The Light in the Woods

10/28/08 Inspirations               Death is the portal to proper and perfect awareness of God. It’s not a going from one place to another; it’s a awakening. When we slip off both the importance of this world and our bodies, we stand before God as we are meant to. This is a good thing – death is the attainment of our proper state. We may mourn the loss of the person’s life with us, but soon realize that death is only the birth of the person into his life with God’s eternal kingdom. This is why in the middle of anguished mourning, we may suddenly have a lightness of heart; it is the hope that God sends with every death — “If you could but know the joy this person can now experience, you would be happy for them and look forward to a joy of your own”.

10/28/08 Insights from Study              We can be forgiven over and over. We have been assured everlasting life with God, despite the sins we commit. If we never from this day forward lift a finger for someone else we are still worthy to inherit the kingdom of God as children of God. How are these things possible? They’re possible because of the nature and perspective of God and the fact that neither resembles the order of things the way we as human beings see it.

In our world A = B; if you add or take away from either A or B, you must alter the other side accordingly. This isn’t so with the Almighty. In God’s eyes there is only one letter, call it “A” if you like. “A” is timeless, immeasurable, infinite, complete, unchanging. “A” just is – God just is, and His plan is in place.

The reason why we strive and worry and place life events like pearls on a string is that our human perception is not the same as God’s. God sees all as a whole picture; we see it as a puzzle we are striving to someday complete. To God, existence is an infinite state without beginning; to us life consumes us in regret, uneasiness, and fear as the faulty concepts of past, present, and future confuses us.

God wants us to enjoy existence and has graced us with this state – it’s our faulty, tunnel-visioned way of seeing things that keeps us from existing in seeking spirituality until death separates us from our bodies and eventually forces perfect joy on our spirits.

This is all part of the plan of reunification of our awareness with God’s consciousness. It already exists and is yours to enjoy in the measure that you allow yourself to witness it – call it heaven on Earth if that helps you envision. Ask God for better perception so you can aspire to what you would experience if the veil between you and God did not impair your vision.

10/26/08 Insights from Study            I hate to see fundamentalists waste their time trying to disprove allegations that events in the Bible never happened. All anyone, believer or non-believer, has to know is that what’s stated in the Bible is how God has chosen to teach man about his relationship with God. God is not concerned with the history of it – He has chosen His inspirations to best make an impression on us; on each of us individually. I wish people would quit trying to out-guess God in His methods or stick up for Him in ways God hasn’t inspired. Don’t get defensive — shake off the dust of disbelief and move on to those who truly want to live Godly lives. But if they tend not to take the Bible literally, see what it does for them before pointing fingers in rage. Maybe you yourself are not using the Bible the way God intended it to be used. God doesn’t care how a person comes to Him as long as he does – it’s God’s inspiration that presents His desires in whatever form He chooses, and God’s inspiration that helps a person recognize those desires when they encounter them. No one can do this better than God. Put down your indignity and trust in His ways.

10/26/08 Reflections          It’s the creeping corruption of our society that bothers me the most. We took a good thing like the civil rights movement and got high on the drug of public protest. In affirming the liberty of the individual, we were empowered. But as is typical, we went from using that power of bettering the plight of the individual to the extreme of “If it feels good, do it”. It’s gotten worse ever since, because each succeeding generation will have it more and more ingrained in them that it’s all about “me” and what I want. And we’ve found that what we want is no longer the nobility of freedom and justice for all, but sex, money, getting high, possessions and power.

This hasn’t escaped the notice of the rest of the world. There are two factions: first, those who love us when we export the new values of “the more and the more decadent the better” and hate us when we export the old values of liberty and justice for all; second, those who love us when we provide an outlet for what they are selling, and hate us for rubbing our decadent culture off on them.

This is hard for those of us who love our country the way it was when conceived. We want everyone to have the freedom and blessings we’ve enjoyed, but we are ashamed of what’s been done to our culture and don’t want its degeneration spread to innocents.

To me, the current world financial crisis looks like the merciful work of God in that it shows us how deeply connected we are as citizens of the world. It reminds us that we not only share commerce, but culture as well. We need to be careful that, if we can’t change the corrupt moral nature of our society, at least we can guard against exporting it, even if in most cases it might seem to be too late.

Can we encourage freedom and justice throughout the world without corrupting others with our own misplaced morality? Of course we can. But when we try we are mistrusted, because word of our sinfulness has come before. All that many know of America is Hollywood, Las Vegas, Wall Street, and excess in everything. We don’t realize how conservative the part of the world is that needs encouragement to throw off the burden of the sheep mentality that leads to tyranny. All the tyrants have to do is to show them our example of how we’ve turned God’s blessings into self-absorption; to equate freedom with a slide into immorality. Better for people to allow government to live their lives for them than to risk God’s displeasure, whatever God is to them.

The only way to improve the world is to fix what’s wrong with ourselves first, and then use God’s blessings to encourage morality along with freedom and justice. We need to get back to the God of the new covenant; the merciful God who lives inside us. Once we’ve recommitted our selves and our society to the desires of God, we can count on the continued wealth and personal peace we’ve enjoyed. Even better, when we export God’s favors in charity to less fortunate neighbors, we will have the powers of God behind us – we cannot fail.

I look at the unbelievable gifts God has showered on this country and I have to believe that this is how God works for the betterment of all — through one nation.  But when I see what we’ve done with those gifts, feeding our egos and our appetites to the exclusion of God’s designs, I wonder if God will put up with us long enough to affect the change back to Him that we so desperately need — before we can offer what we are blessed with to societies that are not free to develop it. I don’t think it’s arrogance on our part, but the unfolding of God’s master plan. How I hate knowing we’ve thumbed our noses at it; how I dread the feeling that God has already begun to take His gifts away from an ungrateful nation. My consolation is that we may learn from it before it’s irreversible.

10/25/08 Inspirations                  I’ve gradually learned that God works through many means. It’s not always sweetness and light – His favors and consolations are certainly there and are wonderful, but if we look for that exclusively, we will find our progress blocked. It’s the way God works through adversity that gets really interesting. Or as I like to put it – He gives us a lot of manure to grow roses in.

I almost look forward to the next problem, hoping it’s a small one, but ever-trusting that it will afford an opportunity to please God by going against my weak human nature.  It’s in these times that I feel God’s nudge so acutely – I’m on the verge of decision, knowing I’m going to do things the way God wants me to, but at the same time aware of how easy it would be to do what comes naturally.  This is what people who do not abide in the spiritual plane can never understand — that it’s in denying selfhood that we arrive at peace and joy.  In the secular world it’s just the opposite — self-interest is it’s own reward.

That little bit of effort whereby I ask God for the means to do His will in the matter brings a satisfaction I get no where else. That in itself might be self-serving, but it might also be thought of as the reward for trusting God to provide the right way and obediently following that way. If I didn’t have to struggle so against my nature, I might never gain the satisfaction of giving to God my proactivity in favor of His work through me. Without adversity, I might miss the evidence of the presence of God in my life. I thank Him for His knowing me so well.

10/20/08 Inspirations                Because we don’t live on the same plane as our Creator, we cannot naturally share His perspective. This is where many people leave their faith on hold – what’s the point of God if He’s so high above us we have nothing to say to Him? But to others this is the very reason for faith – they know from somewhere inside themselves that it’s a loving God that not only knows us, He cares about us and wants a relationship with us.

The place within us from which we carry on a relationship with our Creator we call our spirit. It’s the place where God resides in us, where He places His grace so we may function, and function with a spark of divinity. Our spirit is the place within us that no one but God can touch; where we can be ourselves completely insulated against what the world thinks and demands. It’s where our relationship with God is developed and enjoyed. From here we speak to God; from here we listen to His words. It’s the place where the miracle occurs by which God gifts us with His own spirit – His perspective. It’s only a taste of His perspective, but it contains the hint of hope, peace and joy that we need to trust in the sharing of His full glory in the better world of eternity.

Science will never locate the human spirit anymore than it will ever define the spirit of God. Spirit is on a higher plane than anything we can discern through our natural senses. It’s our supernatural senses that recognize the Divine when the gift of His grace enters our spirit; it’s our supernatural senses that long for something we haven’t defined when that spark is lacking in us.

It’s from our spirits that we pray. Meditation and contemplation are forms of prayer that put us on alert to receive the communication from God that is the focal point of our spirituality. The deeper our desire to share in God’s presence within our spirits, the more God gifts us with the grace to know Him and uncover the divine perspective. In this way we know truth even though we can’t bodily detect it, and reality even though it’s hidden by our own weak position of perspective.

A mystic is a person who has been graced with the awareness of the workings of the spirit and the desire to use the spirit to experience God to the full extent that God intends. They aren’t better people, just specially graced by God. God wants everyone to experience Him through love given and love received.  The mystic state is God’s preferred state for us – we are all potential mystics. We will receive God’s grace if we ask for it. To ask for it we must withdraw from worldly things and enter the inner room of our spirit. Here in humility we share with God what comes into our minds, and in obedience listen to what God means to share with us. In this union of communication we can gain the God-given perspective that evolves our best self on the path to perfection leading to everlasting joy.

10/19/08 Inspirations          We could more easily understand the mystic principle of the path to true perception if we imagine ourselves floating in space looking down on Earth. Here there is no day and night, no need for time, no weather – Earth just is, as everything in space exists passively when seen from a supernatural level.

If we were to move in closer, we would feel less alienated from what we felt in true life; more at peace in familiarity by moving away from true reality – the world as God sees it. We would experience unending light from the sun, warming us as we need to be warm and a welcome brilliance away from the darkness of the universe; yet too bright and too hot for us. The same universe as the universe as God sees it, but from a different perspective; a more human-oriented perspective.

And yet, even this perspective is not at all what we exist in if we move yet closer so that we now actually stand on Earth again. Now we are most comfortable – we are still in the same universe, but with a different perspective than that of both cold, dark space and the hot, bright experience within the solar system. Now we experience night and day, when we know full well that night and day are an illusion particular to our world – not experienced near the sun where light is not influenced by the movement of the Earth, and not experienced out in space where sunlight is inconsequential.

In the same way, much of what we gain through our worldly senses is an illusion as well, because we experience it only from a vantage point different from God’s. In other words, we’re comfortable in our own little world, but we’re far from the reality of the universe as seen by God. And the farther we get away from the world, the closer we get to the reality of supreme truth.

No wonder then that we do not understand the perspective of God, or even have the capacity to learn much of it. We are dependent on what grace and how much of it God gives us, and that is good, because God knows what we need and what we can absorb. When we leave it to Him, we may be moving out of our Earthly comfort zone, but we are relying on a greater good than we can rely on in this world, because it comes from the perspective of reality.

To a mystic, that is the only use of free will that is needed, for God can do the rest, and should. We dedicate to God the only power we really have. We do everything that God asks of us – He asks only for our love for Him and for our neighbor. Everything else that needs to be done for the good goal of His master plan flows out from this one act of an individual willing to trade his perspective in favor of God’s. If we love our neighbor, God may use us to feed and clothe him, but our abandonment of our will to God’s must be done first, and we must carry out what God desires; not conform to the action for action’s sake that seems appropriate only because of our Earthly, limited, not God-centered perspective.

10/12/08 Inspirations           God is all-powerful. Whatever is, is because God declares it to be. In this context, our free will moves about, making choices about this and that. We make the choices, but God alone decides in which areas these decisions have any viable importance.

God will deal only with individuals, because only individual human beings have free will. The natural world operates through God’s dictates automatically, and human institutions such as families, neighborhoods, governments, societies, nations, and organizations are ultimately made up of the co-operation of individuals and answerable to them.

It is individual choice which God addresses; individual spirits into which He positions His grace, irregardless of the institutions which the individuals make up. We are not congratulated or held accountable for the actions of principalities to which we belong. God deals with these entities directly, just as He deals with His natural creations. Societies have impact on the world, but that effect is overridden by the will of God. It cannot be otherwise, for we could never function in a world based on what we deserve, or on what we know enough about to make an informed judgment.

Instead, we are judged simply on what we wish to do with the divine grace given to us. And because our human abilities are paltry compared to the supreme abilities, the effort in carrying out our desires is not as definitive as the holiness of the desire itself. God runs the world – our only responsibility lies in humble obedience to God. We need only use our free wills to acquiesce to God’s desires; to welcome His grace into our spirits. At this point God will take over, and only then are our actions assured to be fitting. Anything more than this is human ego and human pride, teamed up to please ourselves; this does not glorify God and often results in the opposite.

Mystics are criticized for this basing of actions on the will of God because, to many, it sounds like an excuse for inaction or an abdication of responsibility. First, inaction is better than action for action’s sake, for the former waits upon God’s will while the latter is ego-motivated. Second, a mystic assumes no responsibility other than to abandon himself to the will of God – this assures them of taking the best path instead of the more human and infinitely less compassionate grab for prideful satisfaction. In other words, the things a mystic is criticized for are the very things God treasures in us – obedience and humility. Only when we see the world from a God-based perspective will the rightness of the mystic position become clear. Only when this path becomes obvious to a great many will the derision cease and peace begin.

Most of what we arrogantly attribute to human initiative, whether we perceive it as good or bad, is actually the will of God in action, and all for our good. Until we understand this we are beating our heads against a wall, trying to be the movers and shakers when all along the real Creator has created perfectly. Until we understand that any good we do we accomplish as the instruments of God’s will, we will tend to default toward wanting to run the show. We either co-operate with God or we interfere with His perfection.

It’s a hard lesson to swallow. We see famine and we want to feed people. God could end all famine in a split second – the fact that He doesn’t means the hunger has a useful purpose to the good of the world. We rebel against this because we are sure we know better. We’re good at blurting out “How could God do this?”; not so good at thoughtfully pondering “Why would God do this?” We want to fix what God has messed up. Or if this is too harsh, we want to blame the situation on someone other than God and then fix it up. We don’t have God’s way of seeing the situation, and we never will. But instead of assuming we are right and our answer is the only answer, we could try admitting the sovereignty of God and working from within it. If enough people did this the purpose of famine would be accomplished and hungry people could eat.

All we are saying is we would like to be left alone to acquiesce to the will of God and go where that will takes us. We’d like you to join us, whoever you are.

10/12/08 Insights from Study         If we could have proper perception, we could see what we think of as “bad” in its proper place in the scheme of things. For instance, we think of fear as a bad thing – it causes anxiety and despair for the future. But if we lived in the present; within God’s world instead of our own, we would see that fear is a good thing because it causes trust in God. Which would you rather deal with – anxiety and despair or trust in God? God is goodness – there is nothing bad in His plan for us. With proper perspective, for every thing that you see as bad there you find God working for our good.

Critics think mystics look at things with rose-colored glasses, as if they get along by ignoring the pain of life. They don’t ignore it; they just see it the way God wants it seen – as the catalyst for your God-mindedness. You can do this if you live in the present moment, where things just are; not where everything is either an effect of the past or a cause in the future. Not that mysticism doesn’t acknowledge past and future – that would be silly, for this world is all about time and its progression. But in God’s world there is no importance to cause and effect, and therefore time itself. In God’s eyes there is just the state of being. I believe we will all have this perspective after the spirit leaves the body, otherwise the thought of infinity would be unbearable; God does not provide us with unbearable things.

The worldly life is imperfect not because it was made that way, but because we see it that way. It’s a choice most people don’t even know they have. But if you see life through God-colored glasses, put on you by the grace of God Himself, you are experiencing a glimpse of eternal life, and life in God’s eternal kingdom is very good indeed.

10/9/08 Inspirations            Because I’m not content, my devotion is not complete, and because my devotion is not complete, I’m not content.

A very important concept for mystics is the idea of “living in the present moment”. It’s a state of mind that provides a hefty supply of ammunition for critics of mysticism – they like to use it to portray mystics as useless dreamers gazing into space while all around them real people are “getting things done.”

When I look around at what really is getting done, I have to wonder what good it all is in the end. Whether you are spiritual or secular, if your biggest consideration is what works you can do, doesn’t that all stop the moment of your death? And even if you leave a legacy, doesn’t it die along with the death of its beneficiaries?

Mystics are concerned with the only thing that doesn’t die – the spirit. Everybody has one, and will throughout eternity. We don’t “do” anything to it to make it most beneficial — it is filled by its Creator; the grace of His presence. What we can do is recognize what’s already in our spirit – the way to do that is to tune out everything else, and to do that we must live in the present moment. The fact that there are great personal benefits to be derived from this focus doesn’t take away the beauty of mystic spirituality as the perfect worship of God.

Take a moment to go to someplace quiet. Settle back into a breathing rhythm that feels soothing to you. Think about this very moment, to the exclusion of everything past and present. The only thing worth noting about the past or present is that they don’t exist if you live for the present only. Now keep the present moment in mind as seen through the eyes of God; as God within your spirit.

Nothing else matters. Everything is taken care of for you. Nobody can hurt you; nobody but your Creator can help you. You live for God, and that is possible because there are no time considerations. What you and God are at this moment is all there has to be. You have everything you need. You have only what you need. Nobody can take this relationship away from you. Now thank God for this moment, in any way that feels right for you. Remain in His presence for as long as you can; when other thoughts intrude, calmly go back to the world.

You will soon look forward to doing this – sometimes when the perfect opportunity presents itself, and sometimes in the middle of being shuffled around a noisy airport. For God, there is only one time, and that time is now. Visit Him in the now as much as possible; with His grace it will get easier and it will color your world the beautiful color of rightness. It will put a new face on what you do; it will remind you of what is truly important as you go about your worldly existence. You are not abandoning your responsibilities, only ordering them into perspective by promising yourself to acknowledge God in your spirit at any time and at all times.