What can you tell us about Love One Another?

It's a movement, a campaign, with a business aspect  and it's designed to encourage and remind people to LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  The logo on the the LOA website is the brand and reminder.

What difference does it make?  Why should we "love one another?"  Really, how is this helping change the world?

It makes a difference if you focus on it and place your attention on it.  Despite the fact that great spiritual masters  - Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and I believe Mohammed too - have said Love One Another in the vernacular of their teachings, very few have understood or embraced this idea.  It's almost been relegated to the realm of platitudes.  That's pretty harsh, I know, but I believe it's true despite the fact that Religion Founders, Saints, Avatars, spiritual teachers, and poets have placed "love one another" in their teachings and also in their art.  If you look you'll find much evidence as to the power and effect of Love One Another.

The best proof is, of course, your own experience.  Love One Another has to be brought into your experience and your awareness.  It must be the context in which you view all content and you will eventually witness the content transforming.  That transformation allows for Love, Presence, Non-Judgment and even Bliss.  It is the original integral theory that excludes nothing but reacts appropriately in the moment, in any situation.  You may still have something harsh to say to someone but the context is always love.  Jesus and Buddha admonished their disciples and generations but they loved them and said we are to be like them, a Jesus, a Buddha.   That's the point isn't it?  Rise to their level.  Do greater works.

We can only do that when we Love One Another and the greater works only come when, I believe, all or a critical mass, a tipping point, uses the context and content of Love One Another.  It will change everything.  And is in the process of changing things NOW in the noosphere where conscious beings are infusing the over all consciousness field with Love for One Another.  Of course that may sound airy fairy but see for yourself.  Only Love can see Love, though.  That's the trick.

Emerson said "The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.”  Damned skippy, it hasn't.  It's never been tried by any sizable portion of any population either, except on some level Tibetan culture and it's practice of Kindness.  I believe we are only now ripening to the point where we can see the import of this idea and the reasons to practice it, and it is a transformative practice, in the same vein as meditation or contemplative prayer.

The cool thing is the Great Masters, Saints, and Avatars never really gave us a “How To” regarding how to Love One Another.  Just Do It was the message.  So we kind of have to go on the vast adventure ourselves and I believe it's immensely personal and tailor-made to you and your experience but it will have universal commonalities but more of us need to practice that to see what emerges.  It's very leading edge, kind of like Spiral Dynamics and Turquoise altitude in nature to use Integral speak.  But I don't want to debate KDub (Ken Wilber) and get intellectually squished like the neophyte bug I am.

How does humor play into your business model and vision?

Good Lord Gracious girl, what business model?   I'm freaking winging it.  Humor is paramount for me but not so easy to intelligently input into the message.  I think you have go in phases and build the brand and constantly expand the vision of which I hope humor is a
big part. 

What are the challenges?

It's hard to explain but when I get Rod out of the way wonderful things happen.  Hopefully then people will begin to see the power of the message which literally changes everything.  And I mean that sincerely.  This was handed to me and it feels bigger than me so I try to get out of the way.  I'm learning.

And how does loving one another help the individual?  What do "I" get out of it?

It helps you to the degree you use and investigate it.  Love, not in the egoic or romantic or sentimental sense, but in the Sacred Divine sense makes all the difference and is simply all there is.  It is GOD, Being, Presence, NOW…ALL THERE IS - now and always.  Tap into it with all your heart, mind, and soul just as you've been told to by the Great Masters.  Just as you've been told to by that still, small voice within you.  You know the one.  It's not the one that says "go shopping, eat that, that jerk's an a-hole, I've been wronged, I'm right."  That voice we're all familiar with.  The other Sacred one, not as much.  So we've got some listening to do and some action to take from that listening and wonderfully it's the same thing…LOVE ONE ANOTHER.  That's why I'm attempting what I'm attempting.  Help me, please.  It's more fun that you can imagine, seriously.  There are bumps, oh yes, but with Love the bumps become great rides.  So let's ride Cowboys and Cowgals…YEEEEEHAAAAAAA!!!!

Okay, Rod, this has been an illuminating conversation.  I'd like to know what your message is for zaadzsters out there.

Love One Another....that's it.  What else is there?

FYI, LOA's first national ad is coming out in this month's What is Enlightenment? magazine, so keep your eyes open and show your support to Rod and the campaign in whatever way you can!

Ladies, listen up.  Ready to tell your story to a big, friendly audience?  Have something you need to get off your chest?  A message of peace?  An offering you'd like to make to change the world?

Now accepting applications for December/January PerspectivZ (short) and interviews (long).  zMail Gwen and let her know a little about you/your story.  You could be the next interviewee!  Won't that be awesome!

-G

I finished out a moleskine for the first time this year (and no, people, gosh, it is not made out of real moles).  The last few pages were like finishing a marathon.  I told myself when I started it on December 18, 2005, that I'd finish it before that date in 2006.  Goal met!  The final pages turned out to be a reflection on the year/my personal growth & development.  I share it with you now because I like you.  And you've been good to me this year.  What a wild ride.
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Now is as good a time as any to finish out this notebook.  A year to the day since I started writing in it.  2005-2006.  What a year!  What an incredible time of growth and spiritual development.  A shake of the snow globe.  Another cycle.  And now here I am in Boulder.  Beautiful, slow, easy Boulder.  Grounding Boulder.  The mountains simplify everything.  The sun shines for a few hours and for those hours, light bounces off every surface and I can reflect.

I'm moving toward the middle path.  It is a slow process but doesn't hurt anymore.  Tonglen and sitting brings clarity.  When there is no clarity, I accept that, too.  It's been a year of learning to accept.  The work has barely begun.  I have a long way to go and it's going to be the rest of my life accepting and loving others, developing wisdom, seeing the world as it is.  Seeing myself as I am.  I am that I am that I am that I am.

Let me continue on the path.  Let me keep my heart open when the defenses go up.  See the knives come out.  Watch.  That witness is a step in the right direction.  And even when it feels like I'm fucking it all up.  Even when I feel like I'm hitting walls in others (because it's never them with walls; it's always me).  Even when I feel there is no clear way.  I do something.  Do anything.

Jump.
Plunge
Make a loud, thunderous, huge mistake.
Drop down into it
Fuck it up.
It's okay!

There are no wrong turns.  It's all the path.  It's all the practice.  Even when it feels like there is not truth in it there always is.  Can I look closer?  Can I look deeper?  Can I look under it, into it, through it?  Can I see that the parts that hurt the worst - lying in bed with my lover and being told:  you don't always have to be strong, crying then laughing, that is part of the practice, too?

It's all practice!

So I keep practicing and growing and I keep learning and teaching.  I incorporate what I see as truth.  I gently let go when it is not mine, when it's not my truth. 

I learn to let go gracefully.  No grasping; gently and completely.  When I transition I do so with my eyes and heart and arms open.  I prepare for one million embraces.  I know one day I will embrace my child and then they will grow and I will let go because they will start on a path the way I did twenty-five years ago.  And they will hurt and ache and cry and I will witness that and allow it to just be.  Then I will die and they will grow and they will die and the next generation will do the same and so it goes.

And so it goes.
I am that I am.

How do I hold on tight to this world and let go at the same time?  How do I plan and let things unfold as they will?  How do I stay on the path?  I just do.  I just follow my heart.  I just put one foot in front of the other.  I become my own teacher.  I already am.  And I listen to the voice that speaks truth every moment of every day - without fail.  The more silent and still I am the easier it gets for me to hear that voice. Let me continue to drop down into that voice, to recognize my own truth.  To see my own dharma.  To share what I can in the most skillful way possible.  I know that I can and that the the teacher is within me and all around me.  That she speaks.

It is hard to say what is next and I prefer it that way.  I'm moving into my own fear.  There is no complacency.  I'm actively engaged except for when I'm not.

No resistance.
No running from truth.

I'll hold my own hand and walk through this life because I know no other way.  Mom is with me - her spirit - which is linked to some divine spirit that's bigger, way more powerful way more knowledgeable than I.  I don't have the answers.  I only have the questions - many of which are half-formed and open-ended and some of them will never be answered.  I don't care.  I'll keep asking until the answer arises and know that though there is fear and though there is suffering there is also something bigger than that - Truth.  I'll seek truth until I see that the only truth is that there is no truth and that it's all truth.  Write over what was there before and come to a place where writing words on the air is sufficient.  Then go beyond that and understand that truth is actually ineffable and all of this was just practice for the real truth that is in the tiniest pebble, in his pinkie finger, in an inhalation and an exhalation.  And then that ends and we stop breathing and the truth is that we never stop we go on endlessly in cycle after cycle of suffering until we finally break the cycle of samsara in an instant, in just the briefest moment - snap! - we're enlightened and suffering ends and we know truth and what we see after countless centuries and lifetimes of suffering is that we are truth, all things are truth.

The end.