Towards the Silent Heart

kitchen table philosophy

Tag Archives: Universal love


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A new day dawning

Kitchen Table Philosopher JOSEPH RAFFA looks ahead to a time of transformation.

 

A new day is slowly dawning for humankind.  The day of the humanist, of the materialist, of the intellectual dominance of the human expression is on the way out. The day of a spiritually awakened humankind is on the way in.

As it takes over, every social aspect will be transformed.  Relationships, science, medicine, politics, day to day living – every social strata will be affected.

The old attitudes will be bulldozed aside by the influx of a new understanding.  Resistance to change will melt away before the awesome power of the new spirit that will be abroad in humankind.

Look out selfishness, envy, greed, everything negative and disruptive in human nature.  Love, like you’ve never known before, is coming.  God’s love – Universal love – open wide the channels tightly closed for centuries and let it through.

Step out of the darkness, humankind, into the light of a brand new living that glows with the Sunshine of Love.

Step aside, hard-headed intellect.  You’ve had your way. The suffering has been too much.  Intolerable, the separation from all that is warm, gentle and considerate.

A new spirit is urging to show what it can do.  There’s enthusiasm inside, a youthful outlook, all the  desirable qualities that have been dammed back – wanting to surge outwards.

Who wants to dance the new steps of love, in tune with a universal melody?  Come then and join the universal rhythm.  Blend with its timeless beat, then dance out and express the joy that arises.

Cast aside the pain of living, the intellectual struggles and striving of the vagabond that travels the highways and byways of time looking for a home.

Humankind, too long you’ve been lost in time.  Come on home.  Love is waiting to enfold you – to smooth away all the heartaches caused by separation.

Castaway that you are, leave the vale of time.  Join the Sunshine of Love, just for a moment.  See how it opens your eyes.

You’ve heard the saying “Home is where the heart is.”  Go then, to the Silent Heart of humankind and there you will find love waiting to greet you.  You will never be the same again.

 


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There is another side

Kitchen Table Philosopher Joseph Raffa reminds us there is a gentle side of human nature behind the darkness being reflected in today’s world.

 

In the silence of being we discover that which stills every sound –  the sound of breathing, of the heart beating, even the sound of thinking.

The atmosphere of killing fields, of charnel houses, of cities devastated by bombs is something we can do without.  The odour of violent death is not a pleasant one.  There is something

deeply repulsive about it.

Animals being led to slaughter show the fear in their eyes and in the frenzied behaviour of their bodies.  Hasn’t this planet had enough yet?  Must we go on living with such behaviour, reflecting

the violence, the aggressiveness, the selfishness that has been part of our makeup for so long?

We don’t have to be like this.  There is a gentle side to human nature waiting its chance to show what it can do.  It doesn’t need the protection of force, of security screens and protective

devices, of alliances and other means devised by minds riddled by fear and uncertainty.

Behind the darkness of human living, behind the aggressive mask there is indeed another face – gentle, sensitive, caring.  All it needs is a chance to come out and, when humans experience it for

themselves, when they dwell in its nature and know it for what it is, never will they choose to dwell in the darkness of human living ever again.

 

To read more of Joseph’s spiritual writing, visit his Amazon author page.

 


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Seeking the great river of life

Kitchen Table Philosopher Joseph Raffa muses on the search for the mainstream that feeds all life.

I have wandered many tributaries in my search for the Great River of Life. But so many of the streams I travelled led only into marshes and swamps. Oh, how I searched for this mainstream,this Great River that feeds all of life.

I have journeyed forwards and backwards, moved in circles that go round and around; wandered the highways and byways, endlessly asking the what fors and whys. Questions – always unanswered – reasons – on the tip of my mind. But the Great River remains elusive, refuses to make itself known.

Demarcation is not for the River, its movement is not for the mind. No sun shines on its surface, no wind ripples in waves. Its course is not watery motion, its silence like that of the grave.Why then does the search continue and the questions continue to fall like leaves from the trees in Autumn, that litter the ground but to die?

In our journey are we then like a river, lost and out on its own, seeking to flow into Greatness, but doomed to wander alone? Why then do we urge for the Greatness, yet wander the streams of the mind; these streams that lead only to deserts – where they dry out, wither and die?

  • Joseph’s Kitchen Table Philosopher series of spiritual writing is available from Amazon.com and other online retailers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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 Journey inward to reach home       

Kitchen table philosopher JOSEPH RAFFA contemplates the ways of the mind.

Life has its demands.  These cannot be ignored.  The body has its needs.  These must be met. In living the human expression many pathways beckon.  People do their best to travel those that seemingly offer the best returns. The mind is the determinant, the decider of where to go and what to do.

If the mind is happy, at ease with what is done, all is well and life moves smoothly.  But if uncertainty, resistance and compulsion settle in then the results are not very pleasant at all.

Not many live from moment to moment with a happy heart. Contradiction and choice are the bugbears that unsettle our movement through life, particularly when inner and outer security control the choices we make.  The mind urges for self protection. The self is a complex mix of arising desires and demands.  So many influences and attitudes have lodged in the mind.  The past clouds its judgement.

The expression of choice is influenced by the past, by thinking, which is an attempt to lock the unknown of what to do for the best into a present frame of reference that is agreeable to the mind.  The constant exercise of choice, to do what pleases, what is agreeable or profitable, is what makes living so difficult. Life refuses to be put 100 percent into a personal framework of this kind.

There are always challenges arising that we shy away from and, if face them we must, there is anxiety at the outcome.  So, we venture through life with confidence at times, like timid mice at others.  This cannot change while the self with its complex background is at the helm of human affairs.  The insistence for the demands of the self to be met in every way leads to conflict. To have them denied by others also leads to conflict.

Life has become a push/pull affair, a constant attempt to satisfy and please the self.  There is a persistence in this that is powerful.  It can be held back for a time by discipline, channelled into organised courses for mutual benefit, welded into states, nations or movements to serve greater self interests, but unless every vestige is dug out of the human expression by a faultless understanding, trouble will follow in almost every human endeavour that the mind sets into motion.

The pressures within the self are like a ball held deep under the water.  Relax the hold and it rushes to the surface and goes on its merry way creating mischief wherever it travels.  Mind you,it has a high opinion of its own value.  And it tenaciously clings to everything it has inwardly accumulated – agreeable memories, so many influences that have been absorbed in its journey through life.  These shape its progress and its choices. Accustomed to being how it is, the self is very difficult to deal with.  Being in control of its life, certainly having little understanding of its inner content, of what motivates its actions, it is not in a position to objectively investigate and evaluate its own behaviour.  Nor can it easily clarify its relationship to others, to the outer world, to the society it lives in.

This does not matter if it is not interested in an exploration of the self.  But it sometimes happens that the self sets to and decides to undertake an inner journey through its own nature.  Itwants to understand what is going on beyond its surface extent, beyond the reasons, beyond the beliefs it holds.  And, if it is stubbornly inclined in this direction it begins a learning that continues for as long as it functions in time in the way it knows.  This journey, if it comes to fruition, takes it step by step from the outer it knows, from what it appears to be, through unknown levels that it was not aware of until it lodges without form, substance or illusion, in the heart of the strange Universal nature that is the essence of all things.

In this, it abides with the Eternal.  The little self has come to rest in something vaster and grander.  Now, a new rhythm controls its movement through life.  Choice is exercised in little things, but in living the things that matter choice doesn’t come into it at all.

And the way of it is locked in the hearts and minds of those who travel this way – who make it to the Silent Strangeness.  They are the happy, go lightly people who know what it is to sing thesong of the real and dance in time to heavenly music.  What happens in time merely ruffles the surface.  Their inner serenity remains undisturbed.

The little self that began the journey has come to the end of the line.  And the end of the line is home.

  • Joseph’s collected spiritual writing is now available as The Kitchen Table Philosopher series. It is available in print and digital formats from Amazon.com and other online retailers.

 


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Women exalted

Kitchen table philosopher JOSEPH RAFFA pays tribute to women.

Women are the beautiful people.  They are the tenderness, the warmth, the love of life – even the light of life. They are the music that life plays in the female form.  Life flows into woman in the softest of curves, ever so gently flowing from one part to another.

The spirit of life dances brightly out of sparkling eyes. Its remarkable depth expresses itself in the tears that slowly fall down a rounded cheek, in little drops of water stirred by the deepest of feelings.

Such exquisite features has life moulded in the female face. Such a blending of softness – a delight to behold – framed by a woman’s crowning glory – hair that dances in the wind and shinesin the sunlight. Music the sound of her voice – her walk a rhapsody of movement.

Man, you should be so lucky that God created woman. Your life is as barren as the desert when she is not near, yet ripe, like the sweetest fruit when she shares her love.

She is the mother that carried the seed of life in her womb. She nourished you then, suckled your body at her rounded breast, nursed you in sickness, wiped away your childish tears and comforted you in time of need.

‘She is the music of the universe in female form’

Love’s song echoes like a never ending refrain from everything she is.  She is indeed the music of the universe manifest in female form.  She can be as gentle as a dove yet show the fury of a wounded tiger.  She has a gentle touch yet claws like a cat when aroused.

And, when she finds fullfilment in the highest nature of all, she is love personified, understanding in motion, poetic in expression, wisdom in action.  Naught can match her in tenderness, in softness of nature nor in the capacity to give out beautiful human qualities.

Woman, you stand on the pedestal of my admiration.  With these words I pay you homage as an extension of the mystery and the wonder of life. You delight man in so many ways.

– Inspired by the sweetest woman of all – my wife, lover and companion. Always in love with you. Joseph. 3rd March 1992.


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The Way to Peace

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By Joseph Raffa

The existence of God and the nature of evil have perplexed humans for centuries. Rational reason cannot reconcile a God of love with the behaviour expressed by humans hellbent on a destructive rampage. Especially seeing that God is said to have created man in its image.

Rational reason should look at its own behaviour. Reason, not God, created national and religious divisions. Reason, not God, supports greed, ruthless ambitions, oppression, racial prejudice, economic exploitation.

Reason invented the technology used to create super weapons that destroy at the touch of a button. Reason over-rides the heart, unleashes fear and war and observes without compassion the death of its brothers and sisters.

Just listen to rational reason as it plausibly argues who the enemy is, what the calculated response should be and why war is the way to peace.

So many have suffered and died because of (ir)rational reason. Reason has divided mankind, shattered the God-created unity of the human race, found so many reasons to hate, kill and exploit those who are weaker.

And reason wants a pliable God, one that supports it in what it does. Hence the cry, “God is on our side” when war is raging.

Let reason draw from the inexhaustible spring of Universal Love and watch then the transformation. See how fear flees and the ego loses its force. See divisions fade, illusion and ignorance evaporate when a Universal togetherness takes over.

Then love becomes the master and reason its servant. The reign of evil ends. So too does rational reflection on God end when God and humans are reunited in one omnipresent reality.