The Path Ministry

Topic: Mindfulness Be aware of where you are and what you are doing in the moment. Do all things with clear intention. Consume mindfully: never take more than you need.   Mantra: "Be here, now." -Ram Dass   True Mindfulness takes Effort and Self-Control and is necessary for Balance. It also takes a certain degree of self-awareness; you need to know yourself and your true motives behind every word and action.    Mindfulness also means being aware of your surroundings and the people around you. Be conscious of the space you occupy, respect others’ personal space, and be ready to react appropriately to changes in your environment.   There is a situational aspect to the practice of Mindfulness; certain activities that are perfectly acceptable in one situation are wholly inappropriate in another. For example, daydreaming during a long bus ride versus daydreaming during a meeting with your boss. Know where you are and what you’re doing and behave accordingly. ...

  Topic: Compassion  Compassion is more like empathy than pity; it is the desire to ease the suffering of others. Treat all people with kindness, especially those who are in pain, even if they lash out at you. Mantra: “Everything that does evil is in pain.” -Clive Barker Compassion is required to practice the first Core Tenet of the Path. It requires Self-Control, Patience, and Mindfulness. True Compassion lies not in how we treat those who are kind to us, but in how we treat those who are unkind. The choice to do harm always comes from a place of suffering. While you should never allow someone to hurt you if you can avoid it, do your best to treat everyone you meet with as much kindness as you can. How you react to unkind words is always your decision. You can allow them to affect you and retaliate, or you can look past the words to the suffering behind them, and either ignore the unkindness altogether or even offer to help ease the suffering, if you can. Hurting some...

  Topic: Patience True Patience is more than just a willingness to wait. It means accepting others for who they are now, and treating all people with dignity no matter where they are on their own path.   Mantra: “This, too, shall pass.” -Persian Adage Patience requires Self-Control and Mindfulness. Live in the moment; be aware of what you are doing now, and what you are focusing on. At the same time, give others time and space to walk their own path and find Enlightenment on their own terms. When interacting with others, exercise Patience by letting them express themselves in their own words and waiting for them to finish before responding. Recognize that some people, especially people in distress, may say unenlightened things from time to time. How you choose to respond to those statements should be appropriate to the situation: Sometimes you can offer your personal viewpoint and sometimes you can’t, but to be Patient means accepting others for who they are now. Refrain from...

Topic: Sacred Mother Archetypes   In honor of Mother’s Day, today we're going to talk about Divine Motherhood and how that concept is found, to some degree, in nearly all ages and cultures.    Humanity has long considered mothers and motherhood to be sacred. Mother is the first face we learn to recognize as infants. For most of us, she is the one we turn to time and time again, for advice or help or just a sympathetic ear. It makes sense that some of our first ancient deities were Mother Goddesses. The Woman of Willendorf, with its exaggerated feminine features and lack of face or feet, may have been a representation of a Mother Goddess, although some theorize that those sculptures were self-portraits of pregnant women who could not see their faces or their own feet at that stage in the pregnancy, but who felt the contours of their own bodies. This suggests our ancestors’ reverence for the state of pregnancy, as these statuettes could have been used as currency.   Th...