5/04
What we are seeing is a wake up call for not only all Americans to wake up, but for the whole world. Wake up to what? To wake up to the fact that everyday within our homes, our schools, our workplaces, and in ourselves, torture and humiliation is happening. Now, however, we see it manifested in stark form what we do to each other and to ourselves, albeit in subtler ways.
We have a tendency to project our suffering to someone or to some event 'out there'. But you must remember, all phenomena is an effect and not a cause. These horrible deeds did not just happen in a vacuum. A hundred and one events have led to that moment. And before that a hundred more and before that a hundred more, back to the beginning.
And what is the beginning? The beginning is the belief that we are separate from God. That we are just pathetic bodies, soon to be cut down by time. And we are afraid. And we desperately seek alliances of other bodies to help us survive a little longer, each of us holding out our arms trying to ward of the inevitable. Maybe we can have a few moments of happiness to make us forget time's onrush; but where to find that happiness? So we spin around, flailing about desperately to find that someone or something to make us forget. So we buy our SUVs, or satellite discs, or large homes, or go shopping, or have sex, get drunk, yell at our children to shut up, slam the door on our lovers to make them go away, go to movies, read books, root our teams on, enroll in schools, find new jobs, stay in our old secure ones....
But we don't find it! We do not find that happiness that will forever make us forget our mortality. We torture ourselves in the constant search in the ashes of disappointment; humiliate ourselves with our ugly faces of anger and our bent backs of despair as we shuffle along with our pants down. What we do to ourselves is no less horrible and degrading than what those soldiers did to those prisoners. In everyone of us we have the soldiers of the separated mind who are protecting the notion that we are isolated beings exiled from All That Is, raping and killing any thought, any feeling, that says, "There is nothing to be afraid of. You are Divine, created by the Divine, and you will always be so. You have never been born, so you can never die. Only bodies do so and you are not that."
But the soldiers laugh and taunt and shove up the idea that we are sinners. That we are worthless. That only in death will we find release from this torture.
But if there is death, then there must be birth, and this they know, these soldiers of the mind, awaiting the next round. And a thousand lifetimes of hell awaits; until we listen not to their rantings and ignore their prodding; and, instead, listen to the small voice within that says, I AM. When that voice is listened to and the Holy Name reveals itSelf, then the guards will stand at attention, get the keys out and open the prison gates.
You ask, friend, what you can do: Listen. Free yourself of your own tormented mind that tortures you with the possibilities of happiness if you only do this and avoid that. Be free from the chase and the running away. And be silent.And when you appear to be moving about in the world, be kind. Be kind to all living beings to help ease the pain of the torture and humiliation of believing we are nothing more than bodies.
Hari Om Tat Sat
copyright 2004 janaka stagnaro
www.janakastagnaro.com