The Light in the Woods

2/28/08 Reflections           More and more lately I’ve had this unusual thing happen to me. I’ll experience some kind of small setback, acknowledge that it bothers me, and then go on with life – forgetting the setback and forgetting to be bothered by it. By the time I think of it again it’s too late to affect me because of all that’s gone on since. My life is more peaceful for having not succumbed to worry, and nothing I could have done in the way of worry would have changed anything. But what makes this kind of thing noticeable is that now I forget these setbacks subconsciously, and only when I’m reminded of them do I realize they never really bothered me at all.

2/28/08 Insights from Study        It’s misguided to have doubts, and misguided to seek for certainty. The first is a lack of trust in God, and the second too much need for gratification. How can you get around this dilemma? Sit in absolute quiet, thinking nothing except welcome of God into you spirit. Only He should take you from doubt to certainty.

2/28/08 Revelations        “You have to be more specific for your targets to learn what you have to teach. You hold back on writing the specifics because you aren’t moved to do this writing; if you aren’t truly moved then you feel it’s your thoughts, not mine, that you present. You aren’t moved to write the lessons I want you to write because you have been graced; it’s incomprehensible to you how people can not know these things. But remember – like the apostles, things are yours to know that aren’t given to others to know. You can’t rest with that – in order to be of service you have to quit basking in the favors I’ve given you, and do the bull work of passing along the word to others. In that way they will come to drink of the living waters I’ve provided for them through you. Just get started — you know I’ll do the real work. Right now you’re holding back because you think it’s arrogant of yourself to presume to be a spiritual counselor because you haven’t been trained in that. You haven’t completely opened up to my desire to work through you. My work is perfect, well more useful than any training you may get from any human. This is a worldly attachment you must give up now. Forget the fear of being judged by the world. If you do, you will please me, and that will be answering the highest calling possible.”

2/28/08 Insights from Study        Here is a powerful thought presented in my current study of the Holy Spirit: Who is waiting on the other side of your obedience? As hard as I think I’m working to present to others what was presented to me, there is a self-imposed dam preventing the living water to flow to others waiting below. If only I could clear out the debris that’s holding up the flow, I could welcome in the grace to serve God and others the way God means me too. Whatever is holding me back must be very powerful – some aspect of me is not accepting something vital to accept. I will ask for enlightenment and when the Holy Spirit readies me I will accept the change. I think it has something to do with prayer. When prayer is the keyword others draw near. I must do more contemplation and less meditation. Holy Spirit, please release my mind from all thought that isn’t of God, so I can break through the barriers between me and those waiting for my help through You.

2/27/08 Inspirations        Scripture-worshipers can so easily scoff at spiritual insight because they have their proof of God’s word and it must be real because their faith is a book they can hold in their hands and react to with their senses and intellect. Like scientists who say God can’t be believed because He can’t be proved, scripture-slaves don’t brook any insight that can’t be found in the book. Worse, they proclaim that even if lost scripture itself is discovered they will not consider it valid. But the very worst thing they do is hold tenaciously to the human-declared close of any new word coming from God. How dare they limit God? What a gross example of human pride run amok. What a slap in the face for God! But relax; it’s OK. We are running away from our churches because we see the harm they do. We’re running right into the arms of God with a readiness to listen to Him. This would not be possible if our church leaders hadn’t erred so terribly in their quest for power. As for myself, I will go to the one infinite power. I will ask of Him, listen to Him, and gladly receive His loving grace to hear Him and respond to Him – with love and according to His desire; not mine. If that isn’t the real message you get from the Bible, then maybe it’s you who’s being deceived.

2/26/08 Inspirations       A few days ago I was lamenting over my involuntary lack of compassion; wondering what function it could possibly serve. Then without thinking about it, this morning came the answer: “It is to showcase the way things are on your human side, so that when you write about love and compassion you will not have to doubt that the word really comes from God.” I’m well aware of the importance of the mystic feeling of being guided in ways that go against my nature, but today I really had the two phenomena put together for me in a way that brings great understanding.

2/25/08 Insights from Study       As you get interested in mysticism and start to study it, you may come across areas that sound familiar to your own experience. At some point you wonder to yourself “Could I be a mystic?” Your first response might be “No, not me – I’m not worthy enough or holy enough.” Then you might figure “Besides, I haven’t heard voices or seen visions.” As you progress you will understand that God is not limited by any unworthiness or unholiness you might imagine in yourself. Then too, many, if not most, mystics never hear God’s voice or see a vision – at least not with the exterior senses. Mysticism is not about what you strive to acquire; it’s more about an attitude of acceptance. Acceptance can come to fruition no matter your circumstances, and the call to acceptance can appear in anyone at any time.

So at what point can a person feel confident that he or she actually is a mystic? It is when you closely examine yourself interiorly (that is, spiritually) and realize you have an overriding sense of being guided, especially if the guidance is taking place against your nature and beyond your intellect. This implies that there is a force in you that was never there before – while the effect is real the truth is that it was always there but not recognized. You become a mystic when God works in you to make you recognize His presence, His purpose, and His guidance, all at once. This is the evidence that you have been chosen to experience a higher plane of familiarity with divine things. It feels like a persistent force inside you beyond what you think of as “yourself”.  Because that’s what it is.

2/25/08 Insights from Study       Sometimes the themes of the Old Testament seem so out of date and irrelevant that we start to think of it as belonging to another people and another religion; that it has little to do with us today. But if you’ve read the Old Testament through, set it aside, and started to think deeply about it, you see that just as it is today, the focus is all about our relationship with God, and God’s work with us to get us back with Him again. God’s desire has never changed – there are millions of human responses to this desire, but God’s purpose has never wavered. Far from being irrelevant, the Old Testament inspires us in God’s persistence – so great is God’s love that it has never failed us, and is the same yesterday as it is today and will be tomorrow. If we get nothing else out of the Old Testament, the proof of God’s commitment to us should be awe-inspiring.

2/24/08 Inspirations        Just because sin is the default condition of our world, doesn’t mean that hell is our fate unless we do something to prevent it. I believe heaven is the default in spite of the sinful world. We need to realize the inexhaustible work of the Holy Spirit in us that is toiling to keep us from the occasion of sin. We would have to actually fight against God’s help in order to lose our inheritance in Heaven. I realize that there are people who try to do just that. Temptation, though, isn’t a choice. We are not condemned because we are tempted. So many lives are ruined with guilt over things that aren’t even in our control. Our free will has a limited application – our power in this regard has been overrated by well-meaning preachers who forget that God does not give us trials we cannot overcome. For at the point that we can’t overcome them is the point that we know they are part of God’s plan for us.

You aren’t going to get your mind around this principle until you understand that free will has only one function – to accept or reject God’s spirit in you. It is God’s spirit in you that is keeping the propensity to sin away from you or letting the temptations of a sinful world creep in. This is done behind the scenes, with no human input whatsoever, for reasons we can’t categorize. The function of an individual’s free will is to accept or reject the grace of God. The fact that we must exercise this free will over and over gives the impression that it is we ourselves building virtue in us. If it’s rejected we simply don’t act on it and our protection from temptation is rejected as well. We don’t sin so much as we reject the grace that keeps us from temptation.

Turned around, when we do not sin we are not virtuous, only accepting of the grace that brings virtue into our spirit. It isn’t our work but God’s that brings virtue to our spirit; sin is not our work but the work of evil until we succumb to it. We become implicated in it when we use our free will in the rejection of the Holy Spirit’s gift of protection from it. This distinction is important to our concept of heaven and hell. Neither is won by our actions but by our choice of forces we accept.

In Mysticism we make this choice once and for all by giving up the choice to God as a gift. That isn’t to say there isn’t an ongoing process, because we can’t be perfect in this world. But the gift is the desire itself. Like the “born again” phenomenon of Christian religious dogma, it is a promise given once and built upon through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Mysticism’s principle of abandonment of our will to God’s will guarantees our union with the powerful forces of good. By giving God our free will we are infused with the grace of His own will. Heaven follows with surety because God’s will for us is eternal life in His full presence. It is God’s will – it is the default. Therefore hell would be impossible to attain – you could choose to fight against all-powerful forces of good bent on your salvation, but we are much too puny to win this fight and that’s why I don’t believe in hell.

That isn’t to say there isn’t a necessary, painful preparation for heaven beyond the scope of free will choice, which ends at death. Or that there are sub-perfect levels of heaven that is instantly existence upon our deaths. These things aren’t meant for us to know until the time of our deaths. That makes our choice all the more urgent at this very minute, and this in itself is part of God’s plan.

2/24/08 Reflections       I have been appalled over my own lack of compassion. Me – who knows in her heart “I am a good person”. I don’t know how to reconcile what I know I should be feeling with what is in my heart. Is it really coldness of soul, or is it certitude of spirit? Is it that I really don’t care what happens to others, or that I have such an extraordinary sense of the rightness of God’s work among us that compassion is antithetical? How can I be Christlike if I have no compassion? What I’ve been given to feel in the matter is that somehow, on the path that God has chosen for me, there is a need for this distancing in order to do for Him what He wants me to do. I see my unique role in exactly the confidence that I see everything around me – it’s all God’s plan, and God is good. To interject my own feeling – which are after all human feelings; subservient no matter how noble – would be an interference. It could be that in making me cold-hearted, God has insured that my own feelings don’t get in the way of what I must do. A medic on a battlefield would not be doing a good job if He stopped ministering to the wounded to cry over the dead. It’s not a lack of compassion but fortitude for the job at hand. I must not criticize myself or allow myself to be devastated by the criticisms of others who have been put on the more normal path. My path is right for me, because it was given to me by God’s own spirit. Sympathy, or lack of it, is not something we choose. It’s a tool better suited for the hands of someone God has chosen in that capacity. If it is my path to encourage humility and obedience, probably God has decided normal feelings of compassion would be a hindrance to that end. God’s ways are awesome even if we don’t understand them. I’m ready to be excoriated by others for the unique way God has deemed necessary for me. That is where my real care lives.