Some New Year’s thoughts for our spiritual paths 🙂
We are the heirs of the religions, the inheritors of their wealth. As members of an emerging global humanity, all of the traditions belong to all of us. This time in our planetary unfolding is not a time to hold tightly to religious forms and identities. We are not to be servants of the forms, we are to allow the forms to serve humanity.
You may have a cultural or karmic affinity with a particular lineage or tradition—the way of Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha, or Krishna. Use its form and teachings to open your heart, but do not cling to the form. Do not identify with the form. Allow the form to become transparent, allow it to make you transparent.
We who are born into this moment of spiritual history are the inheritors of all the forms. We are to hold them tenderly, lightly, and deeply, to delight in their gifts, and to be willing to learn from them all. We are to allow them to form in our souls the unique path laid out for us, the unique path that wants to be spoken into being through our living.
Your path may play out through the merging of historic lineages in your own individual journey; it may remain grounded in a single tradition, which you evolve even as it evolves you; it may lead you beyond any of the traditional forms. Know that each path belongs in the Wholeness of things as an irreplaceable, necessary, and wanted expression of Divine life.
Remember that all of the paths are meant to serve our awakening, service, and surrender. Whatever the way you walk, whatever the practice you embody, see that each is here to serve our higher unfolding. Allow the forms to become transparent to love, and to each other.
The future will not be made up of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists following different religions. The future will be made up of human beings walking the path of awakening, love, and surrender in one of its many unique expressions.
The future will not be many religions; it will be one religion in many forms.
With love,
Matthew
Thank you Matthew. This is a beautiful articulation of our hopes and prayers for our future. It seems to me that this is a the heart of our InterSpiritual aspirations. Ed
Yes, yes, yes! Thank you beloved!
wonderful, Matthew!
Matthew,
thank you so much for this loving statement. I am a person who does not claim any particular tradition, but I work very hard at becoming a better and better version of myself. Someone who is compassionate, humble, grateful, and is of service. One of the most important topics under interspirituality is how does this movement include and welcome people like myself. There are recurring themes across traditions (for example: how to be in community together, how to be of service to the world, how to be a contemplative) that we can explore across traditions and outside all traditions. This movement is a great adventure!
Thank you, Michael.
This theme you suggest is fascinating: “The future will not be many religions; it will be one religion in many forms.”
This idea is the core principle of our emerging “Interspirit Alliance” — http://interspirit.net
Could there possibly be “one universal foundation” for this vast global diversity? We are inquiring into that possibility.
http://interspirit.net/alliance/axismundi.cfm
Blessings to all from Santa Barbara
– Bruce
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Michael writes: The future will not be made up of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists following different religions. The future will be made up of human beings walking the path of awakening, love, and surrender in one of its many unique expressions.
The future will not be many religions; it will be one religion in many forms.
Thank you, Matthew.
This theme you suggest is fascinating: “The future will not be many religions; it will be one religion in many forms.”
This idea is the core principle of our emerging “Interspirit Alliance” — http://interspirit.net
Could there possibly be “one universal foundation” for this vast global diversity? We are inquiring into that possibility.
http://interspirit.net/alliance/axismundi.cfm
Blessings to all from Santa Barbara
– Bruce
****
Matthew writes: The future will not be made up of Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists following different religions. The future will be made up of human beings walking the path of awakening, love, and surrender in one of its many unique expressions.
The future will not be many religions; it will be one religion in many forms.