On mobile? Click here to view the flipbook with live links.
Welcome to the January 2017 edition of Parvati Magazine.
I recently asked my mother whether she felt the world was crazier now than when she was young, or that the underbelly of the human psyche is simply more visible today due to the power of our media. She gasped, then immediately responded that people are much more on edge and violent today. I recently had the privilege of meeting a 92-year-old World War 2 British marine vet. I asked him the same question. He too felt that the world is more intense now, even more so than when he went through the devastating war
The world today seems polarized and divided. There is an undoubtable prevalence of global darkness, exemplified by the increase in radical groups that seek to kill and destroy. There is also a growing effulgence of luminosity, which I feel when I when I choose to turn my focus to that which is eternal. There is so much pain, and so much grace, available to us all in this unprecedented time. The choice of which to focus on is up to us. What we choose now affects how we experience this moment, and determines what our future brings. Peace in the world begins with each one of us.
In this month’s issue, you will find articles to help you develop ease of being and inner peace.
Peaceful living is rooted in “non-resistance to what is”, that is, receptivity to what this moment brings. Virtually every second each day, our ego-minds are busy filtering our experiences through the lens of our perceptions, that are wired to support our limited beliefs so that we feel safe and secure. Our egos thrive on feeling separate and divided, taking all opportunities to attach a sense of “me” to an idea, action or circumstance. We do this so that we may feel more powerful than this moment, because in some ways, we fear what this moment offers. “This good/bad thing happened/will happen because I did/will do this good/bad thing.” Do we not all think like this at times?
When we resist the moment, we feed our sense of separate self and inevitably suffer and cause suffering. But when we open to what is, our monochrome, ego-driven world transforms into a technicolour world of boundless possibilities. We see that our limited self, our sense of “me” that we thought was divided, is only a temporal illusion sustained by our attachments. Our deeper, eternal self is an integral part of an intelligent, loving whole, no more or less important than anything else in existence. We are literally one with the fabric of life.
Love yourself.
Love others.
Love our world.
We are one Earth family.
Parvati