Responding - Guided by Wisdom

Responding NOT Reacting

Guidance from Ancient and Modern Wisdom

Satsang Meeting Sat 7th Feb 2015

1.30 - 4.30 p.m

Friends Meeting House

Wolverhampton

We resume our meetings in 2015, the 15th year of this new Millennium. Our World faces many challenges and we require wisdom in order to respond and not react.

The Satsang Association exists as a companionship of Spiritual Seekers who undertake to attempt to live out their life guided by the Triple Commitment. This is requires individuals to seriously commit to:

Their personal growth in spiritual awareness and practice.

Helping remove the barriers of prejudice and ignorance, which divide persons from each other

Building up relationships of compassion and appreciation across frontiers of race, language, culture and religion.

 And is so doing each seeks  to play their part in

Creating a Planetary Vision & a Universal Heart of Compassion.

The 1st commitment supports and nourishes the other 2. 

Our meetings are designed to provide an  opportunity for sharing, reflection and mutual support as we strive to live in ways that break down barriers and build up relationships. We share far more than our seemingly different backgrounds. We are members of one human family, co- creators in this vast expanding and evolving cosmos.

Our meetings this years will begin to focus on our personal response to the  many current crisis facing our family and our planet. But we are not alone, both Ancient Wisdom and modern advances in knowledge can all assist us in this vital task.

Our next meeting will begin this process as we look at some input from Sister Ishpriya and also share our own responses to recent events. 

The Buddha advises us to  reflect within and beware of external forces.  This quotation from his teachings, advises us to  beware of reacting and to value the wisdom of a reflective response. 

' When we return to the root, we gain the meaning;

when we pursue external objects we lose the reason.'

Hope to see you at our next meeting and if not, then we wish you well as you reflerct on how to respond to the many challenges facing our world.

Tolerance:- Responding rather than Reacting

TOLERANCE- Responding with Respect

Some Reflections on the Crisis Facing the Human  Family

Our world seems to be in crisis and unfortunately many of our leaders seem to react rather than respond to events. We seem incapable of responding to the growth in fundamentalism, tribalism and nationalism that seems to have grown in the early part of the 21st century. Partly, this is a result of our common failure to both understand history, the roots of our current patriarchal system and the lessons we could learn from history. In addition, we are operating from and utilising only a small proportion of our gifts. In common parlance we are 'playing with half a deck of cards' . We have relegated women and the feminine to an inferior and minor role.

We know that humanity is not 'programmed' for major change. We evolved over millions of years and consequently we are very good at managing small changes. Today our world is changing at an enormous pace. Modern technology is amassing vast amounts of information. Technology is changing rapidly and many of the old 'givens' are being challenged or made redundant. In such times humans are tempted to cling on to old ways or desperately seek certainty.   This can give rise to a rise in fundamentalism. People try to deny the evidence of evolution, to cling to past certainties in politics, religion, culture etc. The 20th Century suffered from the rise of National Socialism, dictatorial communism and the collapse of colonialism and the ensuing birth pangs of new nations. 

Many leading thinkers believe that  humanity is on the brink of another evolutionary shift. We have gone through many other 'shifts' in our long 7 million year march. Examples are when we first walked on this planet, another major shift was our use of language and many others. A major shift occurred when our species walked and sailed out of Africa. Another major shift, and one many consider to be adverse, came around 10000 years ago with the birth of the patriarchal era.  The new shift ,one of evolutionary consciousness, faces us with a new paradigm. We are all equal, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity etc. We will  have to let go of the old paradigm, which has led to so much suffering, war and inequality . The human family lives on this small Blue Planet floating in the vastness of the expanding Cosmos. We need to get on with each other and respect our uniqueness and diversity.

However, as with all major change we can choose to react or respond. The current upsurge in extremism - in all areas of the world - is because many are reacting and not responding. This is not just applicable to so called 'extremists' but with many others - leaders, politicians, religious  leaders etc. The world desperately requires us to dig deep and respond from our depth and not react from our fear. Compassion is much better than conflict and love is better than loathing. Failing to respect the beliefs and values of our brothers and sisters is not a wise approach. The duality  Either : Or  rather than the oneness of Both ; And  is a false dichotomy. Every 'right' brings with it a corresponding 'responsibility. 

My right to free speech is not absolute. I need to weigh it up against my need to respect others. Sometimes compassionate silence is the wiser response. Whilst we must take a stand against extremism that would harm others, we also need to be aware of our need to respect. We have to learn to live with difference. Our patriarchal era has led us to take up rigid stances and rigidity is almost always the wrong stance. It has led to some very unhelpful and morally incorrect statements, such as : My country right or wrong, my religion is the only one true way, Men are superior to women, White people are superior to other races etc   
These immoral, inhuman and rigid views have led to war, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, apartheid and now religious intolerance and extremism.

We need to refect deeply and begin to respond more compassionately, intelligently and with deep respect.

Our Long Journey with Mystery - Introduction

Our Long Journey with Mystery

Reflections on Spirituality and Religion

These reflections were initially undertaken as a result of as request from my local Church to write something on Christianity and the other main Faith Traditions that co-exist in the UK. We live in a Global Village and , despite the many racial, ethnic , cultural and religious differences, we are part of one great  human family. We also live in times when fundamentalists and extremists strive to focus on difference and suppress our unity in diversity

This is the first in a series of reflections on Spirituality and Religion. It is based on personal experience and I ascribe no expertise to myself. It is designed to set the scene on humanity’s long journey with spirituality and the Mystery we call ‘God’ by so many names and to lead on to a series of  reflections on six of the world’s major Faith Traditions.

We live in a world where science and cosmology is almost daily adding to the revelation of creation, the cosmos and life itself. We know about the ‘Big Bang’ that occurred 14 billion years ago, the formation of the star we call the Sun followed by the birth of our Blue Planet almost 4 billion years ago.  Creation is proving to be exciting, mysterious and mind boggling. Creation is, in a sense, the first and on-going revelation of the Mystery or Oneness that lies at the heart of everything. After billions of years and a slow and constantly changing evolution our planet developed an amazing variety and diversity of plants and living things.

Human beings arrived approximately 7 million years ago and 200,000 years ago Homo sapiens, the Wise Ones, appeared. Our species has many attributes but three very important ones are iinnovation, creativity and curiosity. These have fuelled our search for meaning both in the external and internal worlds.  For at least 70, 000 years, doubtlessly much longer, we have evidence of our search for spiritual meaning. For the next 50 to 60,000 years we adopted a spirituality focused on creation and the environment, a spirituality that sensed and used imagination, intuition and ritual to celebrate the sacredness of all creation. Our ancestors also knew that our world was, and is, enmeshed in the great web of life.  They were in touch with both the masculine and feminine aspects of our humanity.

About 10,000 years ago the Agricultural or Patriarchal Age commenced. It led to a rapid expansion in our ability to grow crops and to domesticate animals. It resulted in the rise of kings and warriors and the establishment of kingdoms, the dominance of the male and a relegation of the female and the feminine. About 5000 years ago, the first of the great  modern Religions – Hinduism- arose along the Ganges River in North India. A second part of these reflections will focus on this great treasure house of wisdom and spirituality and its contribution to our inherited Universal Spiritual wisdom.

However, it is important to remember that Spirituality is much older than the formal religions.  Although we have made rapid advances in science and technology we have lost some of our intuitive experience of the Mystery. Arguably our task is to re-discover the true potential of our humanity, to recognise how every strand of nature is interconnected and to find a spiritually fulfilling way of living that is environmentally friendly and one that delivers social justice for all.

Future reflections in this series will explore spirituality and religion as we look at Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Sikhism.

Part Two :-    Hinduism – the Eternal Journey ( coming soon)

' We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience' 

Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times

 SATSANG MEETING - Sat 7th February

Friends Meeting House  Wolverhampton

THEME :-    Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times

                         Into deep darkness fall those who follow action.

Into deeper darkness fall those who follow knowledge.

                   One is the outcome of knowledge and the other is the outcome of action.

Thus have we heard from the ancient sages who explained this truth to us.

          The one who knows both knowledge and action, with action overcomes death  and with knowledge reaches immortality.

The above extract from  the Isa Upanishad from the Hindu Vedas will inform our time reflection at our 1st Satsang Meeting of 2015

ALL ARE WELCOME

satsang meeting february 2015

Satsang Meeting 

Saturday 7th February

1.30- 4.30

Friends Meeting House

Wolverhampton