SAND18 US — The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love

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Caverly Morgan reminds us that it's easy to dismiss injustice, bias and cruelty in the name of transcendence, and asks us to consider whether our habit is to think of the awakened life as mine to have rather than ours to live.

When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. What it is the illusion comprised of? How is it known? And by whom? The relative may appear to arise out of the absolute, as waves appear to arise out of the ocean, but like waves, both relative and absolute are components of a greater whole. They are not separate. When we know ourselves as this whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human. We experience viscerally that “the world is my family”. From this understanding, we recognize that liberation is not a singular experience. There can be no individual ego that experiences enlightenment. We suffer when we forget that. We suffer when we perceive ourselves as separate from the collective – on the level of consciousness, (the absolute) as well as with our neighbor (the relative). When we recognize that the world is arising in us, Awareness, there is nothing to dismiss. How, then, in our situation of privilege on the relative plane, do we dismiss injustice, bias, cruelty in the name of transcendence or ‘spiritual understanding’? How do we participate in systems of oppression while ignoring the effects our neighbor, as well as the whole? Do we fall for the story that the awakened life we seek is mine to have rather than ours to be? And what’s love got to do with it?

3000-year-old Solutions to Modern Problems

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Diné musician, scholar, and cultural historian Lyla June outlines a series of timeless human success stories focusing on Native American food and land management techniques and strategies.

Indigenous Kuikuro People’s ‘Dark Earth’

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Indigenous people may have created the Amazon’s ‘dark earth’ on purpose

#118 Mythic Dharma

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A discussion on the story of the Buddha’s awakening and the dharma through a mythic lens.

Remembering Mark Dyczkowski

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It is with deep sadness we have learned of the passing Dr. Mark Dyczkowski, one of the world’s foremost scholars on Tantra and Kashmiri Trika Shaivism.

River of Words

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Write something!

Sacred Activism: Awakening the Spirit of Change

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The alchemy of spirituality and activism —born from the understanding that true change starts from within and radiates outward

The Two Birds Within You

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This timeless tale, inspired by the Mundaka Upanishad and Shvetashvatara Upanishad, offers profound insights into the nature of our existence.

#117 Minds Under Siege

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Exploring the complex intersection of collective trauma, political power in Israel/Palestine

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