Life’s Blueprint – Dr. King’s Sincere voice

One of our truly Great Americans who studied Gandhi, was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!  Our great human brother!  His work is receding into the past, out of our human memory.  The bewildered public mind is swooning under the bedazzlement of technology.  Yet, the arching relevance of his words, the universal ideals he stood for are part of the Earth ethical blue print of humanity.

All of his deeply sincere talks literally ‘rang’ with the clear notes of Truth, and that bell-tone resounded in all the hearts who heard him, and still does today, thanks to the right use of technology that has preserved some of his talks and speeches. Dr. King wrote his own speeches,  Something that politicians today rarely do.  He often discarded them, and spoke extemporaneously.

Hearing M.L. King’s voice, hearing the deadly earnest moral quality of his sincerity, is critically important now for our own beings, for our children’s beings.  What qualities are in the media amplified voices we hear blaring into our beings? Sound has the capability to permeate our physical bodies.  It leaves an effect.  To pretend otherwise is self-deception. To hear the quality of true sincerity brings Joy into our hearts, it helps in our own personal moral tuning.

We are fortunate to have his words and images of King’s extremely short life still with us.  To commemorate, and call forth the beautiful vision of ideals, the personal ethical qualities that he called out to, that he gave us to re-order our minds, hearts, is the goal of this post.

Four notable talks, speeches, are posted here.  It is hard to limit the selection, and may the reader continue with his own inspiration!

1.”What is Your Life’s Blueprint?” This wonderful talk to 7th and 8th grade students in Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967, is something that applies to all ages, all people.  To accept and appreciate one’s self, for the way that the Creator has made us.  To strive for a high personal standard of moral and intellectual excellence, “The Mind is the Standard of the Man!” – MLK, Jr.

 

 

2. History of ‘I have a Dream Speech”  This short video on this most famous  speech fleshes out the historical context for our dimming memories, helpful in understanding some important influences.  King was to discard his notes, and speak from the power of his heart, mind, and soul.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr., Emancipation Proclamation Speech 1962. This is an early speech that King gave, recorded on tape; the video shows the text of his speech, with his hand written corrections on it, as he spoke.  This talk was found in 2014, in the New York State Museum.  Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of NY had invited King to speak on the anniversary of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1862.

“We are at one of history’s awesome crossroads.  Our technological creativity is almost boundless. We can build machines that think.  We can dot the landscape with houses and super-highways teeming with cars.  We can now even destroy our whole planet with nuclear weapons we alone possess…[] And our guided ballistic missiles have caused highways through the stratosphere.  In short we have the capacity to rebuild our whole planet, filling it with luxury – or we are capable of destroying it totally.  The shocking issue of our age is that no one can confidently say which one we will do…Whether we survive depends on whether we build moral value as fast and as extensively as we construct material things.  The struggle for civil rights is rooted in moral values.”

As King’s life progressed,  his profoundly noble heart expanded to include not only the civil rights movement in the US, and around the world, but to stand up and speak out against the horrible war machine that devastated millions of defenseless Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian people; the war machine has the entire planet in its grip now.  The entire world that could learn of him continues to recognize his moral power.

1986 M.L.King Jr. Commemorative Stamp from Sweden

King became more and more outspoken on the immorality, greed, cruelty, and plain WRONGNESS of War.

4.” I Have Been to the Mountain Top”.  This was King’s last speech in support of sanitation workers on strike in Memphis, TN.  He calls for boycott, of specific consumer goods, but also certain banks and more,  knowing that only through economic pain would power listen.  His words also address the direction the nation and the powers behind it were leading human civilization, and show his presentiment of his own assassination.  He discusses a previous attempt on his life also.

  “The nation is sick.  Trouble is in the land, confusion all around.[]…I know somehow that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I see God working in this period in the 20th Century [] people are rising up []…[wherever in the world] the cry is always the same, ‘We want to be free.’  []…its no longer the choice between violence and non-violence in this world, its non-violence and non-existence.  That is where we are today.” 

What Great People have arisen out of our Country! Each has declared their unity with all humanity!  Of many, Dr. King’s voice is one of the most powerful in the English language to awaken our longings for the ascendancy of a morally oriented life that will steer human civilization into a noble, war-less, just, direction.

The Beauty and duty of Justice! The needful responsibility of moral cleanliness! The value of introspection, these videos are loaded with Earth Ethical Gems!  Enjoy!  This Brother is in all our Hearts, May we find, know, and be true to our own Blue-Print for life, and may we help our children to know theirs!  This duty is incumbent upon all of us, parents or not.

Let his voice bathe our being, our heart, and as we listen, watch the moral awakening response of our hearts,  of our minds!  His voice, his words, are the ‘gift that keeps on giving’!

PK Willey

PK Willey, Ph.D., is an American, a Gandhian scholar, author and entrepreneur, who has delved deeply into Gandhi's Earth Ethics. Willey seeks to enhance philosophical discourse around the world where globalization has altered ethical values, particularly in the USA. Willey finds Gandhi's ideas, thoughts, and example, to be invaluable in this effort. Currently, besides numerous articles and book projects,Willey is developing a new framework for qualitative research that employs Earth Ethics, guided by a Gandhian compass and Weibust's Transformative Paradigm.

What do you think? Join the discussion...