Posted by Roberta Grimes • July 27, 2019 • 53 Comments
Human Nature, The Teachings of Jesus
Among my earliest memories is the fun of helping my grandmother gather eggs. I was at eye-level with her geese, and they would chase me if they were out so she would shut them in the barn, where they would honk and complain. I was a little bigger than the chickens, so while Grandma collected their eggs I would distract the mommies by chasing them.
It was there in my grandmother’s chicken-yard that I got my first lesson in cruelty. A few of her hens had big, full tails. Some had skimpy tails, some had no tails at all, and one or two had been pecked so much that their whole hind-ends were bare. Occasionally my grandmother would do the most hen-pecked of her hens a favor by making her into a Sunday dinner, but she told me there was nothing else she could do. Chickens have a pecking-order. That is just the way it is.
Of course, chickens know no better. Chickens don’t enter their lifetimes on earth with a specific intention to learn and grow spiritually. They have no great teachers, no ideals or aspirations, no capacity to feel compassion, really nothing at all to balance that instinctive need to cruelly dominate others. For you and me, of course, it is another matter! And the fact that so many people really have not grown beyond the chicken-yard in their capacity to live with other people is a big reason why the consciousness vibratory rate of humankind has fallen so low. This planet is in crisis now. Unless we will fairly rapidly work to raise the consciousness vibration of humankind away from fear and hatred and toward ever more perfect love, we are told by those that we used to think were dead that before long there will be nothing left of this species that once dominated the earth beyond remnants battling on a ruined planet.
Pecking orders are just as usual for people as they are for hens. I recall that this nonsense happened in every grade of school, so by the third grade I was ignoring my schoolmates. I refused to join either the bullies or the bullied, and I couldn’t stop what they were doing so it carried on without me. My high school experience was better, perhaps because there were cliques that largely kept to themselves: I wasn’t athlete-cheerleader or ethnic townie, but I fit with the college-bound just fine. I pursued my own interests in college and law school, making friends among like-minded people, and by early adulthood I was sure that witnessing barnyard-level cruelty was happily just a part of my past.
But sadly, as you know, the advent of the Internet has brought human cruelty to hideous new levels! It affects both children and adults, to the point where the government has become involved. And our civic and political life is a battlefield! Most modern politicians even would rather make vicious personal attacks on one another than engage in substantive debates. What especially gets me is the glee with which so many of these battlers will put down, humiliate, beat up, and try to destroy other people who just have different opinions. Thanks largely to heroes like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the racial issues that fifty years ago were tearing this nation apart are mercifully becoming a thing of the past; but apparently even that improvement is a problem for a lot of people! Many are so eager to continue battling over race just for the sake of battling that today more than two-thirds of reported racial hate crimes turn out to be hoaxes. Next week I will share with you some early signs that perhaps our civic life can be improved, but for now there is rampant cruelty nationwide over what are just political disagreements on a scale that my younger self could not have imagined. The United States has become little more than my grandmother’s chicken-yard writ large!
Helping our society to rise above living at the social level of laying hens is a
deeply urgent matter now.
What got me thinking about this general need that some people feel to be cruel to others was an email I received last week. This website gains new subscribers daily, and of course people also unsubscribe. Our subscribers receive new blog posts attached to an email that begins with the words, “Don’t Miss Roberta’s Latest Post…. ” So one woman who received such an email chose to hit “Reply” and type, “Don’t worry, I won’t. Thank you.”
I try to answer every email. When I came to hers, I said something about the fact that there are many ways to grow spiritually, if she continues to seek I am sure she will find, and I wished her well. Then I put her out of my mind, but insidiously her words kept coming back. In my own life, I try to avoid giving anyone any reason for sadness; and feeling as I do, I struggled to understand that woman’s motivation. What must be in the mind of someone who cannot simply unsubscribe, but who needs to take a swipe on her way out with the hope of ruining a stranger’s day? What made it worse was the fact that she hadn’t seemed to act from anger. No, for her being cruel was what it had been for my grandmother’s hens and for my grade-school classes, and what it is now in our civic arena: it was a weapon of self-aggrandizement. Indeed, what she did seemed less excusable than the cruelty of those high-ranking hens, since at least they lived in a peck-or-be-pecked world! I have since come to see the moment last week when I saw someone try to make a stranger unhappy as a microcosm of what we must battle if we are ever to have any hope of raising the vibration of this planet’s population and thereby saving and transforming the world.
Enjoying being cruel to other people has long been a part of the human condition. It cannot be genetic, hard-wired or innate, because our minds are of the same consciousness as the Godhead; but rather, it seems to be more like the pecking-order that hens establish. It is a byproduct of the stress that results from our living in such close proximity to one another.
Jesus talks about neither cruelty nor kindness in the Gospels, beyond saying variations of “Treat others the same way you want them to treat you” (LK 6:31). He seems to have seen cruelty as something He didn’t need to address directly, since once sufficient numbers had applied His core teaching that we must love other people as we love ourselves, we would be living at a sufficiently high level of consciousness that cruelty would fade away.
So what I am wondering now is whether our addressing cruelty proactively might be yet another way for us to work to raise the consciousness vibration of this planet?
The opposite of cruelty is kindness. If we work to train ourselves to manifest kindness in every situation, might our doing that act in our lives very much as an active gratitude practice does, and soften our minds, making it easier for us to better learn forgiveness and perfect love?
Always choosing kindness is easy. And it quickly becomes a habit that works beautifully with our efforts to learn forgiveness and love! In every situation we must:
criminal gangs, even people who treat us horribly: all of them are sacred eternal beings. Or as Mother Teresa said, “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.”My dear friends, this is an easy one! It’s like cleaning up your living room. You can develop a habit of kindness in only a few months of modest effort, and you will find that it pairs very well with your attitude of gratitude to make of your mind a much happier and a more deeply peaceful personal haven. It also makes your learning to better forgive and love just a natural progression! When Jesus said, “A new 
commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (JN 13:34), He was telling us it was time for humanity to stop interacting at the level of the chicken-yard, and at last claim the universal love and joy that always has been our birthright.
Dear Roberta,
Thank you for this. It is perhaps one of the most pivotal blog entries I have read of late.
This theme of kindness keeps coming up, and there are many distorted aphorisms surrounding the way to “be kind.”
In fact Jesus did preach kindness, but one problem is that we don’t in today’s world know how to intetepret His parables. One example is the Good Shepherd who goes out of his way to find the lost sheep. We don’t think of that shepherd as US, and we don’t think of that lost sheep as our annoying neighbor or the guy who runs the street gang. The Master says exactly what you said– that every lost sheep is an eternal being who is cherished. And doesn’t He also say that if someone asks you to go a mile , we should go two?
We think of these “miles” too literally.
Where kindness often runs up against a stumbling block is that we are afraid of where it will “lead” us. If we say hi to that annoying neighbor (whom no one else may speak to), we are making ourselves vulnerable. No one likes to be vulnerable. Perhaps that neighbor will want us to say hi again tomorrow when we’re in a bad mood or in a hurry? Perhaps that neighbor is a gang member and will slit our tires (if we have a car) in response. We don’t know.
But people ARE being kind to one another anyway. People DO take the risk.
We remain optimistic that the world has the potential to be better, and that the extremes of misery and conflict — which we are presented with and forced to accept if we rely only on the “newsmakers” for our impressions of life on earth — are not the full picture.
There are many people who are interested in peace and kindness and are living every day with open hearts and a mind toward unity. We see bumperstickers in the United States (maybe these are worldwide; I just speak for where I live) that say “co-exist” but co-existing implies to me living alongside each other without conflict; it doesn’t imply interaction or interdependence necessarily. Yet we see that people ARE interested in interacting. Many examples are there. They may not be institutionalized yet, but they are happening.
Maybe we don’t want them to be institutions, or they would lose their one on one impact, or their ability to resonate to a natural larger scale?
I guess it depends on who’s running the institution.
Thank you, dear Mike! Actually, several of the Lord’s important parables are about kindness, but He doesn’t use the word. The lost sheep, and also the good Samaritan who binds up the wounds of the man set upon by robbers and sees that he is safely tended, and the prodigal son who had spent his whole inheritance but was welcomed home by his father – those are just three that come to mind. Now, it may be that in His day the concept of simple kindness wasn’t discussed; or it may be just a problem of translation. But I rather tend to think that He lumped kindness together with love. It’s a sort of junior-league love, being nice to people as a habit; I’m not sure. But in my experience, making a habit of being kind certainly does soften the heart! And it makes people tend to like you, too, which is nice ;-).
The situations you bring up – worries about being kind in a not-so-good neighborhood, or worries that being nice to an annoying neighbor will make him more annoying – don’t seem to me to be problems in practice, although of course they could be. I have found that even in borderline places, what look to be potentially borderline people are always nice to me. I speak to them politely, I call the men “sir,” and I smile a lot. Never had a problem. And where a neighbor or co-worker is concerned, if you are going to be in their space and vice-versa, it seems to be a great deal better to be on their good side! And do them little favors. Then if you might ever need to ask for a favor in return, that whole transaction will be a lot easier!
Thomas Jefferson said, “Take things always by their smooth handle.” (They spoke a lot fancier in those days.) And kindness is a part of that!
I agree with Jefferson! I always advocate for being kind. The point is it isn’t always immediately appreciated. But it’s always the better way.
Hello all, Kindness and Love are my favourite words and pastimes. I have been gently teased by family and friends, “Oh, Margaret talks to anybody!” That is true, it is me. I have made a good many links on the bus from my village to the city of Gloucester. (I live in the UK) It starts off, with a pleasant smile, a loving comment to a Mum and her baby, enquiring to an elderly passenger, as I am. In the beginning I may have only had a nervous smile, a grunt, but as the months and years pass, time has softened the encounter and we greet each other as equals. My cordiality extends to a chat over a coffee, an enquiry to homeless in the streets. Who are we to ignore others? We are “they” and they are us. They, me, are representatives of God, the living Christ. More often than not, I am given a dig, you might say as how to approach another. One does have to be careful to hold onto the aura, because without intent others will sap your energy. But giving God the leeway to use you, should hold you safely on your days journeying and encounters. Much love/grace to all, God Bless, Margaret.
Dear Margaret, I talk with everyone too! It’s great that you have a regular route, so you see the same people often; that lets you make situational friends, and makes your journey and theirs much more pleasant. I don’t have that in my life, but if I am going to be in someone’s proximity for more than a couple of minutes, I always start some conversation. “I love that dress,” or “your baby is adorable!” or whatever. Even just, “I always forget how hot it gets in summer, and now here it is again!” It almost doesn’t matter what you say, so long as it is pleasant and sincere. Then the other person might converse, or might just say something polite. I’m sure you always know, Margaret, who wants a conversation! I try to be careful not to be a nuisance, but if the baby is really cute, all bets are off!
Thank you for your great reminder of kindness. I will start today to build a habit of kindness.
Dear Marilynn, you will find that at first the hardest part is just remembering to be kind even in trying circumstances; but the many fruits of a kindness habit are so enjoyable that it soon becomes self-reinforcing.
For one small example, my husband and I have been in Houston this week so he could have surgery, and we were required to move on Friday to the hotel attached to the hospital (I had slept here all week, of course). The hotel is under renovation, and we found on Friday that there were jackhammers directly overhead. All day long! When the noise gave me a splitting headache, my husband phoned the desk and complained, and he was told that there was nothing to be done but they wouldn’t be working on Sunday.
No such luck! When it started again on Sunday morning, I phoned the desk and spoke sweetly to a lovely woman named Bridget, explaining that none of this was her fault and we would be happy to move elsewhere if this were a pleasure trip, but because of his condition that was not an option. We chatted. She was very apologetic, especially about the fact that we were here for health reasons and we couldn’t go out in the daytime to escape the noise. I apologized for having bothered her, joked a little, and said goodbye. Then we noticed that the noise had paused. And that moment of pause in the racket extended for the whole rest of the day!
Now, I ask you: would yelling at the desk clerk have produced that effect? It was clear to me that she had been getting a ton of complaints, poor woman! But probably everyone else who had called her had blamed her for the noise – lord knows how much abuse she had been getting. As the mother of my childhood best friend used to say, “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar!”
I’m curious how social media changes our brains–literally.
People who are kind and compassionate in real life can become bullies online.
I believe our governments (and other countries’ governments) want us to fight among each other, as a distraction of what’s really going on in the top tiers of power.
Oh dear Valerie, I hate to say it, but it does seem obvious that modern-day politicians seem to be trying to set us at one another’s throats deliberately! Your point is such an excellent one that it is going to be part of what we’ll talk about next week. I tend not to focus on the government, as is true for most of us I think, but when we pay attention it is impossible not to be appalled!
You can see this political mischief most nakedly now with all this talk about everyone being such a racist, when in fact in our daily lives you and I never encounter an actual racist. I’m trying now to remember the actual racists I have known – I mean, people who would speak negatively about other races, or people who by their behavior showed that they bore other races any animosity. To my surprise, I can come up with only one! He was an uncle of mine, and he fought in WWII.
Texas is about 1/3 black, 1/3 white, and 1/3 Hispanic, with other human variations liberally mixed in. My next-door neighbor is a lovely Hispanic family, and on my street are several families from India. An Asian family lives in the neighborhood, and a young black man has our street on his daily bicycling route. I say this only to emphasize the fact that Texans don’t live in ethnic neighborhoods, but instead our summer block parties look like the U.N.! And yet Texas is a perfectly peaceful and happy state where race is concerned. It looks the way all of America will look in a few decades, and I am glad to tell you that we are living in the future and it works just fine!
Isn’t it true most people practice one extreme or the other. We experience emotional kindness when we see injustice then turn around and spew hate to a family member who hurt us or gossip about the co-worker who, in our opinion, isn’t pulling their weight. Thank you for this reminder that we must all follow Jesus example of loving each other and seeking opportunity to be kind, always.
Dear Kimberly, I do think that many people have several sides to their behavior, as you say. It’s hard not to be that way! I think it’s easy to avoid joining the office bullies – I know I got past that join-the-bullies impulse in childhood – but in the family, it is pretty easy to let down a bit and get angry. I still have to work at that on occasion, after 47 years of marriage! But simply being aware of negative emotions as an obstacle in ourselves to be overcome, discussing problems as calmly as we can, and trying hard to see a loved one’s point of view can make a huge difference.
And you’re right that Jesus’s whole life is such a wonderful example! I love seeing Him deal with exasperating people, this man who was at the level of the Godhead: He was so patient with them, but sometimes you can see His frustration. Quite remarkable to still have that much detail of him, after two thousand years! He lost it just once – with the money-changers in the Temple – but He knew He was about to be crucified and there was no time left to fix so much of what still was broken. A remarkable, truly extraordinary man!
Thank you for this beautiful, reminder post, Roberta. A truer thing has never been said.
Like you, I actively look for opportunities to say something nice to people throughout my day and think, if I can make one person feel better about themselves today, then I’ve done my job. More than one is a bonus!
This morning, I rode my bicycle across a pretty square on a beautiful day in my hometown feeling mellow and happy. There, a homeless man was yelling abuse at everybody and everything. Once upon a time I would have judged him and resented him for disturbing my peace. Now, I thank God for the opportunity to practise patience and tolerance and say to myself, “I may not love your personality, or what you are doing, but I can always love the essence of you who is God.” I feel so much better for it!
Thanks again for this lovely post, Roberta.
And dear Kristian, thank you for your lovely example of the fact that at its root, all of this is a choice! We can choose to grow spiritually, choose to begin to see the God in everyone, and in doing that we can choose to make the world around us a better and a spiritually stronger place. Just imagine if a billion people all over the world could begin to see others as you do! Each of us affects so many other people every day, even without our knowing it; we cannot avoid that fact. But we can indeed control the effect that we are having on others. Thank you for this reminder!
Dearest Roberta,
This is a magnificent blog entry. It bespeaks all that is good, all that is high minded and deep hearted.
Thank you!
And yet somehow I am reminded of the wonderful Peter Sellers films that we kids and teenagers of the 60s and 70s were able to enjoy.
The particular scene that I’m thinking of, comes from one of the Pink Panther movies, where Inspector Cluseau (Sellers himself) enters a grand Parisian hotel and stumbles upon a cluster of people sitting in chairs and reading.
At the feet of one gent reading a newspaper is a cute little dog.
Inspector Cluseau asks the gent,
‘Does your dog bite?’ The gentleman says, ‘Oh, no, no.’
So Cluseau stoops to pat the fluffy pooch. As he does so, the dog snaps into a savage fury and bites his approaching hand.
Reeling in pain, Cluseau accuses, ‘You said your dog does not bite!’
The gent just looks up from his paper and answers coolly, ‘That is not my dog.’
So much lack of kindness seems to come from indifference. Indifference to the stranger; that person who is not part of our circle. Indifference plays such a big part in modern life; in impersonal big cities where we are desensitized by; the constant assault of the media, advertising blitzkrieg, overcrowded public spaces, daily obligatory overactivity and time scarcity. Where we feel an underlying sense of nature deficit and a dearth of meaningful connections to the fellow human beings, who bustle and press around us at peak hour.
Is it not indifference and desensitization to our fellows, that leaves a heavily pregnant woman standing on a bus, while young and agile commuters sit all around? Is it not a sense of the blandness of the unknown other, that stops people saying ‘hello’ or ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ in daily transactions ? Perhaps it is the same habitual non concern that lets a man get bitten by a dog without a word to warn him…
I wonder if it is only by empathy that the pall of grey indifference can be lifted from society. Then kindness is possible and can become preferable over a time. If we don’t judge others and remember that everyone we see on the street is fighting their own battles, then we are moved to acts of kindness. Then it’s magic can be released to benefit both the giver and the receiver.
Those of us that employ kindness are trudging against the strong winds of selfishness that roar across modern times. And the awakening ones among us realize that we are all part of the One Mind and what we do to another, we do to a part of ourselves.
I wonder if then we can enter empathy, kindness, love and true togetherness en masse. Only raising our collective vibration can save this planet; the time for the lone hero walking into the sunset is over. It’s everybody’s time now. All of us together, regardless of politics, race, culture or creed need to come to the fore.
Yet I’m encouraged by the reply of Mike J-R here. Rightly he said that there are already so many people doing so many acts of kindness all over the place that we humans are on our way. And when you don’t take the mass media view of the world, you can see it!
Dear Efrem, this is beautifully written. Yes, indifference is the great enemy – it means that you see another person as an object and not as the divine eternal being that each of us is in fact. I think you see it in big cities more than in smaller ones. And it has been my experience that if one person does the kindly thing – helps an overwhelmed person with her bags or offers his seat to a pregnant woman – then suddenly everybody does it. I still travel a lot more than I would like, so jitneys from airports to and from car rental yards are common carriers for me. And I cannot count the times when I have seen it happen: I struggle with heavy luggage, and then one person helps me, and then I have ten people wanting to help me. People are inherently good! They just have been numbed by our appallingly un-spiritual culture.
So it is up to each of us to be what Jesus called “the leaven in the loaf.” If each of us will work to raise our personal spiritual vibrations away from fear and toward ever more perfect love, and if each of us will affirmatively live that love by practicing kindness as a habit, we can inspire all the people around us to begin to practice kindness as a habit too!
Dearest Roberta
How I love reading your blogs , I always sent my children to school with “I love you and remember never do to someone that you wouldn’t have done to yourself” so much so they used to shout it back to me before I’d even finished , it’s still spoken about 30years on with laughter.
Having come thru a very difficult time ,when meditating , praying , to God, the universe , the light whatever you want to call it !!!! the words that I have been hearing very strongly are kindness and kind so it has been very heartwarming and encouraging to read you article . Keep them coming ..
With much love Louise xxx
Dear Louise, you have made me smile! I have three children, and when they were teenagers leaving the house I would always say, “Don’t do anything you couldn’t tell your mother about in great detail!” I said it even in front of their dates. As you can imagine, they all were glad to leave for college ;-).
I appreciate so much your telling me that you enjoy these blog posts! I love to work on them, but always in the process I will have doubts. There have been a few that I was still tweaking mere minutes before the email announcing them went out, at 4:02 a.m. central time. Then I’ll sometimes think on Sunday as I wait for comments – kind of like waiting to read your play’s opening-night reviews – that maybe I have missed the mark this time. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the kindness of our readers and commenters here, who are so generous with their words and from whom I have learned so much!
Dear Roberta. Everything I tried to write seemed lacking, so I decided I would ask my guides, for the first time, if they might have a comment. They answered my question with a question, and gave me a good zing in the process, but a kind zing 🙂. In preface, to say that I’m not a Donald Trump fan would be a wild understatement. They asked, “Do you wish for Trump to fail, or do you wish that he will be inspired to do what is best for all?”
Another thing that came, but they wouldnt confirm, so It may just have been my own musings, was “The path of kindness is one of the straightest paths to The Kingdom.”
Hi Scott,
I can relate to your experience. My wise and gentle but determined guide often responds to my questions with questions. The implication is often that she knows I know that I already have my answer. I like the idea of asking our guides for support and direction in what it means to truly be kind to someone (or ourselves), and why. As you and I have been prompted, though, the answers are often already something we know!
Hi Mike. I once heard someone from the other side, through a medium, say (I’m paraphrasing) that questions don’t necessarily lead to answers, but to deeper questions. It seems our friends on the other side like that technique, always leading us farther. I think they were showing me I don’t learn much from being kind to people I like, but need to apply that even to those I REALLY don’t, also in thought, not just word and deed, keeping the greater good of all as the goal. When we get to the point where we consistently do that, we are well on the way to “The Kingdom.” They pointed my hypocrisy out to me, and gave me a nudge to do better.
Dear Scott, I think I may have said this here before, but a medium friend confided in me in October of 2015 that her guides had told her that Donald Trump was going to win the Presidential election. She was told that ordinarily those at the highest levels of reality would not interfere in the affairs of humankind; but the differences in outcome for this nation were going to be so vastly different depending upon who was the 2016 winner that this time elevated beings were going to have their fingers on the scale. And she was told that Trump was going to have two terms. One thing they said was that this nation was going to experience an EMP attack, and DJT would harden the infrastructure by then enough to blunt the worst of its damage but Clinton would have done nothing about it. I try to ignore politics altogether, but I’ve got to tell you that seeing how the election came out kind of did give me gooseflesh! And reading here what your guide told you gave me the same feeling: it seems he really was chosen.
In an effort to help you look at this President just a bit more kindly, I would note, too, that he has been put through more hell by his opposition than any other in my lifetime, and perhaps in the lifetime of this nation. Things were bad at times before, but seldom anything remotely like this! And he is a old man. He’s a billionaire. He could have spent these last active years of his life golfing and goofing off, but instead he is trying to fix what is pretty clearly a longstanding governmental mess of cronyism and over-regulation. If he will (Please, God!) now attack and rein in our gigantic federal over-spending too, that will be quite enough for me.
I like “The path of kindness is one of the straightest paths to the Kingdom”! And I think it rings true. In my experience, being kind makes you feel more loving to all. And that is kind of the whole point, isn’t it?
Hi Roberta. I stay away from politics as a rule these days as well. Maybe my guides are in on this bigger picture you mentioned and thought it worth bringing up. DJT is a good object lesson for me, and also for many others in these divided times of ours. We should pray for our leaders, as fellow souls, and that they will do what is best for the greater good, not just our personal agendas, since we don’t have that bigger picture yet ourselves. From what your sources say, it looks like I may have another 4 years to work on that particular lesson myself 🙃.
The problem is that we ordinary citizens are as polarised in our view of what constitutes achievement as are our politicians.
Any spiritual aspect in any discussion is rapidly subsumed by human interests, views and opinions. We don’t KNOW what’s best for us all and we’ll argue and fall out about what we believe is best. Spiritual aspects are likely to fall by the wayside.
It’s why conversations about politics – or religion! – are not allowed over on Roberta’s forums. And why I totally support Roberta’s approach. 🙂
Over on ALF, Roberta’s forum-based website, conversations about politics and politicians, even in a spiritual context, sind verboten.
It’s an interesting question your unseen friends posed, Scott. Assuming politicians are usually inspired to do what is best for all, what efficacy does such inspiration actually have? Or are we just left to fend for ourselves in this world?
Heh – thank you for pointing this out, dear Mac! ALF has always banned religious proselytizing, but as you know, it was only in the wake of the last election that we had to ban talking about politics too. People who should have been lovingly discussing death, the afterlife, and the meaning and purpose of life were instead suddenly at each other’s throats!
And I don’t think we can assume that politicians are usually inspired to do what is best for all. Sadly, most of them seem instead to be inspired to feed their personal lust for power and wealth, and it is only in pursuit of that that they often will try to do what the majority wants done. We are indeed fending for ourselves in the area of politics! Which is why, I guess, every once in awhile those not now in bodies have to lend us a hand.
Hi Mac. I agree it generally is good to keep politics out of discussions, especially these days. One beautiful thing to me about this forum is that we can be supportive of each other even as these issues come up. Kudos to Roberta for setting that example.
It is an interesting question my friends asked. If we all kept the needs of others in mind, not just our own, what a different world it could be. If only our politicians usually WERE inspired to think that way…
Hello, Scott. It’s an interesting notion that our friends unseen might be able to inspire politicians to “do what’s best for us all”. Would – could – there actually be something that would be best for ALL of us one might ponder? And if there were would it be right for discarnates to interfere with events in this world where there could be no certainty they would achieve a particular outcome? Or that the denizens of this dimension would feel that “the best” had actually been achieved for each and every one of them, individually or collectively. 😉
Some interesting conundrums indeed – questions leading to further questions – and I don’t think our friends on the other side have all the answers either. There is probably some underlying principle they go by, and my guess is it has something to do with love.
These issues certainly challenge our ideas about ‘divine intervention’.
As you point out, Scott, our unseen friends may not have all the answers and indeed may not have many answers at all. Perhaps the right ones are simply those that result as a consequence of the invariable law of cause and effect.
I do agree with what you say about their approach being influenced by love and maybe the most loving way is not to intervene at all on a large scale?
Dear Scott, I think we sadly have learned by now that 99% of politicians are mostly in it for themselves, and they will try to give us some of what we want only if we yank their leashes frequently. So it is up to us to do that!
quote: “Which is why, I guess, every once in awhile those not now in bodies have to lend us a hand.”
My word I hope our friends unseen are lending their hands over our Brexit arrangements this upcoming Halloween. We desperately need them after over three years of failed attempts to leave the EU. 🙂 😉
Well, our colonies finally got it together and left our overlords in the old country… I should think our brothers and sisters in the UK should be about ready to do the same with Belgium! Personally, I think you will fare much better standing alone economically, just as we have. The US stands ready to trade and develop a direct alliance. Won’t life be simpler and more prosperous when you don’t have that layer of bureaucracy over your heads?
Life after Brexit will probably be like the curate’s egg – good in parts!
The next few months look like being traumatic, though, as we learn to stand on our feet the way we used to do. It’s anyone’s guess – literally – whether we’ll be better off in the longer term however.
As with so many things in life there’s no certainty. 🙁
Oh dear Mac, one thing we have learned here is that the farther away from the individual power is wielded, the less free you are. Embrace the excitement of reclaiming the identity of a truly great nation!
As in the USA over many issues our citizens are split. Some see an exciting, productive time where a nation re-asserts its sovereignty. Others see the risks in leaving a well-established system that brought many benefits. Yet a third group are so disaffected they just want to lash out against situations they blame for their disaffection.
The reality is that all and any change has the potential for both success and for failure and that both situations will likely be seen as the outcome. 😉
Dear Mac, the bottom line is that no government makes anything, so no government is capable of generating wealth. Governments can therefore only take, and whatever “many benefits” we get from them were paid for by money that we earned, they took, and then they used only part of to give us something and make us think they were helping us. This is the whole secret behind why socialism is theft and slavery, and why anything the U.S. federal government does that could be done roughly as well by the state or by the individual also is slavery and theft. In the end, the only source of wealth is the individual’s labor and, eventually, the investment increase on whatever surplus funds the individual can produce.
Wow, that is a hard truth! But truth it is. So when the UK is no longer helping to foot the bill for Brussels, its citizens will already be that much richer. And when those citizens are no longer having to see their wages used in part to help to prop up less successful countries in the EU, you will be even richer still.
Please, someone, tell me I’m wrong about this! I have already bummed myself out, and I haven’t even had breakfast today.
Roberta,
We cannot forget that in a true functional democratic society, people arw the government. People decide on what kind of society they want to be, and then together they decide how to implement. If people decide to join together in a consortium and share resources, then by our free will these common coffers are enlarging all of us. They are not theft. They are not slavery. If we had a democracy that worked, each member would be working in union with all others to prop each other up.
Oh my dear wonderful Mike, one of the many things I love about you is this really touching faith you have in our human-made institutions! If you were to ask any ten Americans on the street whether they felt their tax money was being well and carefully spent by the federal government to implement what they themselves have decided upon, I would lay you odds that at least seven of them would say with spirit that it is not being spent that way. Not at all! And the reason why our Founders created not a democracy, but a republic,is that if this nation were a pure democracy, 51% of us could legally rob and enslave the other 49$. To govern is to hold power over other people and their goods. It is a truism that Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Which is why the less power the government possesses over our lives and our property, inevitably the freer we are!
The sad aspect of all politics – ALL POLITICS – is that whatever benefits are promised by our leaders and would-be leaders, we citizens and taxpayers know from experience they are highly unlikely to come about exactly as promised – if at all.
But I won’t become embroiled in political debate, Roberta, either here or elsewhere because we both know where it’s bound to lead! 😉
You are very wise not to allow it on ALF. 🙂
I did indicate that I was talking about a true functional democracy. Which I am one of the people who would agree we do not have. How did a blog entry on kindness transform into an exchange of ideas about failing political philosophies?
Dear Mike, I have realized upon later re-reading that what I said above was kind of snarky. I’m sorry about that! You are entirely right in saying that if democracy worked perfectly, that might be best; but just as is true with socialism, there never has been a perfect democracy. It remains what the Founders feared it would be, a way for the majority to bully the minority, so always it is inherently unstable. Last summer Thomas called me out of this work to research and write The Fun of Being Free, which is a primer for Americans in better governing themselves; but then he had me put that manuscript aside. I’m getting the vibe that we may be reviving it next year, but who knows? I am always the last one who gets a clue!
And your asking why we are talking about this now is a great question! On Sunday I will give you my answer to it….
Roberta,
I opened up your blog today to see if there were any new revelations, and saw the number of comments had jumped up to 39. After reading the content, I get it! Looking forward to your next post. Have a blessed day.
new revelations?
Nothing new under the sun is a saying I often use…… 😉
Dear Tim, as Victor Hugo said, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” And I think that by now the idea that it is time for Americans to fix our political insanity has come long since! Stay tuned….
Dearest Roberta,
Oy Vey ! What an unexpected and interesting turn this week’s blog entries have taken! Truly, I never know what will occur here, which only helps to generate my continual blog refreshment…
What’s the unsaid connection between kindness and (largely American) politics? Is politics the rock in the stream of kindness that the water flows around but cannot soften? Maybe politics is one dangerously intractable area that really needs kindness to transform it, even in the hearts and minds of we who care for the Greater Reality…
As an Australian, an outsider to American politics, the idea that President Trump is Divinely chosen is a bit strange. Even if higher beings ‘bumped’ him over the line, this is an unfamiliar perspective. Perhaps because Australia wasn’t settled by people of faith, including those who left European religious persecution, as was the case in America. Our view point may be quite different.
Australians are more multicultural now, but still mainly come from British and Irish roots. This southern land was settled first as a penal colony and then by poorer people seeking a better life outside the class organized old country. Hence our point of view is not intrinsically religious, but hands on practical.
American political news gets prime attention here, and this President looks unlike any other that we have seen in modern history. The media does not always present him in the best light. (Though our own politicians are deemed as estimable as used car salesmen..)
I guess I’m more able to see someone great, like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, being Divinely inspired and chosen than the Donald. But what do I know ?!
😉🙏🏼👌🏼
I agree, dear Efrem. Those of us who heard that upper-level beings were planning to rig the election in Donald Trump’s favor were stunned, and then when he actually was elected I was flabbergasted. This prediction was given to a few other mediums too, I later have learned. As the Bible says somewhere, “Not with the eyes of man does God see.” Go figure!
quote: “Those of us who heard that upper-level beings were planning to rig the election in Donald Trump’s favor were stunned, and th….”
Not as stunned as Teflon Don would have been had he been told! 😉
I wonder, though, how much notice one should take of psychics who predict bizarre events, even if some events eventually come to pass? Predict enough things and one may just strike lucky when it happens. Are their discarnate contacts as spiritually-elevated as is claimed or supposed?
Dear Mac, apparently God is apolitical. And it is a stretch to call the election of the candidate of one of the two main U.S. political parties a “bizarre event”! Indeed, since his opponent was a very unpopular career politician, in retrospect his election should have been quite a bit less surprising than it was to many of us ;-).
Oh I never even considered God would have any political affiliation 😉 but that entity was never in the frame of my consideration anyway. Neither do I see God as an “upper level being”, the type of individual it was suggested had been involved in orchestrating/influencing a particular political outcome.
Insofar as I know, the entities who claimed they were about to choose the current president over his opponent were a high-level collective. The reason they gave in the instance of which I am aware was that this nation was going to suffer an EMP attack, and he would harden our infrastructure while Hillary would not have done that. And that is the sum total of what I know!!
It’s time for me to withdraw from further discussion that mixes spiritual with political.
quote: ” Even if higher beings ‘bumped’ him over the line, this is an unfamiliar perspective. ”
IF….
For me such an idea fails the ‘Silver Birch test’, thank goodness.
No worries, dear Mac! And I don’t express an opinion about any of it; all I’m doing is sharing what was reported. But you’re right in saying mixing politics with spiritual matters makes for a pretty caustic brew!