New Year’s Benediction
[I originally wrote this benediction on December 16, 2001 after months of feeling hopeless and powerless in the aftermath of the September 11 tragedy here in the United States. Like many people, I felt religion had a great deal to do with what had happened and I felt something must be done about religion itself. I was initially leaning more toward abandoning religion and its institutions altogether. After much prayer and reflection, I realized that religion doesn't need to be rejected; it needs to be injected with more intelligence and compassion than we have ever given it in the past. It doesn't need to be abandoned; it needs to be upgraded. -- RTS]
My dear Family,
Once again time finds us on the brink of a new year. Though I have stumbled and fumbled in finding hope in the past few years, I am once again refreshed and renewed at the prospect of what lies ahead.
Our capacity to build a more humane way of life has never shone more clearly than in these shadowy times when the world is so at odds with itself. I am not speaking of grand gestures that we believe will sweep the soot and soil off the face of civilizations. I am speaking of far more modest moments. I am speaking of people, individuals, you and me. I am speaking of the decisions we make.
The decision to live in courage or to die slowly in fear is one we make everyday. The decision to awaken to creativity or to sleep in complacency is one we make every hour. The decision to grow in faith or to decay in doubt is one we make every minute. The decision to be happy or to be miserable is one we make every second.
Experience has shown us no less than that we must not wait to receive courage before we can be courageous. We must not wait to receive creativity before we can be creative. We must not wait to receive faith before we can be faithful. We must not wait to receive happiness before we can be happy.
Simply decide. And decide again. And decide once again. And keep deciding without end. And you will find, in the moment-by-moment practice of your deciding, that courage, creativity, faith, and happiness have been residing at the core of your being ever since time was just a toddler. And yet how can we taste the nectar of our deepest being and not give to others to taste the nectar of their deepest being?
There are those out there in the world, near and afar, who have not the slightest intimation that such treasures lie buried in their own hearts.They are unaware of their own worth. The cruel voices of self-deprecation pierce their minds and bodies like shards of broken glass. Their hearts ache to fulfill a desire they have yet to name. Seek them out in the morning and evening and you will find them reciting verses from the gospel of victimhood.
How brittle they see their lives, as brittle as the finest calligraphy paper? How they regard every moment as a threat to the delicacy of that paper? How they guard it? How they hide themselves in guarding it? Every new day is for them a trauma to be survived or a disaster waiting to destroy them. They do not even know how to dream of anything better. They have forgotten who they are and how much they are capable of.
Now, I ask you, can our hearts ever find rest until theirs do? Is it enough to simply be moved for a moment of sentimentality, perhaps even shed a tear or two for the sufferings of humanity, and then return to the comfort of our own far more mellow dramas? And if this is truly enough for us, if this is all that we have to offer, is it not also true that we have forgotten who we are and how much we are capable of?
As we enter the new year, I make a pledge to take down these walls between “me” and “them”. I make a pledge to recognize that we all share a common heritage and a common destiny. I make a pledge to gather the brightest rays of my intelligence and summon the fiercest flames of my compassion and direct them to this blue marble of a planet we all call home. I make a pledge to take off my dramas because they are like the clothes I once wore as a child and they simply no longer fit. I make a pledge to outgrow my past.
I make a pledge to use my remaining days, hours, minutes, and seconds to increase the pool of humanity’s shared knowledge and joy and drain the pool of humanity’s shared ignorance and suffering. Where do I begin, one might ask? I make a pledge to start with every person in my addressbook.
Such is my path for the new year! Perhaps it will be yours too. Will you not make the decision to acknowledge that your well-being is intertwined with the well-being of everyone else? Will you not drink from the nectar of your own being and share with others how they may slake their thirst as well? Will you not join me in this pledge?
May the new year be for you the most impactful year of your lives thus far. May the new year be abundant with bold decisions, with compassionate decisions, with illuminated decisions. May those decisions bear not just fruit, but gardens and vineyards. May you say of the new year, looking back upon it twelve months from now, “That’s when it all changed for me.” “That’s when it all came together.” “That’s when I entered a new phase of my life.” “Never before have I felt so strong and fulfilled.” “I would not trade where I am right now for anything I thought I had before.” “That’s when my heart just opened up and the entire universe fell right in and fit so snugly and warm.” “That was a milestone for me.” “I came home.”
Give yourself that gift. You deserve it. Not only do you deserve it, it is your birthright…for do you know who you are? You are a spirit in the material world. You are an angel on earth. You are a jewel in the lotus. You are a wish-fulfilling gem. Fierce and caring, open and aware, mercurial and full of delight, you are that nakedly wondrous being that both language and form have failed to clothe for untold eternities…
And I love you.
Rahim
This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 2:15 am and is filed under Misc. Find similar posts by selecting any of the following tags: being, courage, happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Jim wrote on December 31, 2007 at 3:24 pm:
We are seeing a paradigm shift in
collective consciousness to our true essence.
You are now part of the great intention experiment.
Legion Delawalla wrote on December 31, 2007 at 5:13 pm:
We always see all beings are racing behind materialistic objects and not towards their faith. I feel, IVORY BAKERY seems to ignite a spark to push consciousness away from materialism and let all beings begin thinking in terms of the creator.
Odell wrote on December 31, 2007 at 5:49 pm:
“…you are that nakedly wondrous being that both language and form have failed to clothe for untold eternities.”
Inspiring and insightful words. A great kick-off to 2008. I look forward to being a frequent visitor- and maybe I can help contribute to the upgrade.
Kayra wrote on January 1, 2008 at 11:37 am:
Thank you for tending the fire. Your vision and wisdom are easy to digest. Your art is clear communication. You warm the sacred within me with remembering. Thank you for being a light in my world.
Mez wrote on January 7, 2008 at 10:19 pm:
Very profound and moving. I can practically feel the strength in your words. But more than mere words, they come across very strong. You have a wonderful a gift within you. We all have a wonderful gift within us. And much as we thirst for the sweetness of our nectar, so to, must we share our nectar. We all have something wonderful growing within us. We must give it love, happiness, and the power to smile at your past, and get excited about your future. About everyone’s future.
Keep moving Rahim, we all support you
Alex Bennett wrote on January 17, 2008 at 4:56 am:
Rahim, thank you for including me in your announcement about your blog. It’s certainly a discussion that needs to happen as much as possible.
Thoughtful people need to parse religious extremism, politics, and religious belief in general. I think most intelligent people already do. The issue is not whether you can get thoughtful people here, but whether this discussion will impact those who conclude that religious differences justify the kind of intolerance that leads to murder, the kind of intolerance that pervades humanity at present.
I am one of those of the “atheist side of the perspective.” My atheism is simply an acknowledgment that I lack a belief in a deity. I make an effort to avoid the arrogance of the capital-A Atheists, those who actively disrespect the beliefs of Theists. I make this effort because I believe as you do, that our specific beliefs are irrelevant so long as our mutual commitment to humanity and compassion remains. I don’t choose atheism as a justification for selfishness or rebellion. I “choose” it as the factual description of my religious perspective. I can’t simply say “I believe in something else,” because there isn’t a convenient brand name to place on my ideas about humanity and being.
Unfortunately, for many people this is as far as the dialogue goes. In a monotheistic society, it’s difficult for an atheist like me to appear sociable when I say, “I don’t believe in your God,” because after thousands of years of theistic thinking, such a statement isn’t simply a statement of personal belief, it’s an attack against the universalist perspective that monotheism demands. This is unfortunate, but also inevitable, given the relationship between church, self and power throughout history. For most everyone, a belief in God is a prerequisite to goodness. The vast majority of conversations in which I’ve “admitted” my atheism have immediately been reduced to questions about my moral fiber. But since the only thing one can understand about the atheist is that he or she isn’t a theist, the hostility is an arbitrary and habitual response that conveniently dispenses with any effort at understanding.
This dispensing with effort at understanding is the very foundation of the cultural crisis that faces our world today. It is very easy to crawl into our caves of categories and from there assault those who choose different caves, since they can’t possibly be better than our self-proclaimed perfect world. This is an altogether human habit, one that has led us to calamity time and again throughout history.
Understanding is very, very hard. It requires intense, personal effort over many years. It’s so much easier to rest on our assumptions. I support your effort to overcome the barriers and open a dialogue.
Mark Sanges wrote on March 2, 2008 at 5:19 pm:
Been meaning to post a comment for quite some time now. Just never found the time to write up a truly relevant and thoughtful one for you. For the moment, just let me say the site and the concept behind it are inspiring and I truly cannot wait to see what this becomes. I’m sure with some hard work and some good word of mouth, you have the potential to enlighten the world!