My friend you have set me on a quest
To find the heart that matches mine best
I am going in search of love’s master key
To unlock every heart til I find the one for me
Some say a broken heart is like a shattered vase
Fragile pieces scattered all over the place.
The shattered pieces of broken glass seem to go everywhere
Unlike the pieces of a broken heart that seem to pierce your soul.
With faith and hope you try to mend the broken heart
Unlike the vase it cannot be so easily replaced.
It takes a while to mend it and then you lock it up
You hide the key and wait to see if someone can be found
A special person who will use the key to unlock the heart
A unique person who will handle the heart with gentle hands,
Who can be honest, truthful and handle it with care.
My heart and I wonder is there really that kind of person out there.
Read Ricky Martin’s Blistering Op-Ed About Donald Trump
By Angie Romero
Latin superstar Ricky Martin has put Donald Trump on blast. But rather than sticking to 140 characters, Martin went above and beyond by writing an op-ed for Univision following the presidential candidate’s very public squabble with the network’s news anchor Jorge Ramos at a campaign press event in Iowa Aug. 25.
The following is a translation of Martin’s Spanish-language op-ed
Jorge Ramos on Trump:
‘I Have a Right as a U.S. Citizen, Immigrant & Reporter’to Ask Questions’
“The fact that an individual like Donald Trump, a candidate for the presidency of the United States for the Republican party, has the audacity to continue to gratuitously harass the Latin community makes my blood boil.
When did this character assume he could make comments that are racist, absurd, and above all incoherent and ignorant about us Latinos?
From the beginning his intention was transparent: basically tell barbarities and lies to remain relevant in the public opinion, for votes or simply to stay on the media’s radar.
Yesterday’s episode against journalist Jorge Ramos, one of the most beloved and respected Latinos in world media, has gotten to the point of enough is enough.
Jorge Ramos was doing HIS JOB as a journalist at a press conference in which he appeared freely and democratically, representing one of the most important Latin television networks in the world and with the same right to freely exercise his profession as all other journalists.
But this new character in American politics verbally attacks him and ejects him from the press conference.
This action from Trump doesn’t surprise me, what does surprise me is that as Hispanics we continue to accept the aggression and accusations of people like him who attack our dignity.
Enough is enough!
If we are united for some things we should be united for others.
We have already shown the United States who we are and we cannot allow this behavior.
We have to defeat the power that Trump pretends to have over Latinos, anchored in low rhetoric and xenophobic speech, which his campaign team is convinced works for him.
Let’s show that our Latin race is to be respected, let’s not allow a political hopeful to plant his campaign in insult and humiliation.
Let’s demand respect for those first generations of Latinos who came to the United States and opened a path for us. We have fought for every right that we have today.
Xenophobia as a political strategy is the lowest you can go in search of political power.
This is an issue that unites us and we need to battle it together, not just for us but for the evolution of humanity and those to come.”
This is, in part, because “spiritual enlightenment” and “spiritual awakening” have been used in so many ways to describe so many things, similar to the way in which “love” is used to describe everything from a preference for ice cream to a merging with everything. And it is also because spiritual enlightenment and spiritual awakening are such rich and complex experiences that they are innately hard to define.
Some definitions are very specific and narrow. One such definition for spiritual enlightenment is the complete dissolution of one’s identity as a separate self with no trace of the egoic mind remaining. This sets the bar very high and means that very few people qualify as enlightened.
The opposite approach is to say that everyone is enlightened, that there is only awake consciousness. In this view, it’s only a question of whether this natural awakeness has been recognized or not. Of course, when a word describes everything or everyone, it loses some of its usefulness. If everyone is enlightened, then why even talk about it?
The 3 stages of spiritual awakening
~Stage 1~
Softening the intellect and ego: this process is done by actively exploring the ideas and understandings, essentially becoming conversant with the ideas, bringing a sense of acceptance and ultimately leading to an acceptance of safety for the individual.
The key to moving beyond this stage is to accept the safely of the person to allow this information as real and valuable. Much of the information in ‘spiritual’ understanding is asked to be taken on faith, ultimately given such an intellectuality lead society, most people cannot do this enough to accept their full safety in taking their exploration further. Only an initial intellectual understanding, to some degree, will lead to a willing conscious exploration going further, without this the person becomes scared and contracts their awakening and their motivation to take this further is withdrawn.
Success comes when the person intellectuality accepts a world view and regards it as safe for them to explore further, until that point, the awakening is halted.
~Stage 2~
Awakening to the inner senses. This experience if gaining information from the ‘inner’ reality rather than just the intellectuality accepted reality is stage 2 and brings the person further along the path of self discovery. There is obviously more information on the ‘spiritual’ path in the inner realms of reality: the search for the self does happen within the 5 sense world, it is an inner journey of self discovery. These inner senses then, bring information to the person that cannot be immediately confirmed by the intellect, requiring the person to validate their own inner communications as real. A feeling or gut instinct is information gained from the inner reality by the inner senses.
In truth, owing to the true nature of the identity of which you are a part, each person is wholly and naturally conversant with their own inner intuitive and psychic senses, the key to stage 2 in the awakening process is to consciously accept this as VALID information and a valid process. The key benefit here is that in accepting the information as valid and real, the person accepts their own inner identity as real and valid: a major step in the awakening process.
~Step 3~
Becoming Conscious of Self: Full conscious awakening is the final step in this process involving the bringing together of both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ reality and conscious use of that information. Once a person accepts that their identity in fact ‘straddles’ inner and outer reality and that they can gain valid information both aspects of their experience the full awakening process is starting. Once again, this process can take years or moments to unfold but this awakening is the final process in the ‘soul’ awakening to itself, which is of course, the person waking up to who they really are, the soul in flesh.
This final step brings with it an unconditional change within the person where they are consciously aware of their identity as separate independent but in co-operation with the physical body, whilst being consciously aware of their broader identity.
"the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord shine His face upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace"
