Omnia Vincit Amor

I was talking to a friend recently and she mentioned she had been working on writing a villanelle for college. Never having tried to write any real poetry before, let alone a villanelle (known for how difficult they can be), I wanted to give it a try.

I was somewhat pleased with the result, and so I will share it with you good people.

Egothought

The singularity of mankind,
We all are part of the cell,
One body, one thought, one mind.

Our moment, the clock chimed,
The egothought, the self we must quell,
The singularity of mankind.

All of us, in the chaos we find,
We have brought ourselves to this hell,
For millenia, body and spirit bind.

Our thought processes singly lined,
Led to the fall, and how we have fell,
The singularity of mankind.

Our identity, away it’s been signed,
It’s death marked by apathy’s knell,
To be reborn, now comes the time.

The moment has come for us to be kind,
Of love and of peace we must tell,
The singularity of mankind.

One body, one thought, one mind.

Light, love and life to everyone. Expect more activity on Omnia Vincit Amor… I forgot how much I enjoyed writing.

Without me, this world will have never been the same. I have changed the face of this Earth forever.

Hmm, that sounded a little self-important, actually. Maybe I should delete that. Naah, it is the truth, after all. You see, I have changed the world, as have you. Every single day, every moment, we very anti-climactically change the past, present, and future of this world.

Mull over that for a second. Stop and think.

We may not have changed the world in some major way, in fact 99.99% of the world’s population have likely never even heard our names, but without a doubt, you have changed the world in which you live. Is that not an amazing thought, when you really get down to it? Every single one of us has done our part in shaping humanity itself.

So, the question begs to be asked: How have you changed the world? For better, or worse? And once you have pondered that for a short while, then we come to the main point of this post. How would you like to change the world?

Now there is an interesting question. If you had the power, if you had all the resources at your disposal, what would you change to make this world a better place?

“But, but, but… Keith! I don’t have time for fantasizing, for whimsically spending my time imagining what I would do in such an impossible scenario. I could never cure world hunger, I could never bring peace on Earth, that’s what governments are for. Big, powerful people to make big world changes.”

Why not us? After all, the governments have done a pretty crappy job so far, and you have already shown you can change the Earth for the better, if not by a very small amount. What if (and bare with me here)… what if we all did our part? What if we all made a concerted effort to love and be loved? What if this is the only way?
We can’t wait any longer to take this responsibility on our own shoulders.

Now is the time for us to stand up for justice, equality, and peace for all. Right now we have to stand against the tides of ignorance, apathy and hatred that bombard the lush green landscape of humanity every day, threatening our chances of ever living in harmony with each other. We need to take our stand. Together. We are all as the grains of sand on a beach; apart, we will likely be washed away into the sea but together, numbering into the billions, we can change the landscape! We can change the very foundation that humanity is today built upon.

We must all, together as one, make a call for peace! We cannot wait for the world’s governments to take positive action towards this goal. They are corrupt and selfish, greedy, sly. Who do these governments represent? They represent us, the people! Then why do we continue to allow them to dictate war the world over, to put out propaganda, to kill innocent people in our name?

We cannot allow this any more. Christians, Muslims and Atheists, everyone, we must take our stand.

Blacks and whites, everyone, we must make our voices heard.

We must right now shout together, as one, “PEACE AMONG THE NATIONS”, before all is lost. And we, every single one of us, will have a part in changing the face of human-kind in a way that has never been seen on this planet before.

And please, before you dismiss this as the ramblings of an idealist (bordering on end-times nutjob)… consider this: the world really is teetering on the brink of self-destruction. Nuclear weapons are aimed at you and me, all of us, no matter where we are. There are power-hungry madmen poised, trigger-finger at the ready, to unleash hell on Earth. There are armies of hundreds of thousands all waiting for the order to march, to decimate, to destroy at a moment’s notice. All of this, because we, in ignorance and apathy, have allowed those in power to drag humanity this far down. We cannot allow the scale to be tipped any further.

Please, stand up and be heard. Through our thoughts and actions, teach love and harmony to all that surround us. Know the decisions your governments are making (from the local council up to the national government) and vote to make a difference. Vote for peace. Pray for peace. However you can, whatever you believe in, do all that you do for the furthering of love to every one of our fellow people, our brothers, sisters and children.

We are, when all is said and done, all members of the human race. Light, love, and life to every one of you amazing people. Let’s do this.

A few of you may have heard this phrase before, it is often referred to when discussing Zen Buddhism. But, really, what does it mean to “live in the now”? Are we all not living in the present? We’re all walking around, carefully navigating the gauntlet of people in the street, all the while talking to a friend on our cellphone and munching on a hastily bought hotdog between sentences. How much more conscious of the present can we get than doing three things at once?!

This is where we can ask the question: are we really doing these things? “Of course,” I hear you balk, “We just established that!” But, with all that we are doing at that one moment, how much of it are we consciously doing? Every single day, we navigate the same streets, have the same conversations, and eat the same food. Many of us could almost go through a whole day blindfolded! We don’t need to think about these things to do them any more because we have drawn our life’s pattern already. The first time we walked down that street, we drew a map in our mind. Then the next time we traversed it, we drew the map again with a heavier pen. And over time, it becomes etched as if in stone. We know every little nuance of that street, every cracked paving stone, and so as we walk that street for the hundredth time, we can now worry with undivided attention about the meeting we have tomorrow.

This goes for anything in life, no matter what we do. Our lower mind (the brain’s left hemisphere) loves to create and follow patterns, the same as a clock just cannot help itself from alternating between the seemingly eternal ticking and tocking. In working like this, in allowing our minds to work as little more than a pre-programmed machine, we find the most efficient way of doing things. Why? So that we can do these things with only the body being busy, and not the mind being occupied, leaving our thoughts to drift away to far off places; which, oftentimes, just happen to be in the past or future.

In essence, for the most part, we do not live in the “now”, the present. When we are sat eating our pizza, watching the television while thinking of what we have to do at work tomorrow, what are we enjoying? What are we learning? The simple answer, nothing! We get nothing positive from this type of living. We become little more than sentient robots.

Here’s where the fun part comes in. Here is where every day becomes a adventure, an epiphany, or a time to savour the most beautiful meal we have ever had.

In everything you do, no matter what it is, know exactly what you are doing. Think about it. Experience it. Everything is an experience in itself. If you are talking to a friend, switch off the T.V. and listen to them. Listen to every inflection in their voice, listen to the things they say, and listen to the things they do not say. If you are eating a meal, experience every mouthful as if it is a delicacy you have never had the delight of tasting before. If you are driving to work, glance at the sunrise in the morning sky, and just for a moment appreciate it’s true beauty.

With all this said, however, we don’t even need a gourmet meal, a conversation with a friend, or a sunset for us to be able to “live in the now”. We can live consciously every minute of every day, no matter what task we are performing. While we are doing the dishes, doing our work, or even polishing our shoes, we should pay full attention to that moment, and experience it for what it is.

Here’s a little exercise I’d like you to try. I want you to make a meal consciously. Go to the store, buy the ingredients to whatever dish you most enjoy, come home and cook it. With every step you take, experience it. Every vegetable you pick up, feel it’s coldness on your fingertips. Everyone you pass in the grocery store aisle, notice them. No matter what you do, do it in that very moment.

When your meal is made, turn off the television, sit at a table, and just eat. Experience the warmth of every bite, the crunchiness of the bread-crust opposing the softness of the butter soaked bread, every herb and spice you consciously and lovingly cooked into it.

After you have finished enjoying that most beautiful meal, sit for a moment. Relax for a minute, just experience the quietness, still silently enjoying the aroma of the food. Breathe. Experience the breath.

Then slowly stand from the table, and enjoy washing the dishes more than you ever have in your life.

Since “love” has had such a profound effect on my life, I figured it would be a great start to my blog. Although I am no scholar, I have some very strong thoughts on love. What really is love? Why is it so important?

When I left the Jehovah’s Witness organization, I decided to study the Bible to see what I found in there that felt right to me. I quickly realized that the Old Testament did absolutely nothing for me. In fact, I skipped much of it. Every word of it was judgement, filled with stories of how God (Yahweh as he is referred to in the OT) was so jealous, vengeful, even hateful. There was no love there. Other than a few proverbs and the like, since then I have barely so much as looked at the OT.

So, I decided to take a look at the New Testament, and there I found what I was looking for. It was love. This Jesus character appeared there, and he was spreading this really cool message about love. He essentially told us that it is all about love, that it was all that really mattered. In fact, he went as far as to give a couple of commandments to live our lives by. And hey, guess what the commandments were? To love!

Matthew 22:37-39 -

37 Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

As soon as I saw this, it struck such a note with me. This is really all that Jesus asks of us? Wow, I’m liking this dude.

What’s so important about it though? Sure, love makes people feel good, it raises our spirits. But really, what did love actually do for the world? Why did Jesus place so much emphasis on it? In fact, why do so many productive belief systems believe it to be so important?

Well, what if those couple of things I mentioned above are exactly what it did for the world? You see, we should not by any means underestimate the power of love. It is an amazing things that does so many things to us. Let’s take a quick look at what love can do.

• Reduce stress, leading to lower blood pressure, higher immune response, a general good feeling
• Lead to truly altruistic actions, helping others for the sake of helping them
• Spread! When you put a smile on someone’s face, that person likely will feel more like going out and putting a smile on someone else’s face.
• Not only can being loved have a positive effect on us, even the act of showing love can have a very good effect on us

As you can see, love has a very profound effect on every part of us. Not only mentally and emotionally, it also affects our physiology! And on a grander scale, it can spread far and wide and affect the very society we live in. What is there not to love about love?

There is also new evidence that love can also have a quantifiable effect in a very physical way. Research by Dr. Masaru Emoto has found some amazing things about the effects of love and hate on water droplets. Yep… you read it right, love and hate can affect the shape that forms when water is frozen.

Dr. Emoto took samples of water, and had groups of people direct certain thoughts and intentions to them. Here is a photo of a water sample that was quickly frozen after having a group of people direct the thought “Love and Gratitude” at it.

Beautiful, is it not? Perfectly formed. Shimmering, crystallized beauty. If I could think of the perfect winter, this would be the shape of every snowflake I would want to fall.

Well, there is also the opposite of love, that being hate. What happens when we project hate to something as simple as a droplet of water? Surely it can’t affect the structure of the water too significantly? Take a look. Here is a droplet of water frozen after Dr. Emoto had the thought “You Make Me Sick” projected at it.