The Light in the Woods

3/8/10 Insights from Study              I love the Bible parables that remind us that when we have everything there is to have, we don’t need to strive or begrudge. And we do have everything we need, plus much more, when we embrace the loving presence of God in our lives. All it takes to believe in our blessings is to be willing to recognize that it’s only faulty perception blinding us to what we have been provided.

We are stubborn though; it’s hard to believe that what our senses tell us is true is true only in a dream; not in Reality itself. The world seems so concrete to us – it must be real. But the real world is beyond Earth, beyond senses, beyond human intelligence and perception. No wonder it’s hard to believe.

But it’s to our great advantage to believe, because with belief comes intuitive perception whereby we appreciate God’s desire for us to have the best of everything. Only then can we be content; to aspire to spiritual peace. Most of us wait until we die, and so waste our time here on things that don’t matter in Reality. Mystics die to the world on purpose, recognizing the love of God we all receive; recognizing it in such a way as to experience a little bit of heaven here and now without the wait.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father tried to explain to the good brother that all the family has belongs to the good brother anyway; the bad brother can’t take away anything of value and so is not to be hated out of jealousy.

In the parable of the Vineyard Workers, the owner tried to explain that wages are wages; having once agreed to what will be accepted as payment, there is no need for any worker to begrudge what another one gets.

So often we think of life as a race — all this does is make sure we push others out of our way. So often we expect fairness out of all of life’s workings – God does not countenance fairness in His dealings with us because we cannot understand and cannot therefore judge His plan. Life is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Life isn’t a popularity contest or a system of rewards we can count on. Life doesn’t run smoothly on greed — not the greed of the “haves” and not the greed of the “have-nots” for what the “haves” have. A smooth life consists in something much greater than what we traditionally hold dear. When we strive for what will really satisfy us, we find that we look to accept the love of God that reaches out to us constantly. In this endeavor, nothing aspired to on the lower plane can approach, and the favors of the Holy Spirit we wouldn’t think of trading away.

If we take our individuality seriously and place our emphasis on a personal relationship with God, we are more apt to accept His work done in His way. There are so many little things that will not bother us in the least when we dedicate all we have to God’s plan for us. And we have a better relationship with others when we are not always trying to outdistance them on the path to fully appreciating God’s love.

2/28/10 Inspirations                  Meditation, contemplation, scripture study, litany and liturgy – all processes done to remove the world from our thoughts long enough to bring the Creator to the forefront are things good for peace of mind. But to acquire pure inner peace that lasts because it becomes the nature of our spirit, this is the ultimate comfort state.

We begin by ascribing all that is to God. We see Him as a loving God, ever merciful and ever forgiving. Only this kind of God makes us worthy of this kind of love. Then we acknowledge that if we give over our lives to God first and foremost, we will not only honor Him but gain for ourselves knowledge and grace through a new perception of His ongoing gifts to mankind. We will see too the nature of God’s reality – the kingdom to which we were born and still wait for our faulty, worldly perception to catch up to.

We live assured of pure joy, and we catch glimpses of this waiting reality. Through God’s loving attention we get heightened sensory input triggered by seeing the things around us in a fresh, God-toward way. The more attuned we are to things that are important to God, the more willing we are to receive these gifts from Him, and the more adept we are at appreciating them.

This, finally, is how we maintain a constant inner peace – by armoring ourselves against worldly strife with our focus on the bliss of reality that’s being covered up by worldly influences. When we recognize the joy of God, we immerse our spirits in Him to the point where we can exist happily even within the stress of our daily lives. This is inner peace, available to all.

2/28/10 Insights from Study              I have a prayer that God loves. I made it up under the inspiration of God Himself and thousands of words of God-lovers who have loved Him before me. If I should find myself suddenly without anything else to call my own, my prayer will still bring me where I need to go. If my enemies chase me to the far ends of the Earth, I can carry my prayer with me without burden. If I have no food or water, I can still present my prayer to God; I will find either sustenance for my body, for my spirit, or for both. If I must lie out in the cold and dark, I can always bring out my prayer and wear it like a comforting blanket. I have no fear of the future, for my future doesn’t stop with my death. The reason I know this is that whenever I take out my prayer and offer it up to the Creator, I keep getting the same response: “I will see to it all”. God loves my prayer because I’ve learned it from Him and I accept its truth with all I have. He responds with all He has, and He has so very, very much.

2/27/10 Spiritual Presentations           I love You my God, for making it clear that You are here, You know me well, and You love me enough to let me know something about it. I must have prayed sincerely and properly for the release of my pain, because it happened immediately and decisively. Much more than my healing, I value how You have given me Your word, letting me know that it’s right to believe, to ask, and to offer.

I worship You and I honor those mystics who have come before me. They have told of their experiences as well as they could, and You have guided me to study their lesson. All this love is not lost on me. Thank You for Your love – I want, more than anyone but You can know, to have the chance to pour out my love to You in return. I promise to take every opportunity to do this, and still, as always, I ask for Your help in every aspect of my life to be whatever pleases You.

You created me as Your child. Everything You do is for my good, even pain. I don’t need to know nor am I likely to find out what purpose you have for my pain. Sometimes I feel like it’s there so that I can know great relief when the pain passes. Sometimes pain reminds me of all the things in my life that can be painful but aren’t, because of Your mercy. Sometimes my pain makes me compassionate towards the pain others are going through. Even when the agony goes on despite my prayers, I at least have a higher comfort – that of knowing I am accepting of Your plan without complaint; proof that I hold You in higher esteem than I hold myself.

2/26/10 Reflections           It’s just as easy to believe in God as not. If you don’t at least try, you’re basing your thoughts of God on your own attributes, which are pitifully inadequate. If you were to ask God about Himself you would be instructed by a powerful source. But you do yourself no favor if, after inquiring of God, you close your eyes and stop your ears against what you might learn.

Every day God guides us and protects us in ways we cannot comprehend because our minds don’t expand that far. Our inabilities should be comforting to us though – every weakness forces us to acknowledge the power of God, which must be working for our good since if God were against us we would know it all too well.

The more humble we are the more able we are to trust in God. Humility is not the same things as humiliation. Ego leaves us open to humiliation, but humility is the antithesis of ego. Humility is a state in which we are assured of pleasing God because we understand the need to make our wills subordinate to God’s.

God is our government – He makes us and He makes the rules by which we live. He gives us our rights and presents us with the circumstances that fulfill His plan. He sees to our welfare and expects us to take responsibility for obeying what He puts in our hearts as the moral way to deal with each other. His plan for us is broad; He does not micro-manage, leaving our free-will liberty to us as much as we need.

Sometimes our egos try to take God’s government over for ourselves, and sometimes we allow other egos to do it for us. When this takes place, it’s time to remember to go back to God in prayer to realign ourselves with Reality. Forget those who won’t do this, for whatever reason they have – the basis of a right-relationship with God is the individual and it’s the individual response to God that matters.

If everything else were to be taken away from the equation, our relationship with God would remain. Our spirits live on; it should be our spirits that hold our attention well above anything else. It is paramount in God’s agenda – His help guides you past the hype of humanity and sets you free to follow His morality; not anyone else’s. Rest yourself in living righteously; pledge allegiance to God and you will not go wrong.

2/23/10 Inspirations          Politics is the ultimate reality show – hype disguised as the real thing. We watch it because it’s real enough to be thrilling and fake enough to be safe. The trouble is we never seem to learn that when politics makes its own reality it takes on a life of its own; the power-people can twist things whichever way they want them to be, and that is the basis on which they make laws. And how they love to make laws! When there’s an opportunity to make another law, if the facts don’t support it other facts must be manufactured.

The same can be said about any facet of life on Earth – politics, religion, science, finance, health, history – the power-people decide reality, and present it to the rest of us as truth so there’s no conflict in their control.

When I think about the fraud on us that might never have been revealed if not for a brave few, I can’t help but think of the deception that is not discovered and how we’ve formed our beliefs on it. I get to the point where it’s wiser not to believe anything anyone tells me, but the yammering is so intense I would have to retreat into an empty cave to get away from it. What good am I in an empty cave? Are we really put on this Earth to be good to one another? If we are, why is power so historically oppressive?

Maybe we do all need an empty cave; one containing an empty chalkboard on which to write only what we can believe for sure. There in the depths of quiet we may have a chance to capture truth and reality. There where there’s only one Power we might begin to receive what we really need to know and something we can really believe. There where we live on only what we’re given without striving on our own, we become humble enough to see clearly what is necessary for us to see.

Mystics enter this empty cave of contemplation whenever they can. With no distraction and no voice other than The One Who Knows, the empty chalkboard receives truth direct from Reality. The hard part is for the mystics to retain this truth and this focus on reality when they leave the cave to return to the world. But that is precisely what keeps the mystic going back to contemplation – the intrusion of a discordant world that never seems to fit right. The more the world yammers at us, the more mumbly it sounds and the clearer God’s voice comes through. That’s the Power I can believe, the Truth that’s without conflict, the Reality that feels right, the Light for which I long.

2/22/10 Insights from Prayer              The trouble with biblical religiosity is that it never encourages us to take what Christ afforded us and use it to get beyond Christ and into God. Fundamentalist Christians, while rightly seeing Jesus as our means of a right-relationship with God, think it demeaning to Jesus that we then aspire to go beyond Him and on into the exact realm for which He interceded.

Yes, we are too immature to start with a unitive relationship with God, and need Christ to win that ability for us. But Jesus is a manifestation of God, and having freed us from our limitations God wants to draw our focus when we’re ready so that we may communicate directly with Him. A direct relationship with God is the whole point of salvation and sanctification – to hear some churches say it, seeking such a relationship is the work of the devil; not of the Christ.  The suspicion is that if we all cashed in on our mystic relationship with God won for us by Jesus, there would be little need for the power of the churches.

Mystics run into trouble with fundamentalists because mystics embrace the goal of Christ’s work instead of worshiping the work itself. Christ’s humanity is not the purpose of His existence, just as it isn’t the purpose of ours. The exercise of our divinity, our worthiness to desire union with God, is the end game. Jesus wants us to aspire to that. To a parent at the moment of letting the child go, if the child keeps running back it’s an indication that the work is not done and the child is not ready. Likewise, to the mystics it’s not blasphemy to thank Jesus and accept the relationship with God that Christ won for us – it only means advancing our focus from Christ the man to God who loved us so much He manifested Himself as Christ. The blasphemy is when we are admonished for not worshiping Christ the man.

We worship Jesus along with God each time we communicate with Him, for this is the purpose of Christ. Fundamentalists de-emphasize God’s call to contemplation and personal communication, drawing the focus back to the Bible and the church’s interpretation of it. Mystics use the Bible as a step to the real purpose of Christ. We may still be too weak to take full advantage of Christ’s work, but to deny those who are ready for it direct access to God implies that Jesus somehow failed, and the job of the church is to cover that failure with dogma.

2/21/10 Reflections              God is not just another experiment for scientists, for He will never be known completely on Earth. This is not a failing; this is His plan. His plan keeps us seeking, keeps us praising, keeps us grateful for the small hints of heaven that we see all around us when we cultivate awareness of them. If God were not a mystery we wouldn’t be in awe of Him as we are.

Now and then I play at pretending there is no God in my life, just to see how it feels. After all, I put in many years of not thinking of God at all, and I made out OK. But I always come back to the welcoming of my relationship with God, because of what it adds to my existence. I don’t need to understand God completely. What I need is to accept that there is something very much worth seeking, and that even if I don’t fully appreciate God because of my human limitations, the desire for that relationship keeps what I can know ever before me.

God is constantly bringing me towards acceptance of what it is I need. He puts before me what He wants to give; sometimes I reach out for it hungrily and sometimes I’m not hungry enough to reach out at all. In one way I’m better off than in the other, but God doesn’t force me. In the same way, He works with what he withholds from me – fear, despair, disease, calamity, guilt, my own sin. Whether I’m thankful, oblivious, or aware yet without gratitude, I’m not forced to acknowledge the source of my protection or my provision.

Yet if I do choose awareness of God I learn easily in proportion to how much of the process I give over to God. Once I begin, I see results. Once I see results, I want more of the same. The more I ask for the more I get – my asking shows that I’m humble enough to use God’s graces effectively. Even though my role is small, it’s an integral part of God’s master plan and therefore significant. Yet I don’t have to perform it flawlessly; I shouldn’t even aspire to that. I merely need to keep desiring the right attitude for my way to be made sure.

That’s why it’s so important for us not to exclude others’ paths or disdain others’ works. We don’t know what assignments God has deemed appropriate for others. We cannot do His desire while judging His gifts.

2/19/10 Spiritual Presentations        

For quite a while now I haven’t believed heaven to consist of anything other than pure joy. To me this means that nothing of our earthly lives is needed to complete our heavenly lives – friends, relatives, pets, or places that we loved on Earth. Even if you discount that the presence of acquaintances must cause disruption as well as joy, just as they did on Earth, it still seems that they would not be necessary and therefore would be redundant.

It’s my intuition that only God’s presence is necessary for complete joy. But there is something endearing about the possibility of being greeted by loved ones as we approach heaven. After all, the fear of death makes us cling to the thought that we will be helped into the transition by people we know and trust. Yet it doesn’t ring true to me, as the concept of “God is All” is so ingrained in my mysticism, and wishing for something else in heaven seems sacrilegious.

I guess there would be no harm, though, in speculating about these wondrous things, much in the way we review what we would do with a million dollars if we won the lottery. I think it’s human nature, since we don’t know for sure about something that’s inevitable, to make up what we would like to be true just as an exercise.

Tonight as we were ice fishing we were discussing how the people in the stories we tell all seem to have passed on. I mentioned that I’m old enough that I think I know more deceased people than living ones. This got me to thinking that the moment of death must not be too hard to handle, since so many have done it. From there I began to reflect on how people might envision their entry into heaven.

There standing on the huge expanse of lake, the enormity of God’s work came to mind. As wondrous as it is here, how awesome it must be in heaven, where we get the full effect of God. I began to play with thoughts of what I’d like to witness as I pass over, even though it’s my theology that the presence of God will comprise my ecstasy and that alone will be enough for me. I went from being able to eat whatever I want without fullness or guilt to having unlimited opportunity to spend my own time however I want. I thought of the things on Earth I didn’t like and gave some thought to how it would feel to not have to worry about them.  I envisioned a lack of responsibility; the freedom to have my head in the clouds instead of on worldly considerations.

At the end of this exercise I looked out onto the lake and was struck by something I don’t remember ever having noticed before. I never realized how beautiful the smell of warm snow is when the sun starts to go down and the cold starts to bring all the senses into sharpness. It’s like a prayer, a gift, and a comfort from God that all is well because He wills it to be. When we see how God presents beautiful things like the smell of snow to us here on Earth, we can be comforted that He really does want only good for us and is capable of providing it in His mercy – now and on into eternity.

2/14/10 Insights from Prayer         I’m convinced that if more of us understood the beauty of a divine relationship the world could start to heal. I can’t imagine being scared of a one-on-one relationship with the Creator, but apparently many of us are. We tend to be more comfortable in groups – groups of like race, religion, gender, causes, economic class, location, interests. All these things are fine to consider, but they make us dependent, and dependent on the wrong things.

Sometimes our groupings hold us back from the one thing that can easily bring us joy – a relationship with our Creator. We often look to a group to help us gain this very thing, and often go away disappointed. A union with God is not a group activity. It is much too special to be anything but an individual commitment. That’s because each of us is specially-made and, in the eyes of God, uniquely loved.

If you really think this over, it’s quite an awesome arrangement. We each have the power of God at our disposal, just for the asking. We are worthy of the asking, for not only are we God’s children, but God is extremely involved in our welfare. He likes for us to put our dependence on Him, because He knows He’s all for our good.

This is intentionally simplified; there are many other considerations. But the point here is that we would be so much happier if we let God do for us what He would like to do. It’s so simple if we start thinking interiorly – that is, with our willing reception of supernatural grace. We often don’t realize how much we desire God; how lost we feel and how homesick we are. Only when we give our selves over to Him do we then realize what we’ve been given and how much better things are when these graces are fully appreciated.

Let’s not substitute something less for the best we already have. Let’s turn to the divine instead of our human groupings to realize our potential joy. God is available to you every second you live. Your relationship with Him is up to you – something you will know how to seek out because your desire for it is always within you. Stand alone and turn inside yourself to experience the ecstasy of God.