Why?
The Light Within Project, a philanthropic extension of Everyday Mystic, which combines my Sacred Energy Art and channeled messages was created to, hopefully, bring additional warmth and caring to incarcerated men and women—to remind them that they are not forgotten. The messages of forgiveness, acceptance and love are not new, but the power of those words alongside the art seems to enable the recipient to more readily internalize them.
As a result of this work I have been introduced to some remarkable individuals, one of whom asked: “Why do priests, imams, preachers, and other representatives always preach patience, non-violence, and forgiveness to the people who are being attacked, but never take that message to the people and institutions doing the attacking?”
Not knowing the answer, I mediated on it. Jesus chose to answer:
Love speaks softly. It doesn’t shout. The ego-bearing souls upon whose ears it (love) falls do not hear its call. Love speaks to the soul, but whose soul is awake to the call? It is often those souls who are in pain. The rest use their station in life as a foundation of false superiority, as if they alone are responsible for their success. Their success provides a feedback loop of self-righteousness that further feeds their ego. Their sanctimony and their laws become self-justified. Those same laws become the gates and fences that keep others out. Who are the others? They are all who do not fit into their self-defined castles of glory. Do they not understand that we are castles made unto ourselves—that we are the castles that hold the One Love?
The first problem is that most (not all) religious leaders do not want you to know that independent of them and their dogma, you can reach the Most High. They teach fear and repression. But who do they repress? They are most effective at repressing those who are already powerless.
It is not that teachings of patience, forgiveness and non-violence are not taught to the attackers. It is that, just as with the voice of God, not all listen. When they do hear, they hear through their egoic filters.
I would offer that almost all preachers are lecturing through the lens of their egos, and the ego neither speaks nor hears Truth. The ego will always act in its own self-interest. That is true of people as well as institutions. I believe this is why both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the need for purification. Today, we might call this the need to do our shadow work or to become ego-free. In the absence of our egos, we understand that love, patience and forgiveness must be embraced by all, and offered to all, equally. No exceptions.
Photo by Brady Bellini on Unsplash
