The Light in the Woods

11/30/08 Insights from Study          Have you ever been emailed one of those Powerpoint slideshows with the spectacular scenes of nature’s beauty, backed up by beautiful, uplifting music? They always remind me that being attuned to nature’s beauty is a sign of God’s good work in our world. Because of this I’m often moved to tears of gratitude for Him.

Of what use is the captured joy in seeing the beauty of nature to the evolutionary process? None. Beauty does not evolve – it’s simply there and always has been. It’s not scientifically necessary in the propagation of the human species for a human being to enjoy a sunset. We can’t witness the delicate display of a bird’s wing feathers at the moment they splay out beautifully to stop the bird’s forward motion – yet when we see a camera’s stop-action display of such a wonder, we are in awe of it. The scientist can describe what a drop of water does when it hits the surface of a lake, but he cannot begin to tell us why he finds it beautiful. Where does this awe come from?

We who experience creation through its Creator rather than merely from its scientific measurement know why something as useless as beauty touches us so warmly somewhere inside. It’s because the Creator wants us to know that there’s more to His plan than what we experience with our senses. If Mysticism could teach only one thing, it would be that the super-sensory experience of God comes much closer to reality than anything we can rely on here on this side of eternity. Life goes well beyond this world, and any evidence of that realm strikes us deeply inside. We ache in tears to return, like a traveler yearns to be home for Christmas.

Yet if we aspire to study beauty – or art, or emotion, or inspiration, or spirituality – we are thought to be dreamers with our heads in the clouds. Why? Because the immeasurable brings us close to the Transcendent, in that both inhabit the realm of the unexplainable. This must be discouraged under the premise that only the explainable can exist, and whatever is to be considered real must be proven first.

But what we know deep inside cannot be that easily repressed. For we know beauty when we see it, and we don’t care if it can’t be measured or categorized or explained by science. Beauty touches a chord inside and resonates our heartstrings. Beauty may be useless in the fight-or-flight, survival-of-the-fittest world, but it’s a useful call to the world beyond this one; a promise greater than things lost and a hope of things to be again. As Hegel says: “Beauty is merely the Spiritual making itself known sensuously.” Because God is present in everything, there is beauty in everything. When it pops out at you suddenly, this latent beauty is a nod from God. It uplifts and comforts, and hints even to the most secular among us that all is not what it seems – all is much more than it seems.

11/30/08 Inspirations

Q      I want to do what God wants me to do. But how can I, when I feel so inadequate?

A      You’re not inadequate. You’re perfect because you were made the way the Creator of the universe wanted you made.

Q      Then why do I feel so inadequate?

A      Because you aren’t looking at yourself from God’s viewpoint. You’re comparing yourself to others from a worldly viewpoint and are trying to conform to worldly ideals.

Q      Isn’t it important to fit in with the rest of the world?

A      Sometimes yes and sometimes no. But if you truly want to do God’s will you must consult Him; not someone shackled to the same world you are.

Q      How do I consult God?

A      You shut out, as much as possible, the world around you and ask God to help you recognize His will.

Q      Will I hear His answer?

A      You might, but it’s more probable that you will come to “feel” His answer in your heart.

Q      What does my heart have to do with it?

A      The heart symbolizes God’s grace inside you that helps you recognize bad from good.

Q      I feel like I’m a good person, but that still doesn’t seem adequate. I should be doing more.

A      It’s your spirit that’s the symbol of God dwelling within you. The more you welcome Him into your spirit, the more adequate you will feel. This will be true joy because its source is in reality; not the distortion that passes for reality in the world in which we live.

Q      How does being in touch with God in my spirit make me feel more adequate?

A      Because now you’re dealing in more than bad and good the way it appears written on your heart. Now you are aware of the supergood possible because of the presence of God in your spirit – a higher plane, so to speak.

Q      I will be at my best because of God in my spirit?

A      By welcoming Him you’re saying you want the same thing He wants – there is no higher aspiration or greater possible power for attaining it.

Q      How do I welcome God into my spirit?

A      He is already there. You must ask for His help to recognize Him and His desires.

Q      How do I ask that?

A      Speak to Him in prayer. If you truly and humbly wish to please God, He will answer that wish in some way unknown except by Him. Since you’re attuned to Him, you will pick up on His desires. You cannot be inadequate when you and God are attuned because God will not allow it, no matter what the world may say.

11/27/08 Reflections                      To an ant, his anthill is a great skyscraper; to God, our great skyscrapers are nothing more than anthills. To understand your place in creation, you must find out in which perspective reality lies. In truth, your perception of reality is no more valid than the ant’s, because your point of view, like the ant’s, is below that of the Creator’s, which is ultimate reality.

Because your senses are adequate only to perceive the reality in which you live, you have to “think outside the box”, letting your worldly senses give way to your supernatural senses in order to glimpse God’s reality. That perfect reality, and the supernatural senses that perceive it, used to be yours before sin demoted you to a life below true perception. We all have inside us the subliminal need to get back to the way we were originally created.

But to allow God to work in us to that end, you must first give up your ego, which works faultily within worldly misperception, in favor of God’s will, which shines forth out of the faultless reality of the Creator. The setting aside of ego in favor of God’s will solves the problems your ego has created. Imagine a world where ego issues do not exist, and God’s will has its way because of voluntary self-abandonment of all egos!

11/27/08 Insights from Prayer                  As long as I usually feel my head is too full of thoughts to prevent them from seeping out as I pray, maybe a better scheme than trying to empty my mind during contemplation is to put in front of it the very image of my spirit which I long for God to fill. It’s possible this might channel that powerful thought energy that’s so distracting into a positive force for elevating contemplation to its purest ideal.

I’ve done this visualization quite a bit to help me cope with pain – it seems to help to override the pain receptors by using my brain to concentrate on an image and its development. During a headache, for instance, I might visualize my head as filled with rust and imagine an eraser slowly but thoroughly erasing the rust; leaving a sparkling pain-free place before moving on to the next spot.

For a contemplation, I might envision my spirit as two-thirds full of a beautiful crystal-colored liquid. On top of this pure, warm, life-giving fluid is a black, bubbly, cold scum of sin and human weakness. As God pours His good water into my spirit slowly, carefully, and lovingly, it adds to the liquid on the bottom and forces the sludge up and out, spilling it down the side of my spirit. But when the scum is out, God’s water of grace keeps overflowing my spirit, washing the outside as well and diluting the remnants of scum until it exists no longer and is cleansed away forever.

In Mysticism, the imagination is something to be avoided during contemplation as it’s a worldly complication. The mantra word or words used during contemplative prayer are meant to bring our concentration back when stray thoughts intrude, allowing only God’s desire in. But I say if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. I will let the thought process have its way, but channel it into a “visual mantra” to keep it busy doing something beneficial to my prayer.

The brain feeds on sensual images, and when rightly deprived of them in order for the prayer to allow only God in, the brain will rebel with all its force. If, like mine, the quality of your prayer is compromised by this every time, try putting this sense-need to work. Use any of the five senses you need to gather the forces of the brain into focusing on the image. It may work out for you in such a way as your thought process, once occupied with the image, will leave you alone to receive the input God wants for you.

11/25/08 Insights from Study          What a great privilege it is to learn as I teach! With every second I devote to putting mystic theology down in my own words, I learn more and more of the beauty of it. To me this is proof of God’s intervention, and it makes me grateful for His awesome love and attention. I would be honored to be able to help convey God’s love and attention to all or any of His children – I hope He’ll continue to help me toward that goal.

11/25/08 Spiritual Presentations                The mission came to me in a series of quiet suggestions — “Wouldn’t it be neat if God would help me . . ?”   Yes, there is something I would love to do, and yet I suspect deep down inside that it will never happen; that I’m not qualified to serve, even if it is God who will make it happen. It’s a life far away from what I have now or could afford, and I have already experienced having to set down a calling from God that didn’t work out.

I understand a bit of how God works – He will set me up for failure in order to perform a purification in me. But this idea is big, and I feel too old and too creaky to benefit from failure. Yet I know that if it’s right for me it will happen even if it doesn’t happen the way I envision it. So let me be sensitive to God’s wishes by passively accepting them as my own, and go from there.

Oh, one more thing – I was doing something else when the thought of this mission raced across my mind, and the absolutely perfect and clever name to call the project popped into my head without the least bit of participation of my own. It’s something like this that brings me hope when there doesn’t seem to be any answer from God.

11/23/08 Spiritual Presentations          Have you ever seen how pleasantly beautiful a sheet of cheap copy paper is? Hold a piece up against a window on an overcast day and see the intricate pattern. You never knew such beauty was there, but it can appear if you look for it. It is the hidden joy inside God’s creation that mystics experience but seldom succeed in relating. You must experience it for yourself by recognizing it when it presents itself. So be aware; be ready to receive what God has for you. God is in everything, even a sheet of cheap copy paper. The trick is to be attuned to what He wants to show you.

(Did you see the eagle in the tree?)

11/23/08 Inspirations              Draw within yourself and breathe in God deeply. Like a fish lives surrounded by oxygen but takes its life-giving force into itself, we live immersed in God but appreciate Him most when we draw Him into our spirits. May you swim in an ocean of Godness, may His ever-presence hold you up. If God were a color, you’d see nothing without His glow. If God were music the noise of the world would be beautifully overridden. As you absorb the grace of God which surrounds you, the same glow and sweetness reflects outward from you to be noticed by others, who may wish for God’s grace by your example. The supply never runs out – you can share it freely and still receive more. There is no limit to you when you mirror God’s love; when His power is yours through your free-will offering of yourself to Him. Basking in the light and warmth of God’s love, you will never look at life in the same way again.

11/22/08 Inspirations             If you were raised within mainstream religion you were probably taught that man is bad and therefore God is forced into being vengeful so that man can’t get away scot-free with his badness. If in discovering your spirituality you’ve reflected and keep coming back to “Then what’s the point?”, you’re not alone.

When you read the Bible without the benefit of inspiration it sounds like it was written by well-meaning busybodies trying to scare you into goodness in order to avoid hell. But you know in your heart that God doesn’t work this way; to admit this is the first step towards reading the Bible while under the inspiration of God. When you do, it’s like an entirely different book; one full of your understanding.

What’s at work here is our inner conviction that despite our sinful nature we share God’s divinity. To some this is blasphemy; to others it’s the whole point of creation. There’s controversy even among Christians who believe Christ was fully man and fully God and serves as the ultimate example for us. Still some feel they must stop short of the concept of human divinity in order to honor God according to His commandment.

In Mysticism itself there is the paradox of self-degradation and the pursuit of union with God. How can we maintain our self-deprecation and still claim God’s indwelling? The fact is, the two states of humility and holiness are necessary to support each other; they are branches of the same vine. Our sinfulness is forced out as God’s grace pours in; all happening quietly within our spirits.

It’s with our recognition of our true identity that we throw off the bondage of sin and reclaim the God in us. There’s no chance of human idolatry in this – we know we can’t perfect our divine state until we return to reality through our Earthly death. And there’s no fear that God will be sullied by His proximity to us – we were made in His image and this doesn’t change beyond the veil of worldly misperception. In God’s kingdom we were created pure and our purity is unchanged. It’s the faulty perception that is our Earthly state that keeps us in sin and from knowing our divine potential.

I don’t believe our divinity can be lost – God made us in His image and in His image we are. But I do believe that the stink of the world must be washed off of us in order to enter the full promise of God’s eternity. I think this is the work that God does in our spirits, and I think it’s up to us to welcome our purification by grace. Why wouldn’t we welcome the process once we realize the truth about ourselves? God’s indwelling brings a peace and feeling of “rightness” to us that drives the allure of sin into the realm of ridiculousness. It’s this need for interior peace that eventually brings us around; not the threat of hell.

11/22/08 Reflections             I get so discouraged by people’s so-called “needs”, which for the most part boil down to freedom and rights never granted by God. Where did we learn to expect our every whim to be catered to? From where comes our power to legislate immorality? Who can be so bold as to confer on us the right to pornography, perversion, public adultery, abuse, idolatry, government-sponsored theft, fetal murder, secular brain-washing, our favorite addictions, extreme consumerism, laziness, destructive activism, foul language, etc.? We detest ten commandments from God, but fall willingly into the arms of big government without questioning to have these needs taken care of.

Maybe we ought to take these human-conferred rights and examine them in the light of our relationship with our Creator, since eternity weighs so much heavier than our lifetime on Earth. Just because we’re free to be ungodly, does that mean we are excused from striving to be godly? No, in fact if enough people take a close look at the decadence of our culture, maybe enough lightbulbs will go off in our heads. Maybe when decadence comes right up to us and slaps us in the face, we will start to ask why we allow ourselves to get further and further away from inner peace just because our permissive society allows us to do so. I hope this is the way it works, but it’s just too bad we have to destroy our country and our souls before we figure it out — how badly we need God in our lives even though we’re free to deny this.