What makes a TERRORIST? and have we invited them to hate us?

May all heal and come together in the unity of peace and love.

First, my heart and soul goes out to the innocents of this barbaric murders, having said that we must look at the real culprits not the whole race. There is a regime out there who hate every thing America, and the stirrings up of hate towards all Muslims by Donald Trump has stirred the pot. What do you think would happen? That they would take it lying down? We are looking at a small percentage of murders who kill in the name of a make believe god, we are looking at a race of men who have no value for women, we are looking at arrogance ignorance and an assumption that they are the true ones.

So let us focus on the few that have committed these crimes and not the whole race of many who are victims them selves and make sure hate and revenge is not targeted at those who do not fight this war, but nether less find them selves in the thick of it because of their race and faith.

We must take accountability for our actions, for our thoughts, for our reaction, for if we choose hate over love, we become the victims.

It will be a true test of humanity at this time, do you support the hate the fear the revenge, or do you support the education the evidence of who is really guilty and the innocents and make sure it does not become another war.

My fear is that this plays right into Trumps hands, he will declare war, he will incite hate there will be more murders done because he has incited more hate and those people will have nothing to do with the attacks. We have to ask, did we invite this? did we incite this? did we fund this? Hard questions, but we need a hard look at the root of the problem not just the emotion.

We have to understand we are the problem, we are so quick to blame hate and kill someone else for wrong doings, when we are avoiding, ignoring, and abstaining from any responsibility in the problem. Take a look, he had mental issues but got no help, he has been looked at for potential terrorism and yet he could buy MILITARY ASSAULT RIFFLE.

If you speak about killing Muslims, if you speak of sending everyone home, building walls, bullying any one who disagrees with you, if you divide degrade demoralise any one who is foreign in America you will have an internal war that will only lead to millions dead and a country so divided it will take a 100 years to recover.Look to the root of the problem what the real issues are at hand and seek solutions that go deep and help build a more united cohesive nation.

Justice must be served but be mindful that it is done in truth not fear and hate.

Please be mindful America, being outraged is ok, wanting to blame someone is natural, but targeting people just because they are the same race as terrorists is wrong. There is not a nation today that does not have blood on its hands, America included, but to seek out violence to revenge violence is self destructive.

Black white yellow brown, let us look to the soul of a person not clump them together to hate. You have America hated for so long, your native Indians, your African Americans, Mexicans, and any one else who you feel threatened by. But America, your country the land of the FREE, is made up of all nations from all walks of life, and your violence comes in all colours as you are a nation who loves your guns and puts people last and profit first as history has noted.

I love America, I love its people, I love its opportunities, but I cannot like its guns, its willingness to hate so easily its willing to attack anything because of differences. It is not just terrorists, its your gay community, its your African American community, your Mexican community,  your inequality, there seams to be a constant war on something. I know your people want peace, they want unity, the want to respect and work together as a whole unit, not divided, not segregated, not hated not in constant fear.

Bernie Saunders, has been spreading the word of unity, community, of self respect and respect for each other. He has been speaking to the 1% who hold the power who start the wars, who capitalise from them, holding them accountable, making them feel threatened because they may loose their power they have over you all.

 Make sure just like Paris, you come together to heal to respect one another to show love for each other and do not let the terrorist win, because fear, hate, violence towards one another is doing their work for them.

My prayers and divine wishes are with you America, may your choices right now be ones that will unit in love not hate in your country, go after the culprits but don’t hold accountable others who had nothing to do with it.

Hate begets hate, it leads to war to death to destruction. Even through your hurting right now, let your healing be of love of community, of unity in peace and togetherness grow.

No matter our sex, no matter our faith, no matter our views, stand together for each other and give peace a chance. 

By Sara Troy

Danielle’s 10 day to Enlightenment by Danielle Bussone 

A few years back, my sister-in-law gave me a t-shirt as a gag gift. On it was a drawing of a ghost with a caption in large letters that read, “I’ve had a difficult past few lives.” She didn’t know the half of it.

In the last year, my stress level has been off the charts. I’ve been running back and forth across the country doing cooking demonstrations, teaching classes on how to prepare delicious plant-based whole foods, speaking at festivals, wellness groups, and senior centers, doing radio and television interviews, and making instructional YouTube videos. All the while I’ve been creating recipes for and writing my second book, interviewing athletes and health experts and writing restaurant reviews for my blog as well as maintaining a social media presence. It has been worthwhile, great fun and terribly rewarding. But, it has also been stressful. Even good stress is stress, and it erodes our health and chips away at our immune systems.

After breaking three molars this year from incessant tooth-grinding in my sleep, I decided something had to give. For some time, I have been looking around for a good meditation class; something credible, not just some weird, wild-eyed, drug-induced hippy bullshit. I didn’t want to know about my past lives or have an out-of-body experience. I just wanted techniques that would help me sleep peacefully while keeping up a hectic multi-tasking schedule.

One day it fell right into my lap. A local woman who had bought my book called me out of the blue. She said she had had an epiphany and decided she wanted to become a vegan. She wanted to know if I would be interested in sharing some bulk food orders with her. “Sure!” I said, and promptly invited her over to learn how to make vegan calzones. While we were devouring the results of our labours, she told my husband and me about a meditation “boot camp” (called Vipassana) she had recently completed in Georgia. It was ten days of monastic living; no speaking, no eye contact, a gruelling ten hours of meditation each day, beginning at 4 am and ending at 9:30 pm. She claimed it changed her life. 

Vipassana means ‘to see things as they really are.’ It is a meditation practice that was developed in India over 2500 years ago as an ‘art of living,’ a means of training ourselves to enjoy selfless, happy, peaceful, and compassionate lives. The program is completely free of charge. Your room and board are paid for by the generosity of others who have completed the course before you, a kind of pay-it-forward system. You are not allowed to contribute a nickel until you have completed a ten-day program and then, only if you have true volition to do so, according to your means. The courses are run purely by donations, and the teachers, assistants, groundskeepers, cooks and staff of all kinds volunteer their time so that you can devote your time to learning this technique of meditation. It is seen as an act of loving service. There are 168 centres across the globe where there are often long waiting lists to get in.

So, Rich and I signed up. I was determined I would learn to relax if it killed me. Rich was essentially going along to support me, even though the men and women would be housed in separate quarters and would have no contact. He’s that kind of guy. We wished each other luck and separated for the duration. I was introduced to my room-mate with whom I exchanged a few words about our living situation, and our group shared a light meal before silence was invoked. It was a racially and culturally diverse mix of men and women from around the world who met in the meditation hall or Dhamma Center for our first instructions. There was an aisle dividing the sexes and a short wall making it impossible for me even to get a glimpse of Rich. Once we entered the dimly lit hall, a shroud of silence descended upon us.

To follow the path of Dhamma—the natural order of the universe—we learn Vipassana, a technique of purifying the mind by observing the sensations that occur within our bodies and their connection to the mind. By observing these sensations, we discover how our judgements, thoughts, and feelings are experienced by the body. We learn that to attain mastery over our minds is to attain mastery over our lives.

What followed were ten gruelling days of physical agony as we pushed our pampered bodies into unaccustomed and uncomfortable positions and our minds into intense focus, fighting off sleep and an onslaught of random thoughts that refused to be mastered. Emotional revelations bubbled to the surface of our psyches from places so deep we hadn’t realized they existed, leaving many of us writhing in pain and whimpering in our sleep.

Pain, according to this teaching, both physical and mental, can be the result of accumulated karma through multiple lifetimes. If this is the case, I must have once been a real ass-hole in former reincarnations because the karmic payback was a bitch. In the end, we learn how to release our torments and marvel in awe as they dissolve into the ether leaving purified spirits in their wake.

From the first evening, we learned techniques to deepen our awareness and our focus, and we were provided wonderfully kind and insightful teachers to whom we could turn if we had trouble understanding what was expected of us. (Yes, we could speak to them.) We were fed delicious plant-based meals, and there were wooded trails to provide respite to our aching limbs and joints.

On the final day, we were permitted to speak again. I had an opportunity to get to know women that I had only observed through the body language and facial expressions of concentrated introspection. Some, I learned, had suffered insurmountable loss. My room-mate’s son had committed suicide; another woman’s husband had been murdered. There are stories of abuse, loss, and struggle. One young woman left the program early, unable to handle the isolation pressed upon us. I wish I could have told her that we were all in this together, that we were all sending her our support and well wishes, that we all had her very best interests at heart. But we weren’t allowed to speak or touch; we weren’t allowed to give her solace. One must walk the path to Dhamma alone.

As Rich and I departed, I looked fondly upon my ‘Sisters of Silence.’ Many had arrived broken. While I can’t say with certainty that all the pieces of their shattered lives had been restored, I can say without hesitation that we all left feeling a bit more whole. We had been given tools for our own redemption, a technique that helps one retain peace in the midst of chaos. We need only practice to keep it alive within us.

Indeed, I may very well have had a difficult past few lives, but with Vipassana, things are looking up.

by Danielle Bussone

AUTHOR OF TIME FOR CHANGE series

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