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The ultimate weakness of violence
is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.

Through violence you murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate...

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.

                -- Dr. Martin Luther King

From Core Wisdom On-Line Number 102 - Aug. 27, 2009
� 2009 Hal Isen & Associates, Inc.

Awakening from the Dream of the World

Though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an Inner Wakefulness
that directs the Dream, and
that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of What We Are.

                -- Rumi

From Core Wisdom On-Line Number 103 - Sep. 12, 2009
� 2009 Hal Isen & Associates, Inc.

Has Any One Supposed It Lucky to Be Born?

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die,
and I know it.

I pass death with the dying
and birth with the new-wash'd babe
and I am not contain'd between my hat and boots,

And peruse manifold objects no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good,
and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people,
all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,

(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

                -- Walt Whitman

 


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