What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Teaches Us About Living Consciously
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Conscious living is the opposite of passivity.
To live consciously is to be awake in all walks of life. It is to be awake to the fact that our well-being is only as whole as the well-being of our brothers and sisters.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. operated from a deep spiritual knowing and reminds us in Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam, “Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for them?”
In times wrought with division and hatred, isolation and self-interest, an us vs. them mentality, Dr. King’s words against the Vietnam War offer much wisdom to reconsider how we heal in these troubled times; they show us the purpose of living consciously - peace - within and throughout, and our active role in its flourishing, our collective, harmonious flourishing.
If we have forgotten, we tend to our well-being to fill our cups up so that we can tend to the well-being of each other and this planet from a cup that runneth over - in harmony and balance. Conscious living and well-being are not selfish - if we treat in isolation and selfishness, we have forgotten it’s true purpose: to build a better world *with stamina,* each contributing in our authentic way to the whole communal well-being.
Dr. King’s words in 1967 ring true to the conditions and symptoms of division and violence present today. The causes of our brothers and sisters around the globe are directly linked; they are our shared causes.
We are brothers and sisters of the Great Mother Earth and Creation. Oneness isn’t an unrealistic spiritual concept to wash over our problems: living in oneness is the solution - it is how we find our humanity once more; it is how we mend, heal, reconcile and build bridges on understanding, compassion, and solutions without leaving ANYONE behind.
We cannot have peace and justice if we have enemies, if we continue to hate and divide.
He says, “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit [of democracy] and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace…”
It is up to the daily actions, grounded in the truth of our oneness, of you and me.
This is conscious living.
Dr. King leaves us with this to reflect on at the end of Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam, “The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.”
