Volker Brendel

A Time for Respect

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"There is also, and most importantly, the need for respect for life, respect for truth. There is a larger picture to be seen."

Photo by madison lavern on Unsplash

by Volker Brendel
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Borrowing from a famous commercial years ago, I could say: “Hello new world!” We are obviously faced with a somewhat dramatic situation with the coronavirus pandemic. This is literally affecting everyone on earth, to some more tangibly at this time than to others, but nonetheless affecting anyone, everywhere. And all of this has developed at breathtaking speed. There are many factors to encompass; certainly, more factors than I personally can encompass on my own. So, we’ll spend the hour slightly differently from other times. I will open our consideration with some remarks to set a framework for our consideration, and then we’ll open it up earlier than usual for others to contribute in recognition that this situation requires many voices, many experiences, many insights; channeled, though, through a common framework of spiritual identity.

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John Gray

Seeing God

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“Among friends with a high degree of heart purity, the more we interact, the more we see one another’s true nature, true light, true colors, we are awed by the magnificence we encounter... Blessed are the pure in heart for they really do see God in the beauty all around, yes, but mostly in one another.”

by John Gray
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Greetings to everybody.  Wherever we are, it’s here—and it is good to be here!

I’ll begin today with a biblical verse well known to many: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”  [Matthew. 5:8] Ever since these words were spoken by Jesus, remembered, and later translated from Aramaic to Greek to English and eventually memorialized in the Bible, how many millions of earnest people have wondered about what they mean and prayed to know how it’s done? I don’t know about you, but I don’t hear of many people walking around claiming they see God, the figurehead of religious belief.  The usual idea is that whoever, whatever God is, is unknowable until possibly after we’re dead.  To me this simply means there may be very few living people with pure hearts.

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Volker Brendel

Time for Reflection

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"It takes global and individual reflection to connect all the dots, to see how our spiritual approach to life needs to become earthly, practical, to result in a living experience that informs everything we’re doing."

Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash

by Volker Brendel
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It is time for reflection. It is good to make time for this, in fact necessary. However, reflection is an activity that is largely being ignored these days by most people. We might ask when we should engage in reflection, upon life in general or our own lives. Maybe when we approach the end of our lives? I think most people would do that if they had a chance to do a retrospective, putting their life experiences into a larger context.

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Larry Krantz

The Ascending Cycle of Spiritual Understanding

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"New bursts of spiritual understanding, little quantum leaps of insights, are often called realizations. It is always exciting to see something with new eyes.”

Excitement
by Larry Krantz
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When a person awakens spiritually, it may begin with the simple questioning of beliefs—religious, political, and others. Such views are often passed from generation to generation. Most families become upset if a child dares to think differently, or questions why they behave a certain way. Actually, almost all of humanity thinks and behaves in lockstep. While one faction may seem at odds with another faction, they are all variations of a theme, and large segments of the populace go along with one system or another, each sure theirs is the chosen path. It is groupthink. 

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John Gray

New Vision, New World

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"Everything we are aware of is in our own consciousness, right? There may be objective reality, but how do we know it? The nature and quality of our consciousness determines how the world looks to us... 'We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.'"

Eclipse

Courtesy of David Barnes

by John Gray
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Today is the first Sunday of 2020.  May this be a year of clear vision.

Light seeds germinate in the heart and then are recognized by the mind. Aha! An idea, an inspiration is born. Many people like to take credit for their intuitive insights and good ideas, as though creativity originates in the human mind.  However, one of the brighter minds of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, is said to have said, “When the solution is simple God is answering.” That may have been his way of acknowledging that something transcendent is at work in the process of creativity; I don’t know, and Albert isn’t around to ask. We’ll have to ask ourselves. 

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Sanford Baran

The Music Behind the Music

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"With ears wide open to spirit we’ll venture forth into realms of musical experience that are transcendent, divine and that truly touch the soul."

VOCES8 Choral Ensemble

by Sanford Baran

The following meditation is meant to be listened to, not read. I created it as a podcast, an audio essay comprised of music interspersed with some spoken words. I invite you to listen and touch the power and magic of spirit as it emerges in musical form.

Listen to the podcast   (It runs about 45 minutes)

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Volker Brendel

Some Thoughts on Practical Spirituality

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by Volker Brendel

We would do well focusing on the characteristics of Life, the characteristics of God, and expressing those. But how do we determine these characteristics? Who can tell us about them? The answer is obvious: we didn’t create ourselves; Life created us, and Life, or God, created us in the image and likeness of itself. And, therefore the characteristics of God, of Life, are immediately accessible to us. The key is that we need to express them to know them. In fact, there is no one else to tell us. Why is that so? Because Life creates in the image and likeness of Life, and one of the obvious characteristics of Life with respect to human beings is that Life doesn’t impose. Love does not impose. Here we are, with the facilities of feeling:  touching awe, sensing the wonder of the universe and experiencing the wonders of thinking, of speaking, of expressing ourselves. In these experiences, we discover what the wise life choices to be made are, and new insights come to us each step along the way.
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Bill Isaacs

True Climate Change

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"What does one do about climate change? In a nutshell one first changes one’s own atmosphere, the climate within which you live, the quality of the field in which you function."

by Bill Isaacs
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Try this thought experiment: Imagine you are in a great building. You look up to see a vast ceiling that seems to reach to the stars. Corridors spread out in every direction. Light streams in. There’s a rich, warm and recognizable atmosphere in this place. It is immense. To call this a building is somehow strange, because it is unlike any other you have ever seen, but the term is also somehow apt. You realize you’re in the halls of a great court, the court of a great King. You know where you are.

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Joyce Krantz, Larry Krantz

The Breath of Life

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"Divine memory carries with it wisdom and an understanding that surpasses any human philosophy."

by Joyce Krantz and Larry Krantz
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Joyce Krantz: The act of breathing comes to mind as we gather today—an in-breath of spirit has drawn us all together in this moment to provide a focus for the nature and purpose of Being. And the outbreath of spirit expands the truth moving through our consciousness for blessing to the whole.

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John Gray

Heritage Seeds

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"Lift up your heads... and the king of glory shall come in."

California poppies near the home of the author

by John Gray
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There is a great amount of revered poetry in the literature of human cultures and languages the world around. Poetry is defined in my dictionary as “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.” That definition is longer than some poems!  I think of a poem as imagery and meaning expressed through spare, carefully chosen words which touch the heart. I admire the work of anyone, past or present, skilled in this language art. We might think, for examples, of famed poets such as Shakespeare and Rumi, Homer and Milton, Poe, Walt Whitman, Lao Tzu, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, and Pablo Neruda, and their profound, insightful, and lasting inspirational works. To me, however, nothing new or old surpasses the poetry found in the King James Version of the Bible.

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