the maitreya effect

"Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out." - William F. Buckley Jr.

Though there be seers, they aren't gods above or below you - simply your peers. As the Hopi Elders say, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

There is a great benefit and beneficence in uniting with peers and soul-kin. (And the Hopis also remind, "The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!") Below is one of the most enlightening explanations of why the time ahead needs no experts, no celebrities, no sanctioned leader, no guru (btw, guru = gee, you are you):

"The great benefit to gathering with other people in this way is that the teacher emerges as the meeting itself. Anyone with a question, or needing support, can offer that to the circle and let the circle become the teacher. There is no guru in the room, spread evenly like hot butter. Rather, the body of the teacher is made up of everyone present and can only speak or move when all come together. The musician Peter Makena sings:

Whenever two or more of you are gathered
In the name of that which loves
That which is compassionate,
That which liberates
Great blessings shower on you,
Great blessings radiate from you.

Before the historical Buddha died, he reportedly predicted that a teacher named Maitreya would be the next to turn the wheel of dharma twenty-five hundred years after Buddha's death, which is about now. Maitreya is often pictured sitting in a chair, rather than cross-legged like the previous Buddha. Some have interpreted this to mean that a man named Maitreya would be born in our time, offering teachings and enlightening humanity while seated in a La-Z-Boy. But the word Maitreya means "the friend." Today people like Vietnamese monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh feel that the Maitreya has come and is actively teaching all over the world, as I write and you read these words. Today it is the spirit of friendship that turns the wheel of dharma, the spirit of honest and open investigation into and testimony to the truth. It is the gathering itself that is the guru, friends meeting friends."  - Arjuna Ardagh, The Translucent Revolution

"When water joins with water, it is not a meeting but a unification." - Swami  Prajnanpad

p.s. Short post to get back in the swing of things.

Apologize it's taken so long to blog here again. Six Apart's Typepad service which I use to publish Crossroads Dispatches stopped accepting accumulated Tipjar donations as payment (nor do they accept Paypal) and would only accept bank or credit cards. So it took a while to get a bank account again and a new debit card...all so I could blog again.

Note to Six Apart: Please accept Paypal as so many other Internet companies do.

ART credits Lunar goddess (origin unknown) via Crystallinks.

Comments

[Michael Pokocky]

I found this post most important because what is truth if truth cannot be shared. It is in the sharing that the evolution of our humanity will move forward to greet the great truth that all of us must accept at some point and that is we are here on this planet to evolve and to find community in concentric circles based on trust and love.

[Atao]

That makes me think of "The Dialog" by David Bohm. He is proposing to "let emerge" truth or evidence or insight through the gathering.
http://www.david-bohm.net/

[Mimi Lenox]

What an amazing site and presence you have in the blogosphere. The theme of friendship, unity, learning, experiencing truth, sharing, communing and helping.....gives me hope and impetus for the Peace Globe project I've been working on since last year. A collection, a "gathering" of ideas and exchanges of peace and expression from across the world.
I hope you will participate in November.

I love the spirit of this blog.
Peace,
Mimi Lenox
Founder of BlogBlast For Peace

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Michael, Thanks so much. What you wrote also had me thinking what is absolute or relative truth if it cannot be embodied and expressed in a human, in all matter of sentient things, carousing and communing among the world? So many seek enlightenment as escape "from" - but it's a homecoming - to embraced and upheld by kinfolk of the cosmos. Enlightenment/truth is really fully freeing until it is a lived truth.

Atao, Thanks. Yes, and I like Bohm's implicate order explanations too. We end up being mirror of what we have to learn, what we have to teach, what we have to heal, what is eternally whole to each other.

Thanks Mimi, I will def check out your website and see what you have seeping for November. Peace (beyond the absence of war) sounds so blase, bland, static, perhaps boring (to me too), so sometimes I like to envision "peace" as a fine-tuned harmony or within an orchestra, or a smooth spontaneous jazz improvization - all much better than discordance and jumbled noise!