Inner Light

"I am not held to succeeding but I am held to always living true to the light within me." - Abraham Lincoln

Living true to the light within us is not always an easy task especially when it means going against mainstream opinion.  Every time that a great advancement in society has been made it was proceeded by a moment of great discomfort.  Discomfort comes when we question what is accepted as truth.  In doing so we put others in a vulnerable position telling them that their perception of reality has to be altered.  Nobody likes their reality to be destabilized and to protect their stability they may lash out against new ideas.  This is why change always requires much courage.  Pema Chodron states that "as long as we're caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we're running away from discomfort, we're going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment, and we will feel weaker and weaker."  Being true to our inner light requires staying present for moments of discomfort.  It means not backing down from the truth even when the whole world is against you.  It means accepting moments of solidarity instead of compromising your beliefs to fit in.  Slowly your conviction will grow stronger and your light will spread.  Eventually your one light will be accompanied by many and the world will brighter than ever.  

Let Change Come

"Nothing exists in and of itself but depends on a series of causes and conditions each one interdependent and connected to all others.  This interdependence of all things makes it so that all phenomena are in a constant state of change." -Dalai-Lama

I had a conversation with a friend this weekend about the nature of man.  Are we capable of change?  Are there behaviors innate to us that we are incapable of extinguishing?  If we understand the nature of all things we know that the only thing that is innate to all humans is impermanence.  The reality of life is that it is constantly changing and that all things are interconnected.  One thing cannot stay the same if all others are evolving.  The same is true for man.  The only thing that inhibits us from evolving is our own attachment to false ideas about who we have to be and how we have to act.  We have been long programmed to believe things like; war is just a fact of life, we have to consume to support the system, others have to be weaker for us to be strong, and we have to fight to survive.  These are programmed perspectives that no longer serve in our best interest.  We can see that these ideas are driving our species toward extinction.  So let's change.  The Dalai-Lama calls this next phase of life "the age of women."  He states "it is time for feminine values to replace the masculine values that have dominated our society for centuries."  The feminine values that he is talking about are compassion, love and peace.  In favoring these qualities we can start developing a more unified and less violent future.  Globalization is evidence that we are all a part of one family and that we can no longer have an individualistic approach.  Our well being depends on the well being of others and on the well being of our planet.  The "every man for himself" mentality is now outdated and irrelevant to the challenges we face today.  It is time to let our old ideology float away in the wind and start rebuilding new ones.  It is up to us to teach the next generation how to live wiser and in order to do so we have to believe that change is possible.