetary consonance – and survival.

Despite the exaggerated details in this legend, the essence of truth remains: One of the greatest violin players alive today, played some of the best music ever written, on one of the best violins in the world, and most of the people who where there that day never even noticed.

When I read the stories about the Baptism of Jesus, I get the impression that something similar has happened to this myth.

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

In this article, I would like to point out 3 crucial problems that arise when one begins with “plain truths” about the book rather than the Christ, the Logos, the “structuring principle of reality.” (John 1:1–5)

Wise and loving God:
Sometimes we have come to you like little children with broken toys to be fixed. Many times you have healed our broken hearts and frayed relationships.

In less than 3 months (as of July 2015) Actor / Filmmaker Matthew Cooke’s social justice commentaries have been viewed over 46 million times on FaceBook — shared by the ACLU, Huffington Post, World Star Hip Hop, Adrian Grenier, RYOT.org, FilmingCops.org, The Anti-Media, The Free Thought Project, and many more.

Part One of Lifeline for the End Times shows how the fundamental problem underlying the destruction of the earth is civilization and its inherent domination system based on violence. It begins by discussing the origin of the malignant fatal disease of our civilization; the domination/violence system. It looks at the foundation of civilization and how changing technologies have brought us to the end time. Today it is not a violent king who rules, but an oligarchy of predatory-capitalists. Part Two proposes a new humanity that is neither hierarchical nor violent and can be built on new memes of love and trust as the foundations of a new social structure.

In Pope Francis’ recent environmental encyclical and in his many pronouncements since them, most notably his address to the US Congress and at the United Nations, he was in effect telling the world that the time has come for all of us to take a long hard look at a false god that has, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution been and continues to be venerated by so many.
 

Alan Watts, philosopher, author and theologian achieved fame interpreting eastern religions for Western audiences in the 1950’s and 60’s. Watts had an impressive command of the Bible and Christian ideology which is displayed in a series of his lectures such as the following video “Jesus and His Religion”.

This behavior-over-belief curriculum connects children with their own inner wisdom.  It teaches interdependence, self awareness, respect for nature, stillness, forgiveness, prayer, meditation, and integrity.  Using the Bible and other wisdom stories, A Joyful Path helps children learn how to follow the path of Jesus, other teachers, and real life heroes in today’s world.

It is time that we as human beings confront the darkness of racism and violence. As people of faith, as followers of Jesus, we must be the leaders of that confrontation.