The Global Conversation

Tag: illusions

  • There’s No Changing Their Minds

    I have an online friend I met probably 15 years ago on a site that offered self-designated “experts” an opportunity to answer questions posted by readers. I signed up as an “expert” in more than 20 categories ranging from spirituality to divorce to GLBT relationships to death and dying. (The site offered hundreds of categories on everything from art to motorcycle repair to accounting. If you had a question, there was most likely a category for it to be asked.) Over the course of approximately 2 1/2 years while this site was in existence, this one questioner and I developed an online friendship that continued after the site closed down and we still interact on at least a weekly basis through other online venues. To say that this friend and I have opposite views on how to solve many of the issues challenging the world today would be an understatement.

    To my friend, everything is a competition with a clear winner and a clear loser. And if you’re not the winner, you’re not trying hard enough. If you are the winner and you won “fair and square” (although what’s “fair and square” is a matter of debate), then you deserve everything you “won” and you’re under no obligation to share it with anyone else, no matter how badly someone else may need it. “Winners” are hard-working, reliable, dependable, employed, self-reliant; “losers” are unemployed, those on welfare or other public assistance (which indicates they are lazy, not resourceful (“where there’s a will there’s a way!”), slackers and freeloaders), needy and unreliable (if you can’t even support yourself, how can others (like family) rely on you to support them?). To my friend, there is this black and white world where you are one or the other: there is no middle ground. There are no other options. There is no compromise. If it’s mine, it’s mine and you have no right to try to take it from me or even to ask me to give it to you. If I choose to give it to you, then I am proving I am indeed a winner because I am willing to help the losers.

    For 15 years, this friend and I have been debating social issues. We have, at the very least, demonstrated that it is possible for those on the polar opposite sides to have a civilized discussion about the issues, even if we never reach any sort of agreement on how to resolve those issues.  But neither of us has had the least bit of success in “changing” the other’s mind about how to resolve the plethora of problems facing humanity today. Then one day I had an “Aha!” moment wherein  I realized that while our solutions may be totally opposite, our goals are the same. We both want a world in which each individual is able to live according to the beliefs s/he holds dear without undue interference from the “outside” world.

    In the CwG material, God tells us that all the problems in the world stem from the belief that we are separate from God and from each other. From this belief of separation, all the other illusions spring forth: that God requires something of us, that there is not enough for everyone and therefore we must compete with each other, even justifying killing each other to get what we need, that some of us are better than others because we are following the “right” path according to “God’s word”, etc. God also says that no matter what policies we change, no matter how we do things differently, nothing in our world is going to become what we say we want until we change one very basic thing: our beliefs about God and how we “relate” to God.

    So after 15 years, I am done debating policy and procedure with my friend. It’s pointless because we humans, when challenged about the things we believe, tend to “dig in” and believe even harder, especially when someone points to factual evidence that counters what we believe. (There is actually a name for this: it’s called the “backfire effect”.) The more I try to show my friend that the way s/he wants to do things, the way that we’ve been doing it since the mid-80’s, is not working, the more s/he believes that the way we’ve been doing it just hasn’t been given a long enough chance to work!

    But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Not at all. Just a change in strategies. The focus has to be on our Oneness. Those seeds have to be planted over and over and over again. Every response to those who still live in the fear that is virtually automatically generated by a “separatist” philosophy will contain the seeds of Oneness. Those seeds are plenty and are found throughout most sacred texts buried among the atrocities they ascribe to the Divine. We must dig them up from this fearful earth they have been planted in for the last two millenia and replant them, allowing them to bloom when planted in the field of Love. We may  not be able to change their minds, but we may be able “change” their hearts.

  • Can I choose love instead of fear?

    There is more love around.  I can feel it.  Or is there more love in myself?

    Love and joy have no upper limit. You can carry only a certain amount of hatred, sadness and grief inside you, because at some point they will all change into love. This will happen either during this life or the next one. Universal love is infinite freedom. It is freedom to choose and to learn from one’s own choices.

    You are never alone. You are always accompanied by love which manifests itself in different energies and forms of life. What you feel and perceive is different from what reality is. Your feelings and perceptions are but partial truths. The more you manifest love, the more you will feel and perceive yourself to be part of a whole, which is a good deal greater than the world you are living in.

    There is much more love in the world than what is usually thought. People would be able to live in a much greater love for themselves, each other, nature and the whole planet if the distorted structures in our societies all over the world did not limit and suppress the expression of love.

    Someone says that we are living in a loveless world. I say that we are living in abundant love. It is a different thing than whether we are able to discover and recognize the abundant love in ourselves. We are living in a world of illusions. The value system around us may rather be more destructive than loving. We are being sold self-esteem without love. Our yearning for love is appealed through our self-esteem.

    Commercials and advertisements make us feel unhappy unless we acquire this and that. Those that we call  charity organizations may say, ”Buy yourself a good feeling, donate for charity.”  Love has been turned into merchandise. Yet love is free of cost. We can show love and radiate love around us all the time, and totally free of charge. If you saw the impact of love energies, you would understand their power. The spirit is stronger than matter.

    Joy is free.

    Joy is love.

    Joy is in your attitude.

    The more you feed joy and love, the more you will be them. This must happen unselfishly, without compulsion or artificiality. The world is full of pretension, smiles and promises which are not real. The world is also full of honesty, smiles and being which are real. You must recognize them in you and in others. You must recognize yourself. Do you know yourself?  Many think that they recognize themselves, their expectations and needs although they only recognize the needs and expectations that the environment has
    created for them.

    Can you distinguish real love from market values? You can if you only want to. Can you distinguish between desire and love? For love is much more of the attitude “how I love” rather than “how I am loved.”  The need to be loved has prevailed for too long over expression of real love in humanity. All kinds of means for being loved have been and are being used.  People do things, buy products, and choose attitudes in order to be loved.

    In the course of history many distorted attitudes have become generally accepted laws and patterns of behavior. The world is so full of these norms restricting love and freedom, rites and attitudes that an individual who expresses love may seem as unfit for the society…because love and freedom are one.

    When we express love, we are free. There is no wrong in love. Real freedom is absolute love. The notion of freedom as well as that of love is distorted in our world. There are attempts to buy and attain both of them in ways that are nothing but delusion when compared with real love and freedom. In the most extreme case, nations think that they can buy freedom by reinforcing their armed forces. In doing so, are they imagining that they are buying love, too? For freedom is love. Freedom attained through life-destroying methods is dependency and fear. Fear is a challenge for reaching real love. Love has no fear. How could love have fear because love is eternal, infinite power and wisdom? Infinite love, infinite wisdom, and infinite power are in you. So why would you be afraid?

    Fear is not in you. It is in the societal, social and economic structures. Fear is energy which maintains these structures. These structures are so distorted that they are sustained by life-destroying energies. They are antiquated energies which are having their death struggle, when at the same time life-constructing energies of love are manifesting themselves ever more widely.

    (Timo Teide is an artist, author, and spiritual guide who lives in Finland.  He has had dozens of art exhibitions and he has done meditative music and books about love. The healing power of art and the multidimensional impact of colors, forms and sounds are the most important elements of his art. Visit: www.teidegallery.com. Contact Timo: timo.teide@gmail.com.)