20 November 2025 Recognising the Divine
You are divine. All sentient life is divine. There is no reason for any of us to bow a knee to another. There is no reason for any of us to use honorific titles for another. None are below any other. The divine spark is in all.
Elevating Others
When you elevate others with superficial cultural acts, you are lowering yourself. When you treat others as better than yourself, you perpetuate the artificial distinctions that are the basis of war, classism, genderism, sexism, racism, specisism, and so many more seeds of violence.
Live in the Divinity of All
Celebrate life by celebrating all life. Live in the joy of our interrelatedness. Live in the joy of the dependent arising we have all shared on this planet. When you elevate the divine in others, you never lower yourself - you are always elevated.
18 November 2025 Tired of Saying “Sorry”
I was at a meeting with other Australians the other day and one woman decided that she wanted to share with the group that she was, “tired of saying sorry to Aboriginals.” I fought my urge to respond sarcastically and searched for the words useful in the context, as I felt strong emotion want to take over.
People who think they are tired of discussing injustices are generally the people to whom these injustices did not happen. The wrongs you think of as former are still happening. When families are destroyed, there are transgenerational effects.
For thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians had structures for dealing with everything from family to conflict. That is, they had culture. We came in and undermined their societies and there are lasting effects.
The Aggressor Doesn’t Get to Decide
When the historic aggressors (white Australians, in this case) get tired of hearing about former wrongs, they don’t get to shift the subject. The issue is when the victims are ready to end a conversation about those things done to them - not when you are ready to move on. Restoration and repair don’t happen that way. You trying to force the end of someone else’s suffering is you continuing the control that started the suffering in the first place.
Current Wrongs
The wrongs have not ended. During my response to the woman in question, I remarked that, “When I arrived in Australia and stepped off the plane, I had more rights than people who had been here for 40,000 years.” There are systemic patterns in place that keep me as a white person dominant in Australia. This is a current acting out of the wrongs of the past. I have privileges that I shouldn’t necessarily have, just because I am not Aboriginal Australian.
If I was like this woman, I could have said something like, “I arrived in Australia in 1996, so I am not responsible for those attrocities!” The reality is, however, that as a white Australian, I share in the benefits of what was done to others. I also share in the responsibility.
Making Things Right
Do you want to make things right? Stop telling victims that they should move on. Try to understand in some small way the suffering and struggles they have endured. Look for ways to help another person.
You do not get to say when the conversations should end.
I am sorry.
06 November 2025 The Eternal Now
Paradise is here. It always has been. We only have to open our hearts to it. The abyss is also here, if our hearts are full of darkness. These are not locations - they are creations of our own spirits.
Creating the Kingdom
We lament the suffering in the world, but we create it. We imagine monsters, evil people and others are the cause of the world’s suffering, but we are ourselves the cause. We kill, torture and exploit other beings and wonder why this world is not paradise!
We have power to create the kingdom, here and now. The kingdom begins within ourselves and radiates out to others. Paradise is within us. That is where it has always been.
You want to create paradise on earth? End the suffering for which you are responsible. There are no devils but ourselves. There are no angels but ourselves.
Be heaven - don’t look for it. It is nowhere else to be found. Don’t wait for it - it is not in the future, but is right here, right now.
You are the key.
19 October 2025 My First Quest
I was eight years old and my older sister had converted to Christianity. I was, fortunately, from a secular family. My maternal grandmother had been religious in her last days, but she died when I was four, so I never encountered any of that. When I was in my 40s, I asked my mum about her mother’s later religious period and my mum said, “I guess when she got tired of whoring, it was something else do do.” I laughed. This was my family’s way - a honestly that many “upright” cannot tolerant, but something I have grown to appreciate. That is not to say that my maternal grandmother was a whore - far from it from what I can understand - but rather that my mother thought the question was boring. Religion was a topic that was beyond boring for my family. It was never mentioned, except by my older sister.
So, she converted and began to tell me the stories. To be honest, they sounded a bit dodgy to this eight year old - parting water, a baby without a man involved, etc. She kept after me and eventually, I thought something along the lines of, “At least it might be something to do in this boring town!” I converted and my conversion was as honest as there ever was.
We were Baptists, so of course this involved immersion in water. I attended church as a child, but as I got older and began masturbating for hours at a time, I found less time for the stories.
At sixteen, I had a heart-felt revival and began to read the text and pray daily. In retrospect, it was a real waste of my teenager energies, but it was at least something that kept me out of small town trouble.
