It is hard to believe that 2 decades of the 21st century have passed already, and we are entering the third decade. The daily moment by moment thought is of gratitude for all the bounties that we have been blessed with, and my daily prayer is that we all continue to be blessed by Allah (God) with health and peace, security, fulfilment and the desire to pay it forward. We are fortunate in so many ways, and could not even begin to count our blessings.
When I reflect back on 2019, I notice how much more time I spend on spiritual development- quite a contrast to my professional development going back all the way to 1974. I have been researching spiritual leaders and thinkers, academics, authors and scientists who are all predicting a next big shift in human consciousness. As we begin to see the limits of the Materialistic Age, they are predicting a consciousness transformation that will take us back to what we were meant to be- caring and compassionate beings that care for all humans- not just our own tribes- and the planet and nature as well. Some of them are calling this the “Spiritual Era”. While that all sounds fantastical and impossible to some of us, what I have come to realize that as each of us develops our own spiritual way of being, we can become ushers of this new era. We don’t have to talk about it. We can just “be” it. It may be as simple and powerful as daily prayers, meditative practice, giving practices. It requires us to go within and build peace within our minds and hearts, and tame our own fears, regrets, resentments, complexes. As we build this peace within, we begin to attract others who are on the same path, and are able to share it more widely. We begin to be less triggered by setbacks and challenges, and look upon them as learning opportunities, instead of “woe is me”! We begin to believe that all will be well, even as we hear the daily barrage of news, which we learn to accept and surrender to as just the last gasps of the dying culture of death.
And it is not as if the material and the spiritual stand opposed to each other- they are complementary and mutually necessary. A purely materialistic approach robs humans of meaning and purpose in their existence (https://www.generation-wealth.com/check out Wealth Generation on Prime Video for a look at the excesses of this extreme). A purely spiritual approach cannot sustain our life on this planet. So, both are to be valued, and more importantly to be balanced.
In our interfaith circle, we often refer to the current age as the Dark Ages, and wish our children and grandchildren did not have to live with such anxiety and fear. While we celebrate all the success of technology and globalization, we are seeing the crudest and cruelest of humanity amplified by the very same technology all over the world and in every so-called “faith”. How do the faithful of any faith even dare call themselves faithful when they are unfaithful to God’s first imperative – to love others as you do yourself? Every month it seems new monsters appear, such as the latest ones in India who are destroying the largest democracy in the world, and attacking a huge minority of 200 M Muslims. It breaks my heart that Muslims all around the world are victims not only of “others” but of each other, and that all faiths are under attack by the so-called faithful others.
I remind myself daily of the hundreds of NGO’s doing good work, even corporations who are beginning to wake up to their responsibility, movie stars leading important causes, musicians using their music to appreciate all cultures and preach oneness and harmony (Yanni, Sami Yusuf, Loreena McKennit, etc. etc.). As Sami Yusuf’s Spiritique Foundation home page says:
Sufi-based, the foundation sponsors and supports projects and initiatives based on faith and the relationships between different religions. The group aims to foster discussions and friendships amongst the world’s major religions through artistic, intellectual and/or academic initiatives. The momentum behind the group’s mission stems from the belief that the world’s great religions teach us that there is a spiritual and harmonious message which has the potential to make the world a more beautiful place, and create peace among its people.
Happy New Year everyone- wishing you and your families the very best for 2020! May we all become ushers of a Spiritual Era in our own ways, and put behind us the violence, hate and wars of centuries past. It is possible only if we believe it is possible. May we nurture the wholeness of our beings by paying to attention to all its facets- spirit, heart, mind and body.
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