I’m often astonished at how, when I want to share some meaningful thought (contemplation) with the world, the Universe seems to jump in and provide all sorts of material to help me make the point…
I recently came across a shared post on social media which resonated with me; however, I was unable to verify the source…so, I decided to tailor it to more closely align with my own thoughts, while keeping the overarching theme, and share it here:
“The savior is within; Satan is a scapegoat.
Divine intervention is not going to fix the world, and Jesus is not returning to save it. Mere prayer will not solve it. All the hatred, division, violence, war, oppression, etc. are a result of what WE are doing. It’s not Satan. It’s me, it’s you, it’s us. The problem is not the demons of hell, but the demons within.
The reality of evil is an unfortunate truth. The disharmony and chaos in the world corresponds to the disharmony and chaos within ourselves. The church cleverly turned the personification of evil into a literal being that we scapegoat for our problems or our behavior (or, in more modern and less mythical times, we institutionalize it).
But either scapegoat—whether an evil entity or a distant institution—lets us off the hook from taking responsibility for the violence and discord we sow all around us.
But the truth is that the suffering of the world is a result of the beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that rule us from within. We are good at making excuses for the condition of our world and pretending we don’t have what it takes to change it (by changing ourselves), so we want Jesus (or someone) to save the world because we don’t understand that we can save it ourselves.
Jesus was not saying that he was going to save the world; rather, that we have the power to do so within ourselves (Luke 17:20-21).”
(In consonance with Tolstoy, I believe that Jesus was showing us how to live in order to manifest peace (heaven) on earth, or the kingdom of God. To me, this interpretation is what the above text addresses). And I’ve touched upon this idea in a few of my other articles, such as God as a Verb, The Gospel of Living & Doing, My Conceptualization of God, We Can’t Wait Until the Next Extinction-Level Impact Event, God as Truth, Religion as Self-Control, and Everything Happens for a Reason.
Check Out Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You at Compass Bookstore:
And then, soon after deciding to share the above thoughts here, I came across the following video of Dr. Jordan Peterson speaking at the ARC Conference (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) wherein he details how we all can (or should) live, behave, dutifully perform as responsible individuals in order to bring about positive change in the world—or, ideally, a peaceful, productive, and prosperous society, which is my conceptualization of the traditional idea of heaven on earth, or the kingdom of God.
Worth a watch:
Then I recently read the following passage by James Allen in Mind is the Master, which I feel dovetails nicely with this theme:
“You will always come to the place where your love (your most abiding and intense thought) can receive its measure of gratification. If your love be base, you will come to a base place ; if it be beautiful, you will come to a beautiful place.”
And soon thereafter discovered the following quote by Dr. Wayne Dyer, as presented in the article cover image above:
“Heaven on earth is a choice you must make, not a place you must find.”
And speaking of Dr. Wayne Dyer, I touched on the essence of this article in a previous article entitled The Spiritual Journey, or Self-Actualization, wherein I wrote:
I recently came across the following quote while reviewing Dr. Wayne Dyer‘s book The Power of Intention, which I read many years ago when a friend loaned it to me just as I was starting on a long journey of change. After many years, many books, and much change in my life and my Self, I thought I’d revisit the book that just happened to appear in my life at the start it all, just to see if I might glean any more from it today, as a changed man, than I did so long ago at the outset of my journey. And immediately upon doing so, this passage struck me, without my recollection of it doing so the first time ’round. Thought I’d share:
“The spiritual journey does not consist of arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning oneself and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.”
UPDATE: I have since learned that, though often misattributed to Aldous Huxley from his book The Perennial Philosophy, the above quote was actually written by the Indian spiritual master Meher Baba, in his book Discourses (Vol II), which is available for free download here.
Check Out Dr. Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention at Compass Bookstore:
Check Out Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy at Compass Bookstore:
UPDATE Aug 9 2024: This morning during my studies I came across the following passage from In Tune With The Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine, which again reinforces my conceptualization that the Kingdom of God is within us:
“The finding of the Kingdom of God is the recognition of the indwelling Divine Life as the source and therefore as the Essence of our own lives. It is the bringing of men’s minds and therefore acts into harmony with the Divine will and purpose. It is the saving of men from their lower conceptions and selves, and a lifting them up to a realization of their higher selves, which as [Jesus] taught, is eternally one with God, the Father; and which, when realized, lifts a man’s thoughts, acts, purposes and conduct—his entire life—up to that pattern or standard.”
Check out Trine’s book In Tune With The Infinite at Compass Bookstore:
And finally, to sum it all up, I then stumbled across this graphic floating around online:
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God is Truth is God Mug  | God is a Verb Mug  |
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