12.16.15 Seeking a Path Through "Us vs. Them"

This last week was most certainly a challenge to inner peace... with family losses and those throughout the world, the most media-evident ones being in Paris, at Garrissa University in Kenya and in Beirut.

This morning I found some solace in a meditation led by Deepak Chopra entitled "Belief Embraces All Differences". Here are some of his messages:

"In parts of the world where people are divided and hostile, their faith and deepest beliefs have been distorted and constricted. When it isn't distorted, belief is one of the strongest forces for uniting in a common purpose and vision."

"The most divisive belief is 'us vs. them'. The most uniting belief is that humanity is one family.... 'Us vs. them' begins in the ego's desire to feel safe. The ego feels safe with the known and unsafe with the unknown... By clinging to only what it knows, the ego shuts out an entire world of human experience."

"The human family should be source of joy. When you find this joy in yourself, you become a unit of peace for the entire world."

"Once you share and unite with other people, the ego loses its sense of being separate and insecure."

"Open your awareness to see how alike you are with other people and how alike they are with you... It is through small gestures that we begin to express the common spirit that unites everyone."