Jeff Kober | What Can I Do to Help

08 Jul What Can I Do to Help – July 9 2018

Posted at 15:52h in Daily Thoughts by admin

So we all serve all of life through all of our spiritual endeavors–everything that we surrender to God for the good of all, every advance, every forgiveness that we personally do, every time we let go of feeling sad and unhappy, every negativity we let go–benefits all of mankind. Consequently, anyone who is in spiritual endeavor is of service to man at all times just by their intention.

David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.,

Realizing the Root of Consciousness

The world can, at times, seem terribly dysfunctional. If we choose to look for it we can see unfairness and bullying, economic disparity, justice that seems to be for sale to the wealthy and famous, abuse, neglect, exploitation, injustice. Whole groups of people at the mercy of other groups, based on gender, race, religion, sexual identity and the oh so many other differences that we humans can find in each other to judge, to be frightened of, to demonize.

Today in conversation a very intelligent, well-informed, politically astute man asked me, “Do you know the difference between a realist and a pessimist?”

“No,” I said.

“Nothing,” was his reply. “They’re the same thing. It’s already game over. We’ve destroyed our planet. We’re done.”

From his point of view, he’s right. We can turn on the news at any time, day or night, and see the human race at war: liberal vs. conservative, Christian vs. Muslim, Fox vs. MSNBC. Etc., etc., etc. There is a war of humanity vs. humanity, and humanity is losing.

And at various times we may react to all this with fear, with anger, with disgust or with apathy. We may want to fight the good fight or simply forget it, it seems already to be broken beyond repair.

As someone committed to a spiritual life, what can we do? Where can we apply ourselves that will be more than a band-aid, that will help the whole?

We can meditate. We can choose to forgive–ourselves and those around us. We can choose to love, in spite of our resistance. We can find compassion for all these humans who are doing life so imperfectly around us. We can choose to know that something is in charge other than my individuality, that there is a conscious intelligence in the world–call it nature, call it Totality, call it God–that knows far better than individuality ever could what ‘should’ be, what could be, what direction things are moving in. We can give up our commitment to pain and loss, suffering, victim-hood and self-righteous anger; and remember with each moment that it is our job here on earth to be happy, joyous and free. We can remember, as Dr. Hawkins references above, that each time we choose the one over the other, the light over the dark, present moment awareness over the mental morass of self-recrimination and negativity, we are helping to uplift the whole of nature. We are lending to our less-fortunate brethren the benefit of our capacity to see beyond appearances and into the truth of life. We are giving to the whole the most precious gift we possess–our ability to choose life–and in so choosing, our expression of God’s love in the world.

Today I will choose life and love at every opportunity, knowing that I do so for the whole of our world, knowing that the fact that I have this ability to choose makes me a steward of consciousness and makes it my responsibility to do so again and again and again, as many times as it takes.

Community Breakfast, Molt, MT