Fearlessly Feral Living!
Fearlessly Feral Living!
Spiritualty and World Day of Peace
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Today, September 21, 2025, is the United Nations World Day of Peace. Listen to this episode to discover how spirituality relates to World Day of Peace.
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Well, hello, hello, hello, everybody. This is Reverend Karen Lindsley at Fearlessly Feral Living. Welcome. Thank you for listening. Today I'm going to be talking about International Day of Peace because it's September 21st as I record this. And September 21st is every year annually the International Day of Peace, or also known as the World Day of Peace. But before I get further into this topic, I want to give you my introduction. It's changed a little bit. So I've got another podcast episode coming up that I'm going to talk about the reason for this change. But my mission and purpose statements have changed a little bit. And they changed as a result of a talk I gave just this morning for a Center for Spiritual Living in Rhode Island of all places, Concordia Center for Spiritual Living. And the talk was called Transcendent Purpose. And as I got into preparing the talk, I realized that transcendence, in other words, moving beyond the ordinary is really what fearlessly fair living is all about. So I changed my mission statement and my purpose statement to match, which sometimes happens with these nonprofit organizations. We grow, we change, we have to change our mission and purpose statements. We do that as individuals as well. But I'm not going to talk about that today. The other thing I want to uh mention before we get started is my news. My third book is so close to being published. It's called How to Live Fearlessly Feral. I'm pretty excited about this book. Not a day goes by that I don't speak to someone and think to myself, oh my God, they need my book. They need the book. So I will keep you posted when it comes out any day now. I am uh pacing into the book the last couple of graphics that I've designed for it. And the cover is getting designed, and then it's going to be done and it'll be ready to go. So, welcome again to Fearlessly Fair O Living. And this is indeed Reverend Karen Lindsley speaking to you from the back 40 of northern Nevada, where I'm half an hour away from the nearest gas station and the nearest grocery store. And our mission is to facilitate successful living. Our purpose is to transcend, in other words, to live beyond the ordinary. And our vision is a world in which everyone lives wild and free. In other words, fearlessly feral. So, World Day of Peace. This day was created by the United Nations to help further the goals of peace and global cooperation. And I got to thinking about this World Day of Peace thing. And every year I mention it and think about it and do my best to honor it. The theme for the 2025 World Day of Peace is Act Now for a Peaceful World. I think it's pretty timely. And they've got a website, International Dayofpeace.org. It's all one word, international dayofpeace.org. And here's what they have to say about today's theme, this the theme for this year. They said we must speak up against violence, hate, discrimination, and inequality. Practice respect and embrace the diversity of our world. There are many ways to act right now. Spark conversations about the urgent need for understanding, nonviolence, and disarmament. Volunteer in your community. Listen to voices different than your own. Challenge discriminatory language in your workplace. Report bullying both online and offline. And take the time to verify facts before you post on social media. You can also speak up with your choices, opting to purchase items from socially conscious brands or donating to organizations that promote sustainability and human rights. So that's the World Day of Peace for today, September 21st, 2025. Now, what does this have to do with spirituality? That's what this podcast is all about, basically. Spirituality. What they are calling for are all outer acts that can only be successfully performed if we begin with an inner foundation. And I'm going to specifically mention joy, love, and peace. We have to feel those on the inside. And that's as good a place as any as I can think of to start with what spirituality really is. Because whenever we want to do something in the outer world outside of us, we have to first begin within. It's a basic thing in this teaching called science of mind. We begin within. Spirituality is an inner thing. Now I define spirituality as being able to feel joyful, loving, and peaceful on the inside, no matter what's going on out there. But spirituality is thus an inner thing. Turns out that, according to Ernest Holmes, I'm not too far off with my definition. He says spirituality may be defined as an atmosphere of good. Spirituality is not a thing, it is the atmosphere of God's presence, goodness, truth, and beauty. So he's talking about an atmosphere. For me, that atmosphere is inner, it's within us, it's our consciousness, it's who and what we are. Now, Ernest Holmes goes on to say one of my most favorite quotes ever from him, he says, To be spiritual is to create. But in order to be able to create peace, we have to first go within and make sure that we've got peace within ourselves. So the place to begin with spirituality is within. My days are like roller coasters. I try to maintain a balance between staying informed and descending into a morus of hopelessness. Because when I do that, when I become so hopeless like that, I can't function effectively. I can't write, I can't teach, I can't work on my book, I can't be a good minister, and I can't even live a rich and a full life. I don't have any energy to do so because I'm just hopeless. And I it feels shackled, is the word that's coming to mind for me. I feel shackled by that hopelessness. And I don't know about you, but that is not how I wish to live. That is not my purpose in life, that is not how I transcend the ordinary. And I will do everything I can to move beyond that place of hopelessness. And it takes a few inner spiritual practices. And I want to mention here that, you know, some of my colleagues in science of mine, they don't much want to talk about everything that's going on out there because there's there's a lot of, you know, it's it's snarly, it's nasty out there. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to feel it, they don't want to accept that it's happening, they deny it, they just deny it. They say they go right into treatment, which affirmative prayer about it. And some folks are even being told at Centers for Spiritual Living that they can't speak to this from the pulpit. So I disagree with all of that. I think that that's a form of spiritual bypass. And I consider a spiritual bypass to be highly destructive. And if you're on the receiving end of spiritual bypass, you know, if you go into a center and you say, I'm hurting, and whoever is responding to you says, Well, let's let's pray for your good, let's treat for your good, in my opinion, that's abusive. It's abusive. So I do consider treatment to be a powerful and a very necessary and effective and invaluable tool in a process, but there is a process, and that's my point here. In order to be able to act successfully in our outer world, we have to first go within and function within ourselves. So I have a few tips to encourage peace inside of ourselves, to create peace inside of ourselves. The first tip is acknowledge all the feels that are coming up as a result of everything that's going on in this country. Acknowledge it all. Don't judge it. You know, if you feel angry, sad, hopeless, any of that stuff, just acknowledge it. It's okay. Need water. Okay, that's the first tip. Acknowledge all the feels. The second tip, love it all. Now hear what I'm saying here. I don't say love them all, I say love it all. Loving them all comes later. It starts here, in inside of us, loving it all. I was attempting to explain this concept to someone the other day who was feeling hopeless and angry and sad and all the stuff that's going on with us right now. And I suggested she love it all, and she said, I can't love them all. And I said, No, that's not what I said. I said, love it all. Love it all means we love all of our stuff, we love all of our feelings, we love all of our beliefs, we love all of our thoughts, we love all of our idiosyncrasies, we love all of our sore spots, we love all of our strengths and all of our weaknesses. We literally love it all, all the stuff that's inside of us, we love it all. Step number three is we have compassion for ourselves. This means no shooting on yourself. Have compassion for all of those feelings for everything that's going on with you, be gentle with you, you deserve it. Now, this is going to come into play later, but loving it all and having compassion for yourself and acknowledging all the feelings. Whatever we be on the inside shows up in the outer. It's called the law of attraction. And the law of attraction that says who we are is what we attract to us in our world, and it also says that who we are is how we behave out there in the world. So if you're finding yourself behaving less than peacefully, you might want to take a look at what's going on inside of you. But when we acknowledge our feelings and we love it all and we have compassion for ourselves, guess what? It makes it easier to go out in the world and acknowledge their feelings and love them all and have compassion for them. And I'm sorry to put it out there, but that's part of the solution here. But let's go on for my list. This is our inner work, this is stuff we are doing for ourselves. We're acknowledging all the feelings, we're loving it all, we have compassion for ourselves. Number four, we develop and maintain an active gratitude practice. Be grateful for everything. Like I'm looking out my office window here, and I see the big, beautiful, poofy white clouds in a brilliant blue sky, and I see a breeze that's making the trees dance a little bit, and I'm looking at those fantastic views of the sweet water mountains in the background, and I am grateful for all of that. Just be grateful for whatever. Start somewhere with gratitude, it will grow, I promise you. Next up is affirmative prayer, and I have a podcast called affirmative prayer, I think, five steps of treatment, something like that. Go listen to it. I'm not gonna repeat the five steps of affirmative prayer here. I've done so many times in my podcast. If you want to know more, you can always call me or send me an email. But do your affirmative prayer. And last but not least, number six, explore oneness. Now, oneness is commonly thought of as a principle, not a practice. But I want to suggest that we explore it as a way of being, a way of living, a way of showing up in life. And yes, we can't commonly think of oneness as a principle, which it is. Now, oneness is that concept that says that God is everywhere present, including and especially in and out and through us. And that makes us all one. That's the principle. But in spiritual practice, oneness says we are connected. Now think about that for a minute. If we are all connected, if I'm connected with you and you are connected with the neighbor down the street, and we're all connected by virtue of oneness, and I believe that we are. That means if one person is hurting, we're all hurting. If one person or group of people is being marginalized, we're all being marginalized. This is why I've been so adamantly against the policies of the current regime. It all stems from oneness. There's people hurting, and there's people being marginalized, entire groups of people. And it's affecting us all. We're all marginalized, we're all hurting. We're advocating separation and not oneness. And I'm just looking at all that and going, that makes me hurt. And if it doesn't make you hurt, well, good for you. But it makes me hurt. Now I'm thinking of a story that's so totally not spiritual and used in secular organizations all over the world. And I want to tell you this story because it really is a good illustration of oneness. There was a farmer who grew excellent quality wheat. And every season he won the award for the best wheat grown in his county. One year, a reporter from the local newspaper interviewed the farmer and learned that each spring the man shared his seeds with his neighbors so that they too could plant this and grow wheat from this high-quality seed in their fields. And the reporter says, How can you afford to share your best wheat seed with your neighbors when they're entering their crops in the same competitions as yours and they're selling to the same markets? And the farmer explained, Well, that's really simple. That's a no-brainer. He said the wind picks up the pollen from the developing wheat and it carries it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior wheat, cross-pollination will eventually degrade the quality of all the wheat, including mine. If I'm to grow good wheat, I must help my neighbors grow good wheat. We've got to help our neighbors. It's as simple as that, guys. As simple as that. And that's oneness in action. When we can acknowledge that if one person is hurting, we're all hurting. When we can acknowledge that if one group of people is marginalized, we're all marginalized. When we can acknowledge that we need to take action to help others and correct that situation, that's oneness in action. Now here's another aspect of this thing. And I mentioned it kind of in passing a little while ago. Um the folks that have been doing the marginalizing, the folks that have been hurting others, the folks that have been practicing racism, the folks that are advocating things like America first. Oh God, save me from that one. The folks that are advocating going back to the times when women were second-class citizens and people of color were lynched and redlined from buying homes. And the the folks that are rounding up brown people and putting them in concentration camps, those folks are just as unhappy as we are. If they were at peace, they would not be doing what they're doing. Now, this doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does give us a place to begin when we start practicing oneness in our own life. Those folks that are doing all that nasty stuff, they're just trying to be hurt. They haven't been hurt in decades. They've been trying to tell us for so long about their feelings, and we haven't listened. This is called, it's a technical term. It's called secondary cause in science and mind. And yeah, we haven't listened to them. We need to begin listening to them. We don't need to tolerate it, we don't need to advocate it, we don't need to put up with that shit, but we need to listen. And they're advocating that everything needs to be dismantled in order for us to start over again because it's too late. That the systems we have in place now in this country are no longer workable. The demo democracy and the and so they're in favor of democracy being dismantled. Well, if that is true, then we need to take a look at this, and we need to get to work creating from our own place of peace. We need to get to work creating something new that everyone can live with. We need to do our part to create global peace. I don't advocate for the entire dismantling of democracy, I don't advocate for misogyny or racism or America First or any of that other stuff that's going on. I don't advocate any of it. But I do advocate starting from a place of spirituality, listening to our own feelings with love and compassion, and then moving out into the world and listening to the feelings of some others who haven't been listened to in a very long time. And then moving into a place of compassion and openness. And then maybe we can meet somewhere not on middle ground. I don't think there is a middle ground here. I think we got to create an entire new ground, honestly. Something entirely new. But we can't do that unless we start with the places that I'm advocating for, to feel that peace and that joy on the inside of us, to do our own spiritual work, to acknowledge that we've got feelings and listen to them and hear them, and then acknowledge that other people have feelings and listen to them and hear them, to love it all, to love our own feelings and our own angst and our own stuff, and to love the feelings of others, and to have compassion for ourselves as well as for everybody else, and to practice some gratitude every single day, and to learn about affirmative prayer and do it because it's very powerful, and to realize that oneness is indeed a very real thing, and that if one person is hurting, we're all hurting, and then we can move out into the world and do our part to ensure that no one is hurting anymore. So that's my message today about World Day of Peace. Now, you may be cynically thinking that the things I speak of are not possible. I happen to believe they are. The principles we teach here are powerful. Affirmative prayer is powerful. Oneness and the belief of it in it is powerful. Our thoughts are powerful. It's why we need to change the ones that aren't serving us. They're powerful. And if we come from a place of peace and joy and move out into the world and listen to other people with compassion and love, we can begin to create a world that works for everyone. And achieve the goals of today's World Day of Peace. So I thank you very much for listening, and I do appreciate your support. You can subscribe to my work over on Substack. I've got um Substack consists of articles that I write that are not quite long enough to put into a podcast episode. Um you can spread the word about my podcast and my Substack writings and keep in touch with me. All that stuff means a lot to me. And of course, your financial support is absolutely wonderful evidence of abundance in your life, and I appreciate you sharing that abundance with me. And you can contribute your tax-deductible donations to me anytime. You can subscribe at Substack with a paid instead of a free subscription. Just know everything that free people get, so do the paid people get because I'm not gonna exclude anyone. Buzzsprout, my host for my podcast. You can subscribe there. You can donate via my PayPal page or my Venmo page. And all that information, all the links are on my webpage at fearlesslyferal.org. So once again, I thank you for listening, and I am knowing Fearlessly Feral Living for me and for you.