Guiding Thought
My Inner Divine Love Presence Knows what I need or desire before I do. It is constantly providing me with ideas, material goods, situations, and interactions to fulfill all my needs and desires. I relax and allow the Presence Within to supply me with everything I need.
Reflection
What came to mind as soon as I read the first sentence was the song “Are My Hands Clean” by Sweet Honey in the Rock.
The song itself is about oppression and exploitation of workers. This makes it a very interesting juxtaposition to this Guiding Thought. The song maps the travels of the raw materials and labor that go into making a blouse, from El Salvador to the US to Cargill, back to the US, then to Venezuela, then to Trinidad and Tobago, then back to the US, then to Haiti, then back to the US…
Corresponding this to the Guiding Thought (minus the oppression and exploitation) is that whatever I need or desire is known to my Inner Divine Presence when it’s the equivalent of a raw material. My Inner Divine Presence knows the path that everything I need or desire will take in order to get to me. It knows the people that need or desire will pass through; it knows the shortest path; it knows how every situation needs to turn out, sequentially, in order for whatever I need or desire to make its way to me.
If I need or desire a new residence, My Inner Divine Presence not only knows the best place for me to move to, but it knows the way I will find it, how I will come up with the money for the move, who will help me make the move, etc. If I cooperate with my Inner Divine Presence, and follow Its Plan, every step is already set up perfectly in advance. If I am not listening to my Inner Divine Presence, and think that I know better, there will be bumps, detours, delays…
If you have ever worked with the energy of Shri Ganesha, you know that this is how Ganesh helps: he removes the ego-driven decisions about what someone thinks “is best”, thus opening and allowing the Divine Plan to have Its perfect way.
Text and video, Are My Hands Clean?
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.
Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of
Dupont
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela Where oil
riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador
In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric
for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount
Are my hands clean?
SusanWithPearls 
I loved this day’s reflection!! Gah! And Ganesha’s face made me SO happy. When I reflected on the words “My Inner Divine Love Presence Knows what I need or desire before I do.” I felt the struggle of consumerism and the anger I feel for all the advertisements in my life that tell me what I need, and even especially—spiritual advertisements to sign up for this or that to join in or do this or that program. I knew the guiding thought was speaking to the divine wisdom of the creator, and to the loving presence of fulfillment in abundance, of already being whole, of needs already being met. So I stuck with that, and I cling to it now. I’ll have to visit another time to listen to the song, but we do have to ask the question… our world connectedness, the sacrifices of people, their labors, the unfairness of non-fair trade, and very sad legacies of clothing manufacturing among so many trades with disturbing shadow histories.
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Oh, yes. You got it. Namo Namah. That’s it. “even especially–spiritual advertisements…”. All of it, and more. There’s so much that people don’t need (because ALL is FULLfilled), that is sold to them, …and in an unconscious, disconnected state, people buy it and buy into it, simply because they don’t know better. When people know better–when they know their Divine Origins— Self as Source-Substance-Supply– What is needed by Divine Definition flows freely and abundantly.
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