heading in the same direction...

I woke up this morning with a song in my head, it was the prayer for peace by St Francis of Assisi. To me its timeless :

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love;where there is injury, pardon;where there is doubt, faith;where there is despair, hope;where there is darkness, light;where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life."

And there is a really nice version of this that can be found in www. kosmicmusic.com. The artist is called Angelika and the album is Benediction and its has prayers of all religions.
In my view, its the way of the world, being able to transcend religion for spirituality. Two days ago at dinner we were discussing similarities between Islam, Buddhism, Hindusim and Christianity.... and we talked about my upbringing ....When we were young, my dad told us to take 4 glasses of water and put coloured ink in it and asked us what we saw, when we told him the colours we saw, he said, "but is still water". He then went on to explain how God appears in different forms to different people but that it all comes from the same source...just like the water in the glasses.
We live in so much fear ...of opening ourselves up to other cultures and their beliefs but if we stay grounded in the one belief that goodness and light always shines over darknes than we have nothing to fear. Just focussing on basic humaness ...we all want peace, joy , love..this is the common thread that ties us altogether as one human race and hopefully we are big enough to transcend our differences and take this beyond humanity to all life forms on the planet. There is so much to be done, we cannot waste our time on petty differences. We argue about religion and our personal God as if thats the only thing that matters...but in truth, if we are arguing about whose religion is better...its only a mental/cerebral execrcise...not one that can be felt from the heart. If you dont believe me, just feel in your body the next time you get into any sort of an argument, its impossible to to argue and stay in your heart space. Try it! ...your heart will keep shifting you to higher ground always! However , if you are coming from ego...and its not located in the heart, you can argue till the cows come home! The more rigid your position, the more "stuck" you become in your energy...look around you ...everything is in movement...energy cannot sit still...life is dynamic. If we dont challege our own ideas , we dont grow and if we dont grow, we die and thats such a shame considering that we are all so blessed.