Beginning Today, A Peaceful Season Honoring Gandhi and King

by Lael

Daily Mantra received an email in its inbox this morning alerting it to the beginning of the 2008 Season of Nonviolence. This annual 64 day event, which begins on January 30 and runs through April 4, was started in 1997 on the occasion of the 50th and 30th memorial anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., respectively.

Daily Mantra couldn't agree more with the stated goals of this commemoration:

• Honor the dignity and inherent worth of every human being.
  
• Understand that all of our words and all of our actions have impact.
  
• Choose to practice compassion with apparent adversaries.
  
• Become stewards for the rights of individuals and the environment.
  
• Use our talents to empower rather than to exert power.
  
• Engage in constructive dialogue with one another to solve conflicts.

While we love these objectives, our acute consciousness of the ever-present, unyielding Law of Attraction that brings about whatever is focused upon leads us to suggest a change. Why not rename this event in a way that frees it altogether from any connotation of violence? After all, the term "nonviolence" carries at its root the very phenomenon it wishes to negate. Instead of the Season of Nonviolence, therefore, we suggest practicing a Season of Kindness for All or, if you prefer, a Season of Universal Compassion.

In any case, we send love and gratitude both to the organizers of this worldwide series of interrelated happenings and to the two spirits, one an Indian Hindu and one an American Christian, whose profound commitment to spiritual truth and positive change continues to transform our world.

| 01/30/08 | Enlightenment