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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gary Zukav
Read between
September 18 - November 2, 2018
Each of these responses creates karma, another imbalance of energy which, in turn, must be balanced. In this way, one karmic debt has been paid, so to speak, but another, or others, has been created.
In order to become whole, the soul must balance its energy. It must experience the effects that it has caused. The energy imbalances in the soul are the incomplete parts of the soul that form the personality. Personalities in interaction are souls that are seeking to heal. Whether an interaction between souls is healing or not depends upon whether the personality involved can see beyond itself and that of the other personality to the interaction of their souls. This perception automatically draws forth compassion. Every experience, and every interaction, provides you with an opportunity to
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If we intervene in an argument, or break up a fight, it is not appropriate that we judge the participants. Of one thing we can be certain: A person that is engaging in violence is hurting deeply, because a healthy and balanced soul is incapable of harming another.
When we judge, we create negative karma. Judgment is a function of the personality. When we say of another soul, “She is worthy,” or, “He is not worthy,” we create negative karma. When we say of an action, “This is right,” or, “That is wrong,” we create negative karma. This does not mean that we should not act appropriately to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
It is not appropriate that we allow our actions to be motivated by feelings of indignation, righteousness, or victimization.
The road to your soul is through your heart.
Gandhi was beaten several times during his life. Although on two occasions he nearly died, he refused to prosecute his attackers because he saw that they were doing “what they thought was right.” This position of non-judgmental acceptance was central in Gandhi’s life. The Christ did not judge even those who spit in His face, and who subjected Him without mercy to His pain and humiliation. He asked forgiveness, not vengeance, for those who tortured Him. Did neither the Christ nor Gandhi know the meaning of justice? They knew non-judgmental justice.
Non-judgmental justice is a perception that allows you to see everything in life, but does not engage your negative emotions.
Non-judgmental justice relieves you of the self-appointed job of judge and jury because you know that everything is being seen—nothing escapes the law of karma—and t...
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It allows you to experience directly the unobstructed flow of the intelligence, radiance, and love of the Universe of which our physical reality is a part. Non-judgmental justice flows naturally from understanding the soul and how it evolves.
When our actions create discord in another person, we, ourselves, in this lifetime or in another, will feel that discord.
Likewise, if our actions create harmony and empowerment in another, we also will come to feel that harmony and empowerment.
The person who has no reverence for Life will not hesitate to strike out against Life.
Business, politics, education, sex, raising families, and personal interactions without reverence all produce the same result: human beings using other human beings.
We believe that we are conscious and that the Universe is not. We think and act as though our existence as living forces in the Universe will end with this lifetime, and that we are responsible neither to others nor to the Universe.
It is not possible for a reverent person to exploit his or her friends, co-workers, city, nation, or planet. It is not possible for a reverent species to create caste systems, child labor, nerve gas, or nuclear weapons. Therefore, it is not possible for a reverent person, or a reverent species, to accumulate the type of karma that such activities create.
Reverence is engaging in a form and a depth of contact with Life that is well beyond the shel...
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Even if you cannot sense the interior, it is enough to know that the form, the shell, is merely an outer layer, and that underneath it the true power and essence of who a person is, or what a thing is, is present. That is what is honored in reverence.
Reverence is an attitude of honoring Life. You do not have to be authentically empowered to be gentle with Life or to love Life.
There are many people who are not authentically empowered but who are quite reverent. They would harm nothing. Often it is the case that they are the most compassionate and the most loving people because they have suffered so much.
Whether a person is reverent depends essentially upon whether he or she accepts the principle of the sacredness of Life, any...
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It is possible to respect one person and not respect another, but it is not possible to revere one person without revering every person.
Perceiving in this way is true reverence, because it allows you to look at what you are going through and to see it within the framework of the evolution and the maturation of your own spirit. It is true reverence, because it enables you to look at all the evolutions that are taking place simultaneously with your own, in all of the kingdoms of Life, and fully appreciate, or at least see very differently, how they unfold.
It is only our kingdom, the human kingdom, that wants to warehouse energy, to use much more than it needs and to store what it does not, so that the balance of the cycle is disturbed so dramatically.
Approaching and regarding Life with an attitude of reverence permits the experience of being unempowered but not cruel.
It is not necessary, in other words, to learn what we need to learn and have it cost somebody his or her life.
It is not necessary for progress and the experience of progress to cost the destruction of nature.
It is not necessary, but without a sense of reverence for Life, who cares...
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If we perceived Life with reverence, and understood our evolutionary process, we would stand in awe at the experience of physical Life and walk the Earth in a very deep sense of gratitude.
As it is, there are billions of human beings who are filled with regret that they are on the Earth, with overwhelming experiences of pain, despair, discouragement, depression, starvation, and disease. These are the things of our planet. They result largely from the fact that so much of the human condition is without reverence.
Reverence is a natural aspect of authentic empowerment because the soul reveres all of Life.
Yet, to the multisensory human, a reverent businessman or businesswoman is a person who infuses a new energy into the archetype of entrepreneur, shifting it from a dynamic that is motivated by profits that are generated by serving others to a dynamic of serving others that is made possible by profits, and a reverent politician is a person who challenges the concept of external power, and brings to the political arena the concerns of the heart.
To live with reverence means being willing to say, “That is Life, we must not harm it,” and “Those are our fellow humans, we must not destroy them,” and mean it.
The reverent person cannot consider himself or herself superior to another person or to any other form of Life, because the reverent person sees Divinity in all forms of Life, and honors it.
this higher order of logic and understanding originates in the heart.
The higher order of logic and understanding that is capable of meaningfully reflecting the soul comes from the heart. The creation of this higher order of logic and understanding, therefore, requires close attention to feelings.
Thus, the pursuit of external power has led to a repression of emotion. This is true of us as individuals and as a species.
We admire the “hard-nosed” businessman who fires employees for the sake of external power. We reward the military officer who sends himself or others to pain and death for the sake of external power. We honor the statesman who is not swayed by compassion.
Emotions are currents of energy that pass through us. Awareness of these currents is the first step in learning how our experiences come into being and why.
Every discrepancy between a conscious intention and the emotions that accompany it points directly to a splintered aspect of the self that requires healing.
Reverence is not an emotion. It is a way of being, but the path to reverence is through your heart, and only an awareness of your feelings can open your heart.
He made arrangements to live in solitude while he searched within himself for the deepest causes of his painful life.
In other words, from the point of view of the multisensory human, the discoveries of science illuminate both inner and outer experiences, physical and nonphysical dynamics.
By hating evil, or one who is engaged in evil, you contribute to the absence of Light and not to its presence. Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it.
The absence of Light causes the personality to suffer. There is pain. When you hate, you bring that suffering upon yourself. Hatred of evil affects the one who hates. It makes him or her a hateful person, a person who also has absented himself or herself from Light.
Compassion is being moved to and by acts of the heart, to and by the energy of love. If you strike without compassion against the darkness, you yourself enter the darkness.
A compassionate heart can engage evil directly—it can bring Light where there was no Light.
It allows you to look with compassion upon those who engage in evil activities, even as you challenge their activities, and thus protects you from the creation of negative karma. It permits you to see that the place to begin the task of eliminating evil is within yourself. This is the appropriate response to evil.
The next phase of our evolution will take us into the experiences of the multisensory human and the nature of authentic power. This requires the heart.1
the multisensory human has conscious access to compassionate and impersonal help in the analysis of his or her possible choices, their probable consequences, and in the exploration of the different parts of himself or herself.
