Swami Beyondananda’s 2008 State of the Universe Address: Swami Predicts Heart Times Ahead

caught it—or rather, if it caught us. With all this hot pursuit, we have left real happiness in the dust. It is sad indeed that we end up jealous that someone else’s happiness might be bigger than our own. Freud called this “happiness envy.” As the saying goes, money can’t buy happiness, although it can buy anti-depressants. But if you are seeking more out of life than not being depressed, the key to happiness is to grow your own. Every one of us should be asking, “What good am I?” What good can I add to the greater goodness? Maybe if we had greater goodness, we’d need fewer goods. As human beings, our biggest asset is love, so now is the time to get up off our big fat assets, and practice supply-side spirituality. Because we aren’t here to earn God’s love, we are here to spend it. We are here to re-grow the Garden from the grassroots up, and have a heaven of a time doing it! HeartlandSecurity We need to amplify the love and light to counterbalance the darkness and fear, and that is why we need a nongovernmental Department of Heartland Security to secure the heartland and let the powers in power know in no uncertain terms, “Bigger brotherhood is watching you.” To do that, we must migrate en masse—regardless of political or spiritual affiliation—to the land of the heart. Instead of squabbling over the differences that separate us, we must cohere around the heart-core values we share in common. That is the only way we can trade our insecurity for inner security. No matter where we stand on climate change, one thing is clear. Global heartwarming is bound to change the political climate for the better. Whatever the problems, we have the wherewithal to address them. Now all we need is the aware-with-all. Whether you call yourself a creationist or an evolutionist , or take the simplest approach of all to the Great Unknown—not knowing —one thing is undeniable: we are all one with the same One. The story of separation , survival of the fittest, and lowest common dominator—that is the old story. Only we have the power to close the book on the old story once and for all, by declaring: And they all lived happily ever after. And happily ever after begins now. I Swami Beyondananda is the comic alter ego of Steve Bhaerman and can be found online at www.wakeuplaughing.com. 80 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 8 CULTURE Every year at this time, I am asked to make predictions, and each time I politely refuse because I don’t want to jeopardize my nonprophet status. But this year is different. With 2012 just one quantum leap year away, we humans might finally be ready for a quantum leap of our own. The message is coming in loud and clear. Time to shift or get off the pot. To upshift our karma into surpassing gear, however, we must shift our awareness from the static of the head to the ecstatic of the heart. If we are to have an awakening instead of a wake, I predict heart times ahead. For millennia, spiritual teachers have told us to look inside for this universal wisdom. It turns out, they were right. The real spiritual pilgrimage is actually a journey of about twenty-four inches, roughly the distance from the head to the heart. TheHeartoftheMatter istheMatteroftheHeart Yes, everyone is equipped to attune to universal wisdom because everyone has been given a heart. And yet, the heart seems to be the last gift we open. The most underdeveloped resource on the planet is the treasure inside our own treasured chest! Given all the craziness in the world, maybe if we invested in expanding our hearts, we’d have less need to shrink our heads. And less of a need to be so all-consumed by consumerism. We have learned to spend so much energy pursuing...