Happy Spring…we have passed the balance point of light and dark. As the light increases, many cultures honor this time of the seasonal cycles with festivals of fire, which are usually conducted on the first day of May. Hope spreads anew! Ironically, this spring of 2002, as the solar light increases each day, bathing the earth in its warm embrace, the darkness of hate and abuse that has been building for decades, centuries and Millennia is rapidly oozing from the cracks of Humanities shattered vessel, foretelling the prophecies that a major rupture is just over the horizon.

And underlying the forces that are propelling Humanity into the chasm of suffering and destruction is institutionalized religion, whether it be the scourge of pedophile priests or the "my God versus your God" silliness, which is really about materialistic economic greed and the power that seemly comes from that finite paradigm of material accumulation.

CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney summed it up best (the Catholic church’s sexual misconduct) in his closing statement during his weekly commentary on CBS 60 minutes of March 31, 2002 titled Those Rotten Apples:

 "…At first the story seemed to be about just one bad apple in Boston who had sexually abused a lot of young boys. Then, it slowly became clear, one story after another, that the problem was bigger than that, that it exists almost everywhere there are Catholic Churches. Church choirs were a hunting ground for pedophile priests…

The pledge of celibacy demanded of priests assumes that sexual desire can be suppressed by resolve. The fact is, sex isn't something a person can decide not to have or promise not to have and then never have it. They might as well have ordered church bells not to ring when struck.

Religions have always been concerned with sex in strange ways. Circumcision is an arcane rite in some religions that I never understood.

We're all sinners according to the Catholic Church. Jesus and the woman known as "the Virgin Mary" are the only two people considered to be free of Original Sin. I don't know whether original sin had anything to do with sex or not.

One of the biggest changes that ever took place affecting our lives was when people found ways to have sex without having babies. The Catholic Church has never accepted artificial birth control, never accepted the idea that sex was okay to have just for pleasure. Good Catholics either have to ignore their church or have a lot of babies…
 
It seems as though the Catholic Church should change its rules - let priests marry and let women be priests. There's talk about it but it probably won't happen because if it did, the Church would be admitting it's been wrong for hundreds of years and if it’s been wrong about that, it might be wrong about some other things."

In this explosive corrupt world of 2002, where can we ever find peace and justice? The answer is within us. This is our source of love and power. Hierarchies, whether they are a church, a culture or a government, will never change. Hierarchal structures will only dissolve when they have only a few followers that will allow them to “lord over” them.

What can each one of us do? Follow our own truth. Be free and walk the Path of Divine Humanity. To begin you may want to consider Entering the Path. This means making a spiritual pact/contract/vow to yourself. Not to some patriarchal hierarchy, but to your own heart covering the following four aspects:

1. Maintain constant awareness of your actions, the actions of others (which are not to be taken personally), and the actions of the earth and the heavens. This is the vow of Baby Eyes. This is the vow of Humanity.
2. Recognize, honor and respect the power of speech being impeccable in your words. Listening more often than talking. Hear, perceive and understand. This is the vow of True Talk. This is the vow of Humanity.
3. Commit to do the best that you can with each action of your life bringing beauty to yourself and others while expressing your heart as a flower. This is the vow of Flower Heart. This is the vow of Humanity.
4. Agree to shift your attention from fear (our first attention—human up-bringing) to love (our second attention—divine essence). Energy flows where attention goes. This is the vow of Divinity.

The First Pathway of Divine Humanity is Forgiveness

The following is a beginning spiritual exercise:

Recognize that you are an energy body (as are all things) or a vibration of love/light. You must begin to reclaim the energy (love/light) that you lost in all past encounters with others in your journey of life. Do an inventory of your past by identifying each encounter (where you lost your energy--love/light) and then forgive each incident by using techniques such as the Sunset Ritual and Dropping the Stone. You must reclaim your power of love/light. Let Go and Reclaim.

May 2002