May you be well. May you be happy. May you know Love. May your know Peace.

My words for meditation today; on the concept of Metta, or Loving-Kindness.  While I was at the spiritual retreat mentioned in my last post, “A Thanksgiving Retreat“, the benevolent monk who runs the Center taught me a mantra on Metta.  With this mantra you visualize in succession yourself, a loved one, an enemy, a stranger you will come across later that day, the whole world and all the people within it, and then finally yourself again … with each visualization you simply chant the four phrases above and GIVE that open-heartedly out into the Universe.  I have incorporated this into my daily meditative habits and I have to say … it is a pretty mind-altering place to live from.

So here are some quotes to meditate upon along this vein of thought:

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

– Anaïs Nin

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“The more we genuinely care about others the greater our own happiness and inner peace.” 

Allan Lokos

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“You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.” 

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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Religion4All is an idea: that every human being (no matter their race, religion, sexuality, social status, lifestyle, or any other possible factor) is LOVED by God; just … as … they are.

We all are loved by God, and NO religion or person has a monopoly on it. Every single person on this planet is loved equally by God … SO many are cut off from God because they are told they don’t belong. God loves everyone … we ALL are beautiful creations … we don’t need to cringe when we hear the words “God”, or “religion”, or their judgments … God LOVES us all!

There is no requirement to change in order to be LOVED by God, or to LOVE God. God is LOVE, and LOVE is God … period. There is no one who God loves more than anyone else … there are only those who choose to LOVE more … to love God more, and consequently then to love each other more. In doing so, we grow closer to God … and know God.

By opening our hearts, and minds to God (free of boundaries like religion, or social trends); by LOVING God … we are exactly where we are meant to be. If we maintain that openness, never allowing any person or event to make us close our hearts, we will be guided by God to be who we are meant to be.

In that space of openness we can then live a life of LOVE, and be guided to where we are meant to be … forever in LOVE.

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