freedom

To Be Free or Not to Be Free? (This article is reprinted by permission from The Holy Encounter, a publication of Miracle Distribution Center, Anaheim, California)   www.miraclecenter.org by Beverly Hutchinson McNeff “To Be Free or Not to Be Free? That is the question.” If this question were posed to us, of course we would choose freedom. After all, only a fool would want to be imprisoned! And yet, many of us walk around feeling imprisoned by time, circumstances, and a variety of other situations in our lives. Our minds have the power to impose many more limits than this world ever could, but our minds can also free us from a world of seeming limitation with merely one thought. A Course in Miracles tells us this world is not our home. It says the world was made as an attack on God, the foremost expression of separation. This can seem rather startling, but every spiritual truth reminds us “something” has happened to distance us from our Creator. Christianity states its rendition of this “fall from grace” in a couple of different ways. In the Bible when it says God created the world, it’s referring to the world expressed by Eden (which represents our pre-separation state) wherein Adam (who represents our pre-separation awareness of our oneness with God) abides. And yet, when he (and Eve) ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (duality or an opposite to what is all-encompassing), he was banished from (or no longer aware of) this […]

Yesterday’s words intended for today’s problems. Taken verbatim and with respect from ‘The First and Last Freedom‘ Jiddu Krishnamurti 1953 QUESTION 1: ON THE PRESENT CRISIS Question: You say the present crisis is without precedent. In what way is it exceptional? Krishnamurti: Obviously the present crisis throughout the world is exceptional, without precedent. There have been crises of varying types at different periods throughout history, social, national, political. Crises come and go; economic recessions, depressions, come, get modified, and continue in a different form. We know that; we are familiar with that process. Surely the present crisis is different, is it not? It is different first because we are dealing not with money nor with tangible things but with ideas. The crisis is exceptional because it is in the field of ideation. We are quarrelling with ideas, we are justifying murder; everywhere in the world we are justifying murder as a means to a righteous end, which in itself is unprecedented. Before, evil was recognized to be evil, murder was recognized to be murder, but now murder is a means to achieve a noble result. Murder, whether of one person or of a group of people, is justified, because the murderer, or the group that the murderer represents, justifies it as a means of achieving a result which will be beneficial to man. That is we sacrifice the present for the future – and it does not matter what means we employ as long as our declared purpose is to […]