Force Of Love Is The Force Of Total Revolution
A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts if any of us is to survive. And our lives will be truly blessed only when the misery of one is genuinely felt to be the misery of all. The force of love is the force of total revolution. It is the unreleased force, unknown and unexplored as a dynamic for change.
We have moved very far away from love in our collective lives, dangerously near destruction, close to starvation. Perhaps we have the wisdom now, the awareness that love is as essential to human beings as the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Love is the beauty, the delicate mystery, the soul of life, the radiant unspoiled purity that brings spontaneous joy, songs of ecstasy, poems, paintings, dances, dramas to celebrate its indescribable, never-to-be-fully-captured bliss of being. Can we bring love into the marketplaces, into the homes, the schools, the places of business, and transform them completely? You may call it a utopian challenge, but it is the only one that will make a significant difference or that is fully worthy of the potential of whole human beings.
Compassion is a spontaneous movement of wholeness. It is not a studied decision to help the poor, to be kind to the unfortunate. Compassion has a tremendous momentum that naturally, choicelessly moves us to worthy action. It has the force of intelligence, creativity, and the strength of love. [...]
The vast intelligence that orders the cosmos is available to all. The beauty of life, the wonder of living, is that we share creativity, intelligence, and unlimited potential with the rest of the cosmos. If the universe is vast and mysterious, we are vast and mysterious. If it contains innumerable creative energies, we contain innumerable creative energies. If it has healing energies, we also have healing energies. To realize that we are not simply physical beings on a material planet, but that we are whole beings, each a miniature cosmos, each related to all of life in intimate, profound ways, should radically transform how we perceive ourselves, our environments, our social problems. Nothing can ever be isolated from wholeness.
There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual.
Vimala Thakar was a social activist and spiritual teacher from India.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you relate to the author's notion of the force of love being the force of total revolution? Can you share a personal experience of a time you realized that you were a whole being, related to all of life in intimate, profound ways? What helps you experiment with the impossible?
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9 Past Reflections
On Aug 15, 2017 B. Vero wrote :
I definitely have been working on this meditation of seeing myself stretch and connect to the core of the earth and connect in a grounding way, I was encouraged to stay in my body and this really resonated with my desires - to grow and develop in new ways, as I am already open and willing to access my ability to be conscious and this ties in to the most recent awakin on week 8/8 and 8/15 of the small and the unknown to be a whole. Thank you!
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On Jul 6, 2017 Amy wrote :
I definitely am feeling the misery of ONE at this very moment! Please pray with me for this ONE! Ily
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On Jul 4, 2017 david doane wrote :
The love that is the force of total revolution is the awareness and realization that we are one -- one with one another and with all that is -- and that what we do to any being, living and not living, and to this planet that we are part of we do to ourselves. With such love we live in I-Thou rather than us-and-them, we live in compassion rather than indifference or worse, we live in cooperation rather than competition, we live in peace rather than war. My realization that I am intimately and profoundly related to all that is began long ago and deepened as I discovered wisdom of the Far East and particularly wisdom of the Vedanta tradition. I don't know what is impossible. I know that what is possible is much greater than what we think is possible. Our capacity is much greater than our thinking.
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On Jul 4, 2017 Kay wrote :
I've been wanting to write something pertaining to the state of the political environment and how destructive it is, but the bottom line sums it up in this article-love needs to arise. We see ourselves and everything else from a position of separation, a dualistic thinking. If only we saw the divinity in each other starting with ourselves. Thank you Vimala for this beautiful piece!
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On Jun 30, 2017 Kristin Pedemonti wrote :
The force of love = the force of total revolution because it opens our eyes to our interconnectedness and how truly, as humans and beings, we are all one. I have felt this in waves and in glimmers many times, a feeling of complete compassion, love, joy all wrapped together envelope me and I feel light and nearly to bursting. Recently I felt this at a Compassionate Listening training, the 14 of us had shared many vulnerable stories of experienced conflict, hearts and minds were open and I felt this sense of being utterly connected to each person in the room. I have felt this with animals too. I am not sure what helps experiment with the impossible, other than having so many experiences over my nearly 50 years on the planet, that anything is possible. <3
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