The World Needs Our Gentle Touch
Offering gentleness to those around us, people we come in contact with, the animals that inhabit the planet, and to our home, Mother Earth, will help create the world we all want – where everyone is happy, feels fulfilled and empowered, and has all they need to survive and thrive –mentally, physically, and spiritually. Gentleness is one of the main qualities of love.
People Need a Rekindling of the Love Within that Is Inherent in All of Us
Most of us have, or have had, a weak connection to the love we all hold within our hearts, and therefore have been unable to experience the full benefit of this connection – or to express it fully out into the world. Some of us have worked to strengthen it and are reaping the benefits, but many of us have not been able to.
We all emerged from love, and at our core we are all still connected to that love. However, over time, as Humanity’s history played out, our connection to the love weakened, and we became unable to experience pure love and the peace, joy, and gentleness it holds.
Whereas once we naturally felt our connection to one another and were able to share in and express love’s qualities, throughout Humanity’s decline we also lost our ability to extend it to others, and our sense of Oneness faded from our consciousness.
This article/blog post is based on concepts in my book Your Journey to Peace, Bridging the Gap Between Religion, Spirituality, Psychology, and Science. Book Synopsis is found here).
Our past history shows that gentleness, as well as many of the other qualities of love, was not valued by those who held the power – nor was it rewarded. Power, control, and wealth were what was valued, and these require might. Gentleness and might are not congruent.
People struggled to live, and the effects on our psyches of not living under the umbrella of unconditional love was brought forth through the generations.
Attempting to rid ourselves of the emotional and spiritual pain of being unfairly and/or cruelly treated, we projected our hurts and frustrations onto others in unloving, selfish, impatient, judgmental, and even cruel ways. This created emotional wounds to those around us – and the cycle continued.
These unloving ways that were directed at us caused us to contract emotionally and we put up barriers to our hearts. The subtler part of ourselves became overshadowed by the harsher realities, and our connection to the love within further weakened, as did our sense of Oneness with others.
When we are distanced from the love within, we are unable to fully accept love from others or express unconditional love out into the world. When our ability to feel and extend love has been snuffed out, we need help rekindling it. Offering kindness, compassion, understanding, and consideration to others comes through as gentle love. And these expressions of love can overlap depending on the situation, as they are not mutually exclusive.
Offering some form of gentleness to everyone we come in contact with will help strengthen the connection to the love within for some people; it may even give enough of a flicker to start to rekindle it in others whose connection is virtually non-existent.
We offer gentle love by our approach as much as by our actions. Here are a few examples of expressing it, as well as the benefits to the receiver:
- Being kind to all who cross our path; this reminds people there is still love and kindness in the world – even if they don’t feel it within themselves. It may even encourage them to extend it to others;
- Being helpful and considerate towards people who are in pain, sick, depressed, are in any kind of distress, or are experiencing any type of difficult circumstances; this makes them feel loved and cared about. This is much needed in our busy world today where health care is strained, and family and friends are often far away and/or busy with their own responsibilities to give loved ones the help or attention they need;
- Being compassionate towards people who have an addiction, or have made bad choices, and are experiencing the repercussions or find themselves in difficult circumstances because of it; this makes them feel loved despite their dysfunctional behavior, and can open the door to them for self-forgiveness – the first step to inner-healing;
- Speaking kindly to others – those we have similarities with – and those we do not; this helps people feel valued for who they are;
- Speaking kindly about others, or groups of people being discussed – those we have similarities with – and those we do not; this sends positivity out into the world in general, and helps create a positive vibration around the particular group being discussed – who may badly need uplifting reinforcement;
- Being accepting to all – no matter how and in what way they are different than we are; this encourages people to be authentic and express who they are – without trepidation or fear;
- Making peace within our self regarding what others have done to us, or for what we expected of them or they promised to do and did not; letting go of our anger allows us to connect more fully to the love within our self – for our benefit, but this also benefits the world as we are then able to extend love more easily to others;
- Forgiving others for what they have or have not done; this builds or rebuilds bridges with people we have had conflicts with and opens the door for harmonious relationships; it also gives them more of an impetus to forgive themselves;
- Offering a helping hand or sharing what we have – just because we can, and with humility; this uplifts people as it allows them to not feel alone in their struggles, and helps them to trust that their needs will be provided for;
- Giving the other our full attention when in a one-on-one situation/discussion; this helps the person feel valued;
- Really listening when another is expressing him or her self – with patience, and without interrupting, giving our opinion, or trying to fix things, unless asked; this gives the other the time to fully express him or her self and allows for their feelings to be validated;
We have all come from the same history of what Humanity perpetuated, but were unaware we were carrying forward baggage that created attitudes and behaviors that either hurt our self or others. Most of us have experienced hurts, pains, or unwelcome repercussions or circumstances – either from generational or cultural influences, our own bad choices, or at the hands of others. And many of us have been the perpetrators and hurt others.
So, we need to forgive ourselves for what we have done, or not done – to ourselves and to others. And we need to be generous to each other and extend true and authentic forgiveness to those who have acted badly towards us, others, or the world. We need to offer the gentle hand of reconciliation – an olive branch – whenever possible. Being the recipient of a gentle gesture can open our hearts so that we too can forgive.
When we are offered gentleness, it helps us to heal the wounds of hurts or unwanted circumstance that caused us to be disconnected to the love within. The more we offer gentleness and other qualities of love to others, the faster we will all be able to reconnect to the love within and embrace its benefits for ourselves.
The more of us who extend love out into the world, the faster we will be able to create the world we all want. As well as offering gentleness to people, we also have to offer it to the animals on our planet.
The Animals Who Share the Planet With Us
Animals share the planet with us to help us, to feed us, to offer us love, and help us grow spiritually. But just like with us, many have been victims of cruelty – for sport, for food, for greed, and even simply because of ignorance and meanness.
Animals have always helped us with our crops and for getting around. And so long as we treat them with kindness, ensure they are given what they need to be warm, safe, and healthy, and train them firmly, but gently, we are using them as intended.
Properly and kindly trained animals that are well looked after and not overworked will reward us with good work. They will have served their purpose. We must ensure that as a society we value the importance of respecting the animals that help us.
Humans have hunted for eons. In the past, it was for our survival – for food, clothing, and shelter. And it was a normal practice to use the animals fully, and we often made offerings to the gods of our tribes as gratitude. In our more recent history, we have hunted for sport, rather than necessity.
Sometimes this was done with integrity towards the animal and we used the meat and the skins, but at other time we were cruel and disrespected them. We are moving away from hunting for sport for the sake of killing, but we have to continue to support efforts to overturn this practice.
The commercialization of our meat and dairy products along with the proliferation of our demands for a variety of foodstuffs at our fingertips brought about huge industries and this created immense competition.
This, along with the greed of some of the producers, created the need to cut corners, and cost efficient but sometimes cruel and inhumane practices toward the animals were created. Since as a society we will still continue to eat meat – for at least a while longer, we must ensure we find our way back to respectful and humane ways of rearing and slaughtering the animals for our tables.
Our domestic animals offer us much needed unconditional love. Our pets fill our homes with fun, love, and laughter. However, many domestic animals are mistreated, while many others are abandoned.
We must ensure we continue to educate people on the responsibilities of owning a pet, of the necessity of having them spayed unless we have definite plans for their offspring, and continue to monitor those who profit from looking after our domestic animals.
Although visiting zoos and aquariums offers families a fun outing and is a wonderful learning experience for children, we have become aware of the unfairness of caging animals for our pleasure. We must ensure that those already in captivity are well looked after – in all ways, and continue to question practices that once seemed acceptable, but no longer are.
Some animals and mammals are also known to be spiritually advanced. People who have swan with the dolphins often say they get a feeling they are not the wisest in the water. Our scientists tell us that whales may be the most intelligent mammals on the planet. And most who own a horse say that a special bond is created between the rider and the animal. Just spending time with these advanced beings can open pathways to our heart. We must ensure we keep these brilliant mammals safe and flourishing.
We must be gentle with the animals, mammals, birds and all other life forms that share the planet with us. We must understand the importance of giving voice to and supporting efforts against the cruelty to all of them – whether for profit, pleasure, or sport, or to research that only benefits us.
There are many more animals, mammals, and small creatures than those I have mentioned that we treat badly – for many reasons, and we need to continue to uncover and find ways to alleviate any cruel ways we treat all those we share the planet with.
Our Home; Mother Earth
Our planet, Gaia, is a living breathing organism. The Indigenous peoples know this. And just like with each other and with the animals who walk the earth, we have abused her. She too needs our gentleness.
In past times, we held a reciprocal relationship with Gaia. She gave to us through her bounty. We took and shared her gifts – with gratitude, and we looked after her. The Indigenous peoples still adhere to this concept of reciprocity, and still believe in the premise of “enough.”
Our planet has suffered physically through industrialization and our greed. We have been inconsiderate of her air, water, land, forests, and resources.
We are now seeing the repercussions of many of the decisions made decades ago. Some of these we made unaware of the long-term consequences; others, we knew there would be consequences and either ignored or buried the research.
We have gotten used to the many luxuries that we now consider our right – many of them attained at her expense. We have gone beyond the concept of “enough.”
Our planet has also suffered from the emotional abuses we have put upon her. All the unfairness, judgments, prejudices, hate, injustices, and cruelty we have directed towards each other, groups of people, like through genocides and wars, or even towards the animals have affected her. Because she is a living, breathing organism and it all happened within her boundaries, she too has suffered when those living upon her suffered.
Gaia, Mother Earth, our beautiful planet has had to shrug off all of these physical and emotional abuses. And even though she is still in an evolutionary stage and some upheavals are normal, many of the recent turbulent weather patterns are because of her releasing this negative energy we have put upon her.
She too requires our gentleness to help her overcome what she has suffered. It is urgent that we now not only consider her air, water, land, forests, and resources when making our current decisions, but also aim to repair damage already done to her.
We Are All Doing Our Little Parts – One Way Or Another
We have to work on two different levels to bring about the world we all want where love, peace, compassion, kindness, gentleness, fairness, and equality reign, and where we look after everyone and care for everything on the planet, including Gaia herself. We need to work on both the practical and spiritual levels.
There is enough in world to go around, and we have the know-how to ensure everyone on the planet has what they need to be healthy and thrive. Society needs to address the many practical issues that are hindering us bringing this about.
We must ensure people are and feel safe, have enough food and clean water to become and stay healthy, and continue to work on everyone having access to sanitary plumbing systems.
Working towards solving these issues is paramount to making the necessary changes, but we also have to create the atmosphere to inspire people to do so.
We do this by raising the awareness about the issues, while at the same time raising the consciousness of the planet – raising its vibration, which we do through every positive and uplifting thought, word, and deed.
This will help us rekindle the feelings of love within and connectedness to each other – to the Oneness we are all a part of, and inspire us to work towards the good of all.
There is a lot of need in the world – individually and collectively, and nobody can answer it all: we can only do our little bit.
And we must be careful not to judge what people are, or don’t seem to be doing to bring it about. Most of us are doing something to help Humanity and the planet – in one way or another. Some efforts have a large visible impact; most do not.
From monks and yogis spending their days in prayer and meditation, to everyday people doing their best to live their lives with joy, passion, compassion, kindness, acceptance, and/or integrity, to people working for animal and human rights, to those working in associations and governments for the betterment of us all, to those who rally others into action – all of this positive energy is working in tandem to get things done directly, and/or raise the vibration of the planet so that we continue to feel inspired to move us all forward.
© Rosemary McCarthy, June 2017, updated June 2018
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Below is a peek at a bit inside the book:
All of Humanity’s issues arise from the false belief of our separateness from Source. (Introduction)
Humanity’s history has been based on conditional love. This has created conflicting messages within us, because we extol the virtues of love, but do not uphold them. (Chapter 1)
Feeling peace and being happy and empowered requires that we believe in our hearts that we deserve to feel peaceful, and be happy and empowered. (Chapter 3)
Our capacity to love others is in direct relationship to how much we love ourselves. (Chapter 3, What We Can Do About It).
Our Relationships Are Pre-set Soul Contracts: The highest purpose of our relationships is to work out our unconscious influences: our fears, neediness, vulnerabilities, misperceptions, and false notions about love. They are set up to bring these misalignments from our True Self to the surface – for healing. This is why we find our close relationships so difficult. (Chapter 5, Relationships)
Being somewhat enlightened means that we have some awareness of the cause and effect of our thoughts, attitude, and actions, and of our interconnectedness. (Chapter 6, Words, Symbols, Rituals, Concepts, Prayers).
Our need to reconcile what we put upon the Indigenous peoples is in direct relationship to our countrys’ successful advancements. (Chapter 9, The Planet and Abundance)
At levels beyond our awareness we chose to be here at this time of ‘The Shift’ to help bring about our and Gais’s Ascensions. (Chapter 10, Ascension).
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Copyright © 2018 by Rosemary McCarthy. All rights Reserved. To copy, share, or distribute this article simply ensure the content is copied in its entirety, is unaltered, and is distributed freely and for no monetary or personal gain, and that this copyright notice and the link for the article and the website www.yourjourneytopeace.com are included. You can contact me at: rosemary@yourjourneytopeace.com. Blessings, and thank you kindly.
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