By Rowena Eghanian of Greater Dandenong Bahá’i Community
Arising from the global pandemic is a conscious need for ongoing collaboration, to address the mounting global challenges facing humanity.
Chastened by the lessons we have endured, what remains evident are stubborn habits of contest and self-interest, prejudices and pride.
These continue to obstruct humanity’s unified progress, despite the growing efforts and actions of so many who desperately long and strive for greater acceptance of humanity’s inherent oneness.
But with aggression and conflict characterising social, economic and religious systems, many hold the view that such habits and behaviour are intrinsic to human nature.
The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh reject such a premise.
Affirming instead that humans are rich in gem-like spiritual perfections and potentialities, are inherently noble and that through education we can actualize these potentialities.
However, when we view society as a jungle, live as beasts in discord and violence, focused only on the survival of the fittest and fighting for material riches, we reduce the regulating principle of life to the struggle for existence.
Thereby we degrade and estrange ourselves from our true spiritual identity.
Offering the solution, humans must seek to find God within themselves and within all others.
They must look through the eye of their heart to attain a self-consciousness of their spiritual reality.
And strive to live as loving spirits focused on peace and mutual dignity and unity, dedicated in service for the whole of humanity and the betterment of the world.
Our Faith teaches us that with spiritual principles at the foundation, a progressive social system, peaceful, dynamic and harmonious, allowing the free play of individual creativity and initiative but based on cooperation and reciprocity can be erected.
Also it assures that world peace is not only possible but inevitable.
Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings provide for us a pathway and a framework for humanity to reconstruct the world so it becomes a mirror of the spiritual truth of all human beings.
It calls for the unity of mankind and extols a culture which develops the glory of the human spirit in the realm of all social relations.
