Every morning, I check the news online. I like to see what's going on in the rest of the world. This morning, I was on Digg.com and came across an article titled, "The World's 60 Failed Countries". And I thought, "Failed countries? What does that mean?" So I clicked.
This article actually turned out to be a slide show of pictures of what life is like in these countries. I sat there in deep sadness as I watched picture after picture of poverty, violence and misery morph across my laptop. And I asked myself, "Why do we tolerate this?" And my spirit rose up against the word "tolerate". All of a sudden, I found that the word "tolerate" caused me deep distress. I was puzzled. Don't we in the USA live in a society that preaches tolerance? Isn't tolerance supposedly the vehicle through which we unite society?
All of this buzzed around in my head for a couple of hours and all of a sudden, I received two bits of understanding at the same time. The first bit of understanding concerned the ascension process that is supposed to raise mankinds level of consciousness. I don't think it works the way most people thinks it does. If you look at how the universe functions now, it literally does NOTHING FOR us; instead, what it does is create an environment and provide materials and opportunity. For example: nature does not plant our crops and it does not weed our gardens nor does it harvest that which we plant. Instead, nature provides the soil and seed, it provides the sun and the rain. But it is our responsibility to plant and nurture and harvest.
So while the universe may provide the ENERGIES for us to change, ultimately, it is our responsibility to plant the seeds for change and to nurture that change so that we may reap the harvest from the change. It is not enough to sit back and wait for the arrival of these energies to change us; we are still required to do some work ourselves.
So what does this have to do with the article I read and the effect the word "tolerate" had on me? I believe the energies of change are here. I believe we will find ourselves "led" or "prompted" or provided with the opportunity to rethink EVERYTHING; not just the obvious "wrongs" in this world, but also what we collectively accept as "right".
The word "tolerate" implies that we "pretend to accept that which we truly do not"! And the actual definition is: To put up with; endure. In order to say we "tolerate" something we first have to judge that "something" as "unpleasant enough to warrant our tolerance". We "tolerate" the in-laws. We "tolerate" the pain at the dentist's office. We "tolerate" different races, religions and cultures.
And as I thought about this I realized it was wrong. I am a contractor and I travel for my job. Everyone in my office does. We are all far from our families. My co-workers are Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddist, Agnostic and Uranchurian. We are from India, Italy, China, Thailand, Germany, Ukraine. And we do NOT TOLERATE each other. We ACCEPT each other. We accept. There is nothing to "tolerate". We simply accept. So I tried to determine how such a diverse group of people remained united. And the answer is that we are not united under a common flag or a common religion or a common culture; rather we are united under a common cause. For true unity to occur, there needs to be a cause that transcends race, religion and culture. So these seeds of "acceptance" are what I'm planting for the ascension process. These seeds of acceptance I plant will be nurtured.
This policy of "tolerance" that we have embraced as a vehicle to peace and unity has been more damaging than we ever imagined. It forced peoples negative emotions, hatreds, prejudices underground. And people walk around talking love and light and smiling and yet beneath the surface, dark negative emotions churn and tumble and eventually, if change does not happen, all of this will errupt. Tolerance has not solved the problem; it has merely allowed us to deny its existance. If we "don't talk about it; it will go away". Has that approach EVER worked?
As I thought about the concept of "acceptance" I had a difficult time finding anything hard about it. To me, it is an amazingly simple concept. Why should I care what someone else eats or wears or believes as long as no one is hurt and I am free to chose what I will eat and wear and believe?
gently,laura
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