Phew!
There are some stories here.
Troubles too, and wishes of better but concern that hopes will be a long time being realised.
With all that we read above, and aspirations for the future, I'd like to risk some words of encouragement and focus for all in good times to work towards, and which can release those in bad times from the apparently overpowering troubles suffered.
As a physicist, I look at how matter comes together, and when recognised, the behaviour of people can be similar with similar effects.
At below the atomic level, three quarks work together to make a proton. The particles that don't work together have never produced anything. Because of the quarks making protons, argumentative, negative, repellant little beasties that don't like working with each other called electrons are tamed, making atoms. Atoms either work together making molecules, or they don't, and they're everywhere else but here. Molecules work together, even to make proteins, DNA, genes - and they all either work together to produce matter and life at a higher level of sophistication, or they become irrelevant to the process of creating new matter, alive, or cease to exist.
We are made of the stuff that at every level has worked together to make us, capable beyond the animal, with a consciousness of something else, the process that made us. But en masse in the destruction we see humans wreaking upon each other, and upon the earth, we appear to forget easily this process of the coming together of matter that made us.
What distinguishes us as alive, indeed alive in contrast to our dolls, is that we breathe . . . and we do. But doing without direction leads us into the dangers of destruction of which so poignantly we read above, and which we find difficulty in believing can be overcome. And yet each one of us, by focussing on that special thing, the breath of life, can overcome the forces that don't create.
There's a special mantra, which is not my own, with which perhaps might be the aspiration of all humanity, of whatever race, religion or creed, because we all breathe.
I'd like to share it as an encouragement to all, I hope that no-one will find it offensive, nor in the context of this thread irrelevant, but if it is, mods please feel free to remove it. But it's of worth more than money and gold, and gives life to the mind as well as our bodies and is a key to the frustrations and destruction we see between Hamas and Israel, and the violence in the name of religion in Iraq and other places.
I wrote it last night to a great friend in trouble from difficulties arising in the middle east hoping that it would give him comfort, certainty, and release of the mind from whatever he might be facing:
Many people don't understand things because they're not led to the root, the source. And the source of our life is life itself, and this happens because we breathe.
We all have an idea of paradise. And we know that that paradise which we know so well is where we come from, and we seek it and don't know how to get there.
But life itself is that paradise - but we have to have a map, a way, and often we go around in circles. So this mantra gives direction, and is circular itself.
When bad things happen, and when good things do as well, I think of paradise and use this mantra to achieve it. It's connected multidimensionally between the lines:
Our origins (which are in the paradise of our minds, and each breath that we take),
Sacred (inducing fear, joy, as that first gasp of breath we take when a defilibrator restarts us after a heart attack) be the name of that which gives life (breathe in, breathe out - through the mouth - you will hear the sound of the breath of life - a name which must not be said, only breathed - you'll hear aah hai or aaah aaah - and guess what those sounds are as sounds without the consonants normally ascribed to them which should not be said and are thus misinterpreted by Hamas and Israel)
May the kingdom come of that paradise of our minds
May the will of that paradise be done on earth as it is in the paradise of our minds
Give us this day our daily bread - this is the mindfood of paradise of our minds for our minds and if we eat it every day the right things will happen in the material realm so that we shall have food in our stomachs (and because it puts our relationships better together sexual fulfilment can happen too) - and it is a two way contract that if we have food for the body to reach contentment (bread, sex) then our bodies won't get in the way of our minds knowing paradise - thus the two way process
Then how do we achieve this paradise? -
Forgive us our wrong steps, debts that we owe to others, as we forgive those who owe debts, who have stepped wrongly against us
(This is how matter in nature always works despite its history, to come together for creation)
Lead us not into temptation of what does not give the breath of life, stifling it, leading away from life, to death and irrelevance to creating
Deliver us from people who don't understand and situations and circumstances in which there is no understanding.
In this way we can escape what is bad, even when bad is awful and yet, despite it, build what is good.
With best wishes and all encouragement,
Harem