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The Heart of the Matter

6/4/2012

 
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"The way of love
is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation." -- Rumi

The Heart of the Matter: 1) We are Love. 2) The power of kindness, the perfect beauty of every act of love, awaits our activation in justice, compassion, and harmlessness... this is the total revolution that will unlock the door to paradise upon this precious blue Planet. 3) We have been created to revel in the radiance of our divine beauty. 4) With every breath, with every thought, with every word, with every action: One Love Blessing... and we will finally become instruments, channels, of the Lord's Peace... and all will be well, and all manner of things, well. 5) To live is to inevitably experience pain, suffering, and death. The key to our divine actualization is our complete identification and total solidarity with the Other and with Every Other: solidarity with / in the Other to the point of radical ego annihilation: the surrender of the illusion of being a separate self... (this is the "devastation" that Rumi wrote of)... 

These five summary points are the very heart of the mystic-activist journey. To walk through life awakened to the essential beauty of the universe is possible! When the power-interests of our "little selves" are left behind (because we are no longer dominated by our fears), then suddenly every moment becomes pregnant with paradise possibilities! When paradise possibilities become our defining characteristic, the One Love lets loose a riot of Imagination -- how else do you think the Universe was born?

Sacred Imagination is another Name for the Holy One... Sacred Imagination is the root of "Boundless Compassion and Boundless Mercy and Beauty within Beauty within Beauty"... Sacred Imagination is the Active Power of  the grace of forgiveness (an absolutely essential practice of the mystic-activist)-- but it is also how the Holy One makes love to time and un-creates every evil, and all violence, oppression, and injustice. Our awakening into Sacred Imagination is the enlivening force of a solidarity spirituality -- side-by-side we can walk with all those for whom to live means to suffer: but it is not an aimless meandering! No, for we are intent upon paradise! Everyone together, hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, is the only way anyone enters Paradise... and it is all of us together... or no one at all...

"Suppose it never, ever comes true, and there is no paradise... well, I'll still go on preaching. And yet how simple a matter it is: in one day, in one hour it could all be brought about at once! The chief thing is to love others as oneself, that's the main thing, and that's it -- absolutely nothing more is necessary: you would immediately discover how to bring it about."
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Dream of a Ridiculous Man)


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    Author

    Robert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is a poet, artist, writer, and long-time  Companion of the Way still dreaming... 

    ​Recommended Reading:

    ​Son of Man by Andrew Harvey


    ​Be Love Now by Ram Dass

    ​Be Here Now by Ram Dass

    The Rebirthing of God by John Philip Newell

    The Hope by Andrew Harvey

    The Return of the Mother by Andrew Harvey

    ​Creation Spirituality by Matthew Fox

    Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day 

    Sacred Pleasure by Riane Eisler

    Occupy Spirituality by Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox

    Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda

    The Self-Aware Universe by Amit Goswami, Ph.D.

    Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

    The Wisdom Jesus by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault

    ​Living the Eternal Way by Rev. Ellen Grace O'Brian

    Listening For The Heartbeat of God by John Philip Newell

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