This morning a daily message suggested we ask ourselves, “Am I living according to spiritual principles?” The message continued with the principles are constant, encouraging us to ask our Higher Power how to best apply these principles today.

I had received a five-hour Zoom link for meditation and inspiration envisioning a peaceful inauguration day, so yesterday morning early I went online to check out the schedule of the inauguration day’s events. The first entry I saw was “7:45 a.m. President and Mrs. Trump will leave the White House for the final time. He will not attend the inauguration.”

Donald Trump was the first president not to attend his successor’s inauguration since Andrew Johnson in 1869.

Later in the day I asked John his sense of that choice. He said he did not have any feelings about it. Asking him further though, he expressed a perception that the choice was justified because of election fraud. He also reminded me I had written that voting is sacred.

“Even if there was voter fraud, two wrongs don’t make a right,” I said quietly.

But this post is not about Donald Trump, or John — it is about ME and YOU and the high road.

A few minutes later, I said aloud to John, “Intuitive yes or no.” (FYI – He is VERY good at being able to access an intuitive answer, and I often just call out to him to do so.)

“No,” came his answer.

I simply stated aloud the question I had held in mind for his asking this time: “Was there more fraud in this election than others.”

Deep Spring CenterThought for Today

Those of you who understand positive polarity are called upon to be models of positive polarity in every way possible. But it’s also how you respond when you’re alone outdoors shoveling snow, your back hurts a little, and your fingers are freezing. At that point do you start cursing at the snow or just take a deep breath and pause, saying, ‘Maybe it’s time to go in and get a cup of hot tea, look outside and see the real beauty of this snow, rest for a bit, make sure my energy field is uncontracted before I come back out and shovel, so I am not fighting with the snow but co-creating a clear path, and asking the snow to participate with me in moving aside.’ ~ Aaron

In a rather lively conversation with friends earlier today, the question of whether or not values are universal, and what universal values might be came up. I said, “Most would rather be nourished than starving, prefer to be comfortable rather than too hot or too cold, and safe rather than in harms’ way. Perhaps we don’t all use the same words, but we do know the state.”

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Amanda Gorman began writing at only a few years of age. At age 22, the nation’s first-ever youth poet laureate — and the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history — read “The Hill We Climb” during the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

I cannot swear she was looking at the exact “hill” but I can promise you, every human does know what the high road is.

John agreed with me that Donald Trump had missed an opportunity to take the high road.

Christians are familiar with the teaching of granting forgiveness seventy times seven, and Chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”

In Buddhism, the “active moment” is that point in awareness (like the baby emerging from the womb) when you know what is happening and you see the possibility of lifetimes of potentiality just beginning.

You and I are all too familiar with how habit energy has grabbed minds and run down the dark alley of fear hundreds of times over lifetime after lifetime in the past. Perhaps habit energy will do so again at some time in the future.

But right now, at this moment in human history, you and I can applaud the the possibility of lifetime after lifetime of potentiality and set our intention to be able to say at the end of each day, “I choose the high road.”