Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

Yes all...

I have not been posting for some time as I have been in a rather contemplative mood as of late.  These notes are what I have been meditating on for the past weeks.  May you draw as much strength from these ideas as I do.

This is my heart..open for all to see.

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Love is sweet, devotion is sweeter, surrender is sweetest.  Love is sweet.  I have felt this in my mothers spontaneous love for me.
Devotion is sweeter.  I have discovered this truth in my mother's pure devotion towards the perfection of my life
Surrender is sweetest.  I have realized this truth in my mother's constant surrender towards the fulfillment of my joy.
Again, love is mighty, devotion is mightier, surrender is mightiest.
Love is mighty.  This truth I feel when I look at my father's face.
Devotion is mightier.  This truth I discover when I sit at my father's feet.
Surrender is mightiest.  This truth I discover when I live in the breath of my father's will.
Love, devotion and surrender, St. Augustines has blessed us with a profound message..."Love and then do what you like"

Our mind thinks this is absolutly true.  Our heart feels that this is undeniably true.  But unfortunatly in our day-to-day life we are not able to practice it.  That is to say, we do not know what love is.  We do not know why we love something or someone.  Finally...we do not know how to love.

What is love??  From the spiritual and inner point of view, love is self-expression.  Human love binds and is bound.  Divine Love expands and enlarges itself.  Here we are dealing with Divine Love.

Devotion is the intensity of love and surrender is the fulfillment of love.  Why do we love?  We love because at every moment we are pinched with hunger to realize the highest, to feel the unmost, to be consciously one with the universe, with the Truth, Light, Peace and Bliss, and to be completly fulfilled.

How to love?  If we love with a view to achieving something from others, then our love is no love.  Love means constant self-offering on the strength of our own inner aspiration.

This world of ours needs peace, joy, bliss, harmony and understanding.  Many ones feel that here on earth there is no light, no truth, no divinity - nothing of the sort.  All the divine qualities, all aspects of the Most High, are in the skies, in the deep blue skies...not here.  This is what many feel.  Hence we always look up high for help.    Many one feel Jah is in heaven, not on earth and to rescue us, Jah will come down into the world.  He is not to be found here on earth.  Here we are wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance.  There can be no light, no truth here.

But we must realize that Jah, being Omnipresent, is here too.  He is within us.  He is also without.  In the inmost recesses of our heart, we feel His living Presence.  Bless.

As we all know, George Bernard Shaw has warned us, "Beware of the man whose God is in the skies".  But our God is everywhere.  He is not only in heaven, He is also here on earth and within us, for us.

Surrender.  Surrender is our perfection.  We begin our journey at the very commencment of our life.  We surrender our existence to our parents and get, in return, protection.  We listen to our parents.  We surrender to their will, to their advice and suggestions and we are protected...well protected.  Joy boundless we feel in our day to day life when we are children...Why?  Because we surrender our personal will, our own inner thinking, to our parents and immediatly we recieve joy plus protection.  In protection is joy and in joy is protection.  Bless.

Now in the evening of our lives, what happens?  If we follow the inner life and the spiritual life, in the evening our our life we also surrender.  To whom?  To the inner pilot, the Most High...Jah Rastafari.  At the end our our journey we surrender our very breath to the Supreme.  Then we again get joy, perfect joy, unalloyed joy.

To quote Dante..."The happiest man is he who can connect the evening of his life with the begining."  

Now, if we are all sincere seekers of the ultimate Truth, then our journey begins with surrender to our parents, our well wishers, our dearest and nearest ones.  When we surrender our existence to them, we get joy in abundant measure.  Then, when we walk along the path of spirituality, at every moment we try to listen to the dictates of our inner being.  The more we listen to our inner being, thegreater is our joy, and the higher our fulfillment.  And then, when our term is over, when we have to enter into another world for a short rest, if we can consciously surrender to Jah's Will, ours will be the supreme joy, the glory supreme..infinete.  Bless.

It is difficult to love mankind.  It is difficult to devote ourselves to mankind.  It is difficult to surrender ourselves to mankind.  This is true, in the same way, it is difficult to love God, to serve God, to devote ourselves to God.

Now why?  The simple reason is that we want to posses and be possesed.  We are constintly making ourselves victims of ignorance.  That is to say, our desires can never be fulfilled.  We have countless desires.  Jah will fulfill only those desires that will be of some use, from which we will derive benifet.  If He were to fulfill our countless desires, then He would be doing an injustice to our aspiring souls. He knows what is best for us and he has given to us beyond our capacity, unfortunatly we are not always aware of this.

St.Francis, from his own experience, has offered a unique truth to the world at large..."He who thinks that God's Love is inadequate is very greedy."  We are all really greedy people.  If we go deep within, we see, we feel, we realize that God has given us more than we need and, needless to say, more than we deserve.

Love, devotion and surrender.  These are the three rungs in the spiritual ladder, or shall we say, the ladder of our evolving consciousness.  

A tiny drop enters into the ocean and becomes the mighty, the boundless ocean.  Unfortunalty, in the west, surrender is misunderstood.  We feel that if we surrender to someone, he will then lord it over us.  We have no individualty or personalty.  From the ordinary point of view, this is true I guess.  But from the spiritual point of view, it is absolutly wrong.  When the finite enters into the infinte, it becomes the infinite all at once.  When a tiny drop enters into the ocean, we cannot trace the drop...it becomes the mighty ocean.

India's greatest poet, in my opinion, Rabindrananth Tagore said..."He who loves finds the door open."  So our hearts do is already open to those who really, truly and soulfully love.  Jah loves us out of His Infinite Bounty, and His Heart's Door is always wide open.  Just because He is all love, we approach him.  He is our dearest, not because He is Omniscient and Omnipotent, but just because He is all Love.

Love, Devotion, Surrender.
To serve and never be tired is love.
To learn and never be filled is devotion.
To offer and never to end is surrender.
Love is man's reality.
Devotion is man's divinity.
Surrender is man's immortality.
Reality is all pervading.
Divinity is all elevating.
Immortality is all fullfilling.

Let us give thanks to the Most High, Jah Rastafai for this ever precious gift of life and let us not waste another moment of it on trivial issues that do not progress our being.

Give thanks continually...

..Kingston..

"JAH IS LOVE"  -1 John 4:8  

i am not certain of the context which u have used the word surrender but i will address it from the words that u have used. I disagree with ur concept of the journey towards truth beginning with surrender. Surrender means to admit defeat, to give up, to yield. And thus i have no intentions of giving in to anyone, neither my parents or well wishers. The road to hell is paved with well wishing and good intentions. I do not see the journey of truth as being that of surrendering to ignorance. I see the journey towards truth as being that of never surrendering, but constantly refining character and learning from the struggle for greater.

later on, u go on to talk about surrenderin to the inner pilotwhich is much different to the context is which u used surrender above:

I can more relate to this concept, even though to many surrendering to the Most High, could just be a very abstract concept permeated with ignorance, with no real bearing or process towards achieving God-consciousness.



For me, love is truth,and it is not always sweet and soft,as we are conditioned to believe. Love accepts nothing less than the best that we can do. And if ones come short, with less than their best, love can seem very harsh, cold and abrupt. Love encourages us to be the best we can be. It is quite easy for many to talk about love and throw all these love words around, but in actuality, to realize love, is to realize truth which is the true nature of ourselves. Thus love is the process of discovering the ourselves, and thus discovering the universe. It was pointed out to me once that if people use all thise nice words to describe and talk about love, what words will they use when they really discover true love?


For most people, because they lack knowledge and experience of their higher selves,what they term love is a binding, conditional form of bondage. But human beings have the ability to transcend this ignorance and realize true love which is essential truth. Thus divine love and human love can be one and the same.


Yes, this could be said,  but non of the above could exist without the presence of truth. Furthermore, there are many that downplay the  importance of reasoning certain critical issues which they term divisive, hateful or trivial and thus ignore certain realities and experiences that are necessary in achieving love(freedom)


My concept of God is different. I do not conssider God to be male and thus do not refer to God as 'he'. I consider it a symbol of male patriachial arrogance that represented God as male. God to me consists of both male and female energy, that is present in everone.I do not view divinity as apart from my self, but a integral part of my self that i work towards manifesting totally.

thought provoking post!!!

Tyehimba

Kingston,

Do you tend to think that if you say you surrendered to Love (Universal Love I assume) that people around will just believe what you say regardless of what your daily rhetoric and/or actions are?

Those who understand the power of Universal Love will do everything in their power to achieve it. However, those who still want to sway other people need to start educating themselves about the self-interest inbuilt and maybe will they erupt meaningful therapeutics for relieving their own selfishness (ignorance) and connect at last with Universal Love (Wisdom).

Bantu Kelani.

Give thanks for your contributions...  This is what I wanted to see.

Tyehimba...

Surrender and what I mean.  

When I am using this term I am refering to te idea of the negative ego that each of us posess and some of us are wise enough to lose.  Think of when you were still a youth.  Don't you remember how wonderful life was and how vibrant things felt and how real the world seemed.  No compare that to how you felt before you dedicated you life to the Lord.  Me, I felt a lack of aim and as such life become troublesome.  When I was young, I lived from the heart and as such worries were kept to a minimum.  I didn't understand what worrying was and this is because I had the knowledge that my parents were going to have my best interests in mind at all times and they would keep me from going down the negative paths that allow such an ego to develop.  My parents were my protectors and I, consciously or unconsciously, gave them this power and it was a wonderful feeling.

In the evening of our lives...or the latter years...we are to fend for ourselves but now our actions have departed from our hearts and taken up residence in our minds.  We, now consciously, have the knowledge and understanding to choose which path to follow and, as you said you can relate, Jah can be our protector and guider.

To me the only difference is in the evening we have the choice to lead from our hearts or minds and by using our minds we can understand the the only path worth travelling is the path that is heart centred...Jah centred.

Of course I understand that not all people able travelling the same roads in life.  This is simply my experience and a common experience from what I understand.

You also brought up the importance of reasoning in order to obtain freedom.  I can definetly agree with this idea as without conscious develpoment and knowledge of self, one can not understand who and where one is in life thus having no idea of where they are going either.

About my concept of God.  Please understand that I am limeted by the words contained in the english language.  This language is very limiting with respect to "emotion" words and "descriptive" words.  Ask any who speak another one and they will definetly say that english is a cold language.  The inuit in northern Canada have over 200 words for snow...I can only think of a handful in english.  I do not see God as a male sitting in a throne in a sky and am more drawn to the idea of an all knowing energy composed of male and female understandings.  I used God, Jah, Lord, Supreme and He interchangibly here. I could have used only one term but the writer in me can not do that.  It was not to be taken in that manner.

B.K.

As I stated in the note, I feel love is only the first step.  Next is devotion followed by surrender.  I am not on the love field anymore I have moved down the street to surrender.  And I am more refering to a surrender to God.  Now, of course I see God in every person on this planet and I have chosen to reckognize this and live in accordance to that idea.  But lets face it, I am human and I do make errors.  We all do.  It is not my plan to convince people of what I am saying here. That said, I do try to live my life by examples shown through my daily actions as this is what I have chosen to do with my time here on earth.

We should hang out some time and you can see for yourself.  I am sure we could have a wonderful time.

I'll say it again, I am not trying to get people to belive what I am saying.  This was simply what I have been thinking about over the past weeks.  My heart open for all to see...remember?

Give thanks to everyone reading this.

..Kingston..