Leadership With Grace

Greetings and best wishes for the coming year 2006. I have a lot of good feelings about this year and I feel that many connections will be made between peoples around the world with each other - so much so that even news services that we think of as conventional or day to day and governments as well will take note. This is a good thing really because if we cannot always rely benevolently on our elected representatives and on our corporations to make peace and benevolence for us in the world then it is up to us to support them.
I know the traditional thought is that it's for governments and corporations to support us. Governments with protection and organization and support when we need it and corporations with products that we need or desire but many times it is up to us as the people to create a notification system to both governments and businesses that we have different desires then they may understand and that by signaling our desires in a benevolent way we can help them to understand that much of what they've been doing may not be entirely necessary or that we are prepared to accept their doing things in a different way.
I know many of you will say this is idealistic or even unrealistic but I feel that the entirety of communications is changing so fast that it's difficult for large institutions to keep up - you know what I mean. Blogging is certainly one of these things and there are many, many others.
So let's take a leadership position this year. We don't have to march in the streets and wave flags - we can. We don't have to write letters and campaign with protestations - we can. I would recommend something different and that's that we continue to communicate with each other. We speak to each other as human beings and talk about what we desire and what we feel would be most beneficial for us all and as you can tell by the name of this site that we make it clear that we would appreciate benevolence for all beings and I feel this last part is the most important - that we are not demanding nor expecting perfection.
Perfection is always identified and defined differently from group to group to say nothing - from person to person. Let's give ourselves permission to make mistakes and to request that they be recoverable. You might think it strange to request to make mistakes but if they are recoverable especially with humor and good cheer and co-operation then we can convert catastrophic mistakes that are unrecoverable to something that is recoverable and will allow us in the best of conscience and benevolence to laugh off our mistakes and say, "Okay, let's do it better."
Let's continue on Blogger and other places to work out our own forms of communication and to establish communion with each other in the most benevolent way. We don't have to ballyhoo this - others will notice it and will talk it up for us. Communion, or true communication with benevolence as I define communion, is something that we can all feel good about I believe. I hope you feel good about it too.
To lead does not require that we stand on the mountaintop and proclaim our absolute authority. It might be perfectly acceptable and much easier to lead by expressing our needs, encouraging benevolence and welcoming benevolence from others. This is what I believe. I'd be interested to know if you feel it has any merit.
Goodlife to you all and goodnight.

The Path

There has been an increasing sense amongst many of you that some great change is impending - not is coming but is actually impending and it's true. There is an urgent feeling of need amongst a great many people on this planet to be loved and accepted and appreciated for being exactly who you are right now even though you may not be presenting any form of what you might consider perfection to the world.
Perfection you know is something that is more of a mental concept then a practical reality. It is in our nature to be human beings. It is not of course in our nature to be some impractical, unrealistic form of perfection. Keep in mind something that I have found valuable and that is that some of the most creative people in the world who have left the most wonderful things for us to use - often called geniuses but they probably would not have called themselves that. As a matter of fact in their own time they would have considered themselves to be eccentric, not crazy, eccentric because they were so devoted to some particular form of interest that they thought of themselves as actually being out of balance and yet who's to say that that wasn't a perfection of their own.
The main gauge that I have found to know whether you are being your perfect self is - are you harming yourself or are you harming others. A wise being once said to me and others that that is the gauge that is most important. That being used to say that the definition of being self destructive was harming yourself or harming another since we are all a portion of the same thing. We are not glued to each other at the hip but we are part of the same race - the human race and therefore one of the most important things we must remember is that being our own personality is what contributes to the entirety of the human personality.
Practice if you can doing things that are benevolent for yourself and benevolent for others. Remember sometimes people around us want to fall into line with some thought, practice or philosophy that they feel is good but think to yourself - you can think for yourself - is this self destructive? Am I harming myself? Am I harming others? If so this may not be part of the practical, realistic human overall personality.
I believe that it is our nature to not be self destructive. I believe we are taught that either by example or we react that way and you can tell this by just taking a look at babies. Babies are born curious. They respond well to love and they naturally provide love as well. They are not then born self destructive.
We are all babies that have matured so if we have any self destructive habits we have learned them and we can shed them. Do your best. I'm not expecting perfection.
Goodlife to you all and goodnight.