Equality; How Are We Hindering It's Existence

Equality. It's been on the agenda for a few years now, but our society still hasn't got round to fully implementing it, for various reasons. The majority of us want it (the minority won't be spoken about), so how exactly are we working towards it?

The aim is to ensure a state of being equal for all. It's basically a given that many of us will have come across, or even helped to support, various organisation aiming to ensure the 'rights' of some selected group of people. In this day and age, this is generally accepted as the most effective way of achieving equality.

As we progressed through society, it was vital to campaign for woman's rights, black rights, gay rights, or any other area of society facing total oppression. And arguably, it still is vital today until we stand on equal footing. However, it is also vital to recognise that this system cannot progress into the future, without becoming a hindrance for equality.

When we merely mention group B's rights in a certain situation, we reinforce that they are 'different' from group A. We consciously remind that we are not the same, and have a different label placed upon us. Though this initially was meant to reinforce equality, it can now lead to further segregation. If we are to ensure that we are all the same -- as we have fought so hard to achieve -- we must then begin to act as a collective, rather than separate groups entitled to the same thing.

It can no longer be simply our right as a woman to be considered for a job, but our right as a human being seeking employment to be considered for the job.  If we continue to do the former, we will continue to in force segregation in our society, and perhaps even turn the tables of privileges the other way.

This in no way undermines efforts made in the past to achieve our 'rights'. However, once we have placed ourselves on a level playing field, we must drop our banners and team colours. If we all want to play on the same side, then we cannot continue to bare different colours. Let us now fight for the rights of humanity, and ensure that we are all heading in the right direction.

Awakening; An Overview

Many of us will have heard this 'buzzword' flung around nowadays (many of us would have also noticed it in the web address). So many of us want to know what this word entails before we sign up to try it out. Whilst the descriptions can be endless, (as it does entail wakening up to an infinite reality), here is a brief overview of what is meant by becoming awakened:

• Accepting the possibility that anything and everything could be true. Now I'm not exactly talking about giant flying monkeys with hats (though it's food for thought), but generally questioning and considering all information we receive or previously have ignored. Why do I believe that to be true? Why do I dismiss that? What sources have given me this information, and are they reliable? What does MY intuition say? Perhaps flying monkeys with hats could come back onto the conversation table.
• Removing all boundaries and restrictions from our thoughts and streams of consciousness. Why is it we put up certain boundaries of what we should be thinking about -- who made us place them there in the first place? When we let information from the world around us flow through us freely, we become much more aware of truths and information we were sub-conciously ignoring before.
• Becoming child-like. No, this does not mean bowls full of candy and temper tantrums at the shopping centre. It means tapping into the child it is in our nature to be; inquisitive, imaginative and hopeful. When we re-adopt these traits, we begin to see that many of our adult 'responsibilities' aren't truly necessities, but distractions from us achieving our full humanly potential. When we begin to dream again, we realise that we are no longer content to live for meaningless jobs, whilst putting our passions on hold for an imaginary day. 
• Learning to listen to the universal consciousness, rather than our own personal one. This follows on well from our second point. We begin to realise that we are all connected, not simply separate entities in a vast universe. No longer do you feel so small and insignificant, but really understand what it means to be a part of something so big. As Rumi said, "You are the universe in ecstatic motion".
• Realisation of your place, as part of the universe, and coming to terms with our ancient, and infinite collective spirit. 
• Removal of human constructs, such as fear. Once we remove these, we realise that all that's left at the heart of it, is LOVE, eternally.