Via Sri Prem Baba: Flor do Dia- Flor del Día- Flower of the day 07/06/2015

“Um ditado popular no Brasil diz: “Quanto mais eu rezo, mais assombração me aparece”. Essa sensação é normal no início da jornada evolutiva, porque o primeiro vislumbre da Verdade geralmente é uma grande escuridão. Quando você começa a desamortecer, ou seja, quando começa a retirar as máscaras, os monstros que estavam escondidos atrás delas começam a aparecer, e isso pode ser bastante assustador.”

“Un dicho popular en Brasil dice: "Cuanto más rezo, más fantasmas me aparecen". Esta sensación es normal en el inicio del camino evolutivo, porque el primer vislumbre de la Verdad generalmente es una gran oscuridad. Cuando empiezas a salir de la anestesia, es decir, cuando empiezas a retirar las máscaras, los monstruos que estaban escondidos detrás de ellas comienzan a aparecer, y esto puede ser bastante aterrador.”

“There is a popular saying in Brazil that goes like this: ‘The more I pray, the more ghosts appear.’ This sensation is quite normal at the outset of the evolutionary journey, because the first glimpse of the truth is usually a great darkness. When you start to de-numb yourself by removing the masks, the monsters that were hiding behind them start to appear, and this can be pretty scary.”

Via Freedom From Religion Foundation / FB

Today's Daily Dharma: What Will Carry You

What Will Carry You

Just as oil rises to the top of a pot submerged in water, your virtue, your goodness, your faith, or generosity will rise to the top, and that is what will carry you to your next destination. - The Buddha, "The Best Possible Habit"

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Via Justabahai: Homosexuality – a false dichotomy?

” … I feel I can no longer associate with a religion that does not perceive LGBT rights as a true social value,” Rayshel said, adding, “I, as a gay man, find it offensive that my same-sex attraction is primarily summed up to a sex act or a perceived notion that I over-emphasize my sexuality which is seen as destructive and self-indulgent.”
Sean Rayshel in The Bay Area Reporter, 4 June 2015.

Is the Bahai Faith “a religion that does not perceive LGBT rights as a true social value?” At the practical level, that is true except where a Bahai makes it clear that they do not discriminate and that their communities do not discriminate. For the present at least, the Bahai community has something to prove in this respect.

Because of the dominance of the perception of discrimination within the Bahai community, I have to constantly state first that I am for equality for gays and lesbians and only then state that I am a Bahai. Otherwise the person I am speaking to is put off from the beginning. I have so many stories, so many encounters, in which people do a double-take and tell me, “but Bahais don’t like gays” or “Bahais discriminate.” In the Philippines, in the U.K., in New Zealand, in the U.S., in the Netherlands … people have said things such as: “Oh what is the Bahai Faith about, because when I read that you didn’t accept gays, I stopped reading” or “So tell me more – I thought the Bahai Faith was conservative” and “When I read about homosexuality being forbidden I thought it was a fundamentalist church.”

I explain that I am as much a Bahai as the person who told them that gays cannot join the Bahai Faith. Then they learn that the discrimination is not embedded in our teachings. For me it is not so much whether or not a seeker is put off but two bigger issues: that our gay children are not tormented by impossible demands, and that our community practises the essential Bahai principles of justice and equality. 

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