Founder of John Gilmore's Healing Circle
A Paradigm Shift: Learning For The Sake Of Personal Growth
By the time you receive this newsletter it will be a new year. Two thousand twelve will have begun, the year that many people tout as the end of one paradigm and a shift, that may well come through violence and shaking up, to one of love, kindness and partnership. I must admit that things feel strange. I have just been riding my motor scooter on the first day of winter; things are very strange. Despite this, the strange weather, there are those who still argue that global warming doesn't exist.
If anything comes out of this new year or new paradigm I am hopeful that it will be people taking their power back to gather knowledge and make decisions based on their own experiences, the experiences of other, and the common sense that has often been so forgotten in our society as we have given over our understanding of the world to all of the experts in just about every area of life.
For centuries great mystics, philosophers, and religious teachers have told us that we are the light of the world and that we are connected with what many call God. Some have gone so far as to say that we are parts of God and as we do the work of God we are entering the Verb of Being Called God. Institutionalists don't really like this.
The new people teaching spiritual practices adopted from the East don't like this. Many of the Eastern Teachers and Pagan teachers don't like this. It bypasses the authority of those who constantly say they are servants, but who really consider themselves spiritually or intellectually superior in action if not in word.
This new paradigm is in danger of being co-opted just like the many revolts going on all over the world. There are groups of people who just despised any type of authority that isn't them. They speak partnership and work for it only to try to take the place of the previous authorities and takeover their unjust deeds.
They don't want to get rid of the paradigm, they just want to be the ones in charge. Be careful of smiling teachers who speak of love and connection, but are homophobic, racially prejudiced, or who hate the opposite sex. You can tell them by their behavior, rather than their words or act.
Anyone who knows God and is part of the creative act known as God--the embodiment of Love, will seek to empower you and to open doors of access to you and everyone else instead of pulling away as soon as they think their coffers will be threatened by associating with the wrong people.
These people can be people who are too political, or too radical, too black, or too Gay. In this dominator world too many people have learned to play the game and have internalized the dominator mode of being where there has to be someone on the bottom and it has to not be them. Be careful about your spirituality.
Be careful who you hear and who you learn from. I have a feeling that if you are not careful one day, after much turmoil, you will find that it is not the person with the longest resume or the one who has studied in a traditional manner with a traditional teacher--which means an institutional person, who will help you the most, but the one who has learned from great teachers who dared to break the mold and one who has learned to dance with God through mystical experience, not memorizing a lot of books.
The whole world will open for you during the coming year one way or the other. As you join the dance this year be sure to study and learn for the sake of your growth and the development of the potential to help build your community and a better world, not so you, like many of the great and small teachers today, can puff out your chest and brag about from whom you learned.
Today we don't need knowledge boxed in corrupt or frozen traditions, we need knowledge that awakens our experiences so that we can touch the face of the Divine and not only that, we can be the face of the Divine.
Namaste,
Om Prakash
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