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August 9 - August 15, 2023
Connection is joy. Disconnection is pain.
If you want to live a life of love, then practice love every day. If you want to feel more connected, then practice feeling connected. If you want to remember those you love, then practice remembering.
Any quality requires sustained practice and cultivation; everything is earned.
To experience oneness is to live with love. To experience love is to live with oneness.
Audre Lorde’s 1988 essay “A Burst of Light,” in which she writes: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
True love is not conditional, nor can it be quantified or measured.
true love is not transactional. Lovers don’t keep tabs on giving and receiving. Anyone who does so is more invested in themselves than in those they claim to love.
There is no desired outcome of love because love is itself the desired state.
What are you willing to give up today to help produce loving justice in your own community?
Guru Ramdas describes ego as a thorn in our foot. If we walk without removing it, it becomes more deeply embedded and causes us more pain over time. The pain only subsides once we remove the thorn.
Love erases the boundaries of our individual identities and opens us up to a new way of being—interconnected and fully immersed.
All is one. And one is all. Ik oankar.
Guru Amardas says as much when he states that true life partners are not those who merely sit together physically; true life partners are those who become one light within two bodies.
Love decenters our self-centeredness.
I love you because we are each other.
C. S. Lewis: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking about yourself less.”
Lao-tzu pointed out that all streams flow into the ocean because it is lower than them: Its strength comes from its humility.
Guru Tegh Bahadur states that the truly wise person is one who neither feels fear nor inspires fear.
John 4:18 bears witness to this: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.”
James Baldwin: “If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
Education is service.
We spend so much of our lives trying to control and plan every detail that we sometimes forget how much we actually can control.
how can a drop of water hope to understand the ocean?
We can start our journey by asking ourselves these three questions: What would an outsider observe while watching your behavior? How might this differ from how you see yourself? And what could you change so that you might feel proud of how you live every single day?
If someone told me that there was a Fountain of Eternal Happiness and that the price of admission was regular time commitment, sustained effort, and a spoonful of initial discomfort, I’d say it was a no-brainer. I think most of us would.
“Once allowed to grow, hate doesn’t pick and choose. It spreads like fire,” Jagmeet said after the incident. “Once we say it’s okay to hate someone based on their religion, we’re also opening the door to hate based on race, gender, sexuality, and more. It’s important that we stand united against all forms of hate. It takes love to understand that we are all in this together. It takes courage to come together, demand better, and dream bigger, so that we can build a world where no one is left behind.” Jagmeet Singh
What is your personal mission statement? What are your core values? When push comes to shove and there’s no easy answer for how to respond, what would you use as a guide so that you feel proud of your actions rather than ashamed?
To live with faith meant that I would not compromise those aspects of my religious appearance that bothered racists. To live with integrity meant that I would continue to do what I thought was right in terms of racial justice and social justice activism. To live with love meant that I would continue on the path that James Baldwin quote had put me on: that loving people means showing them what they cannot see on their own. To live with service meant that I would continue engaging and educating, not for my own benefit but for the enrichment of those around me. To live with excellence would mean
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Create a list of twenty or so qualities you wish to embody. From that list, identify five that feel central to who you are and who you aspire to be.
Once you have identified your top five values, try to come up with one action you will take each day to practice each of them.
What will you do to hold yourself accountable to each commitment?
Carefully honed fortitude is the backbone of resilience.
Knowledge without action is hypocrisy.
Values can be learned. Qualities have to be earned.
One Divine Force. Identity of Truth. Creative Being. Fearless. Without Enemies. An Eternal Form. Never Born. Self-Created. Through the Guru’s Grace.
Creativity is powerful because you are giving something to this world rather than taking something away. There’s something generous and generative about creativity. Creativity is also selfless and life-giving because it brings people together.
To be spiritually connected is to care about the people around you, and to care about the people around you is to pursue justice.
Guru Nanak offered another way of thinking about the sacred thread: “Make compassion the cotton, contentment the thread, modesty the knot, and truth the twist. This is the sacred thread of the soul. If you have it, then go ahead and put it on me. It won’t break, and can’t be soiled, burnt, or lost. O Nanak: the people who wear this thread are truly blessed.”
A complex problem requires a complex solution, and resolving a social disease as pervasive as racism will take all of us working together.
While there may be comfort in accommodating what others need and ignoring our own, there is no joy it.
As Toni Morrison wisely advises, the question we should ask ourselves is: “What can I do from where I am?”
Without compassion, our activism can become dehumanizing and violent rather than enriching and equalizing.
Each of these three—oneness, love, and seva—share the element of selflessness. Through connection, we open up the boundaries that separate us. Through love, we enter into a state of union. Through service, we go beyond our sense of self.
Audre Lorde warned us: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Belonging does not require perfection. Belonging comes with connection and sincere caring.
Serving with love is a powerful practice because it can help us eradicate a key source of our suffering—our egos.
Kahlil Gibran wrote: “There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.”
What will I do today to help someone I do not know? What is one act of kindness I can do anonymously this week? Who is suffering most in my community this month, and what can I do to help them? Who has been most neglected in the past year, and how might I serve them?
