The Light in the Woods

7/31/09 Reflections                  Science is wonderful; we owe so much to those who postulate, then research and prove along those lines. Through science we’ve consistently achieved a higher standard of living for everyone, and with new computer technologies the pace of discovery has quickened.

What we need to guard against is junk science – postulating and then manipulating technology to agree with the supposition the scientist wants to prove. As wonderful as the new technologies are for the scientific method, they also provide a false model when in the hands of someone with a personal agenda to forward. Science is no different than any other discipline; it must be true to itself in order to be valid, and we trust the scientist only so far as his methods are ethical.

The same standard applies to spirituality, no less because it’s an inexact process dependent on individual effect. The fact that it’s an individual acquisition makes it imperative that it be proven to the satisfaction of that individual. Only our inner virtues and spiritual peace prove what we suspect of the Creator. But spirituality can be pursued sloppily – we may think we’re communicating with God and purifying our spirits through virtue, but upon further introspection we find we may be fooling ourselves. That doesn’t mean that spiritual pursuit is folly; it means that when God’s presence is received properly we expect to accept God’s instruction through a faith that is studied and reasonable.

Science and spirituality are both research disciplines – it’s the way of measurement and study that is different, and the fact that in spirituality the search and the learning doesn’t end. For all the good that science does us, it can only be applied to the temporal universe. If that’s all you believe in, then science can suffice. But of all the things science can achieve, it cannot answer the end question — “Why?” When all the measurements are taken and theories proven, the very purpose of the existence of the subjects of scientific exploration, the universe and its inhabitants, cannot be discovered by scientific method. It cannot be discovered by spiritual pursuit either, but it can be glimpsed. This flicker of knowledge can develop faith, and faith itself generates more grace and more divine knowledge.

This knowledge of the Creator and His will can be just as true and clear to the individual as the answer to a math problem. But if this grace hasn’t happened to you, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened to someone else. It’s viable and useful to someone, and secular sneering born of the “Prove it!” school of reality can’t take that away.

Science and spirituality are not looking for the same thing – naturally the results will be foreign to each other. They are not speaking the same language or starting with the same hypothesis. They are not studying the same curriculum or aiming for the same goals. But both are extremely important. To demean one and revere the other is to rob oneself of the full range of the pursuit of knowledge.

7/26/09 Insights from Prayer       We do so much that God has never required of us, and we avoid what little He does ask.

Think about the people you know – does anyone live for the love of God? Sure, they may busy themselves with holy works, but I often wonder if we should analyze what we can do for others and re-assess the importance of what we can do for our own spirituality. One thing is better-handled by God; the other is one of the few things God sets aside for our participation.

We need to get this right, because from it wondrous miracles of opportunity grow. We are taught to think of others before ourselves, and we have an innate knowledge that self-regard can lead us away from God. But wrong too is neglect of our own spirituality, because that is the engine that powers our good works.

We must be right with God before we can bring others to this state. It’s God’s spirit that does the work, but God allows us to participate by maintaining the proper attitude. In this way we work in conjunction with the Creator, building up divine perceptions and keeping our spirits pure and receptive. We need to stop for a while to refresh this relationship if we want to best hold our experiences up as a good example. In this instance self-regard is a benefit instead of a weakness.

7/25/09 Reflections        God manifests Himself in all things great and small – from Jesus to a ladybug – to tell us of His presence and to assure us that the outcome of life will be good. Scripture doesn’t do this. Scripture tells us the human way of seeing things – that we are bad and will go to hell unless we shape up.

How can scripture be both inspired by God and fallible at the same time? Because God uses scripture to inform us of both the human way of seeing things and things the way God sees them. It contrasts the two views in order to spotlight the divine reality, something we would not consider during our daily lives unless prompted.  God’s presence within His creations is another kind of prompting.

The world that comes to us through our natural senses of taste, smell, touch, sight, and sound is very real to us because the effects of these forces is experienced by all and can be measured. By consensus, then, Earthly life is “real”. But human consensus is meaningless because the creator of the universe is powerful and has the first and last word regardless of human forces. It is His reality that is real, and since humans don’t have the intellectual or emotional capacity to absorb God’s reality, reality can only be taken on faith.

The frailty of human faith is the reason why God manifests Himself in every thing He has created. He is here with us if only we want to receive Him, and if we want to receive Him He helps us do that. Now it’s the supernatural senses instead of the natural senses that come into play.  They are the gifts that help us recognize divine reality. They are given; not developed. By our desire to receive them we ask God for them, and as we ask so we are given.  These supernatural senses don’t have to be measured in order to be real – they come from the master and so are perfect.

You will know how your supernatural senses work when they are working in you, because by then you will be sharing in God’s knowledge and grace, and your ability to absorb reality will be expanded. In mystic theology it’s said that you will be approaching union with God, whereby you begin to see things with a divine perspective and to recognize God’s manifestation in His created things. You will know God’s promise of perfection is real, and this knowledge prepares you to approach the human world with peace and compassion.

Your light beckoning others into a unitive relationship with God is the purpose of God’s actions on Earth – to gather all together in harmony as we seek to awaken into reality at last.

7/20/09 Reflections         There are two types of people who ask “Why does God cause the world so much suffering?” — the ones who use the question to prove there’s no God or that God isn’t good, and the ones who really want to know.

Have you ever looked around you and wondered what the world would look like if it were truly God-forsaken? I think of the description of beautiful Venus – a maelstrom of noxious gases. God did not choose Venus for us. He made Earth – He made it just what we needed, and He tailored us to need just what Earth had. And He continues to do so, for His reasons do not change and His powers of creation are greater than our powers to consume.

God did not make life on Earth perfect – He made it what we need. Perfection is the heaven He made for us, which we reject and cannot yet claim. Imperfection is the Earth we earn. And as imperfect as it is, the fact that we get along on it as well as we do is evidence of the Creator and His great love.

Why does He allow pain and suffering? Maybe it’s to teach you what life would be like if God were not lovingly looking out for you. Instead of asking this question, maybe we ought to reflect on the tornado that did not carry us away, the car that did not hit ours head-on, the rain that fell on crops that grew to feed us, the inspiration that produced the vaccine that saved us, the awesome water-cycle that provides us life itself, the babies that are not born malformed, the asteroid that did not collide with Earth.

The list of God’s goodness goes on forever. Every single particle of creation resides in the mind of God, and having created everything, He is in a good position to know what’s best for His purposes. What business is it of ours why God allows suffering? Our job is to accept His decisions with faith. We did not create the universe and we do not order it; is it too much for us to accept the judgment of the one who was able to do so?

We need to review our actions and weaknesses, and then reflect on the love and mercy we have been shown despite what we deserve. Then it might be good to shut off the TV and tune out the bubbleheads that get what they want from us (be it votes, ratings, fame, or money) by persuading us that all is in great crisis. No, all is going according to the plan God made to gather us back into His arms. Think about the God who never created a thing He did not love, who watches over us and disciplines us when we put ourselves in danger, who teaches us through experience what we need to know in order to get back to Him, and who reserves a place for each of us, known to Him personally in His aching heart, in the perfection of life in full union with Him for eternity.

God knows what He’s doing; it’s just that He doesn’t deem it good for us to fully understand how it’s done. This we should praise and not question.

7/18/09 Inspirations       Eternity is just around the corner. If something isn’t going to matter in eternity, why do you let it bother you now?  If God is in control and destines things this way and that, of what possible consequence are our fears and struggles and lamentations and guilt and anxiety and labor?

It’s up to you to lighten your load – God never asked of you all you think you must accomplish. In fact, it’s in your arrogance that you strive away with great showmanship in things you are only guessing God wants you to do.

The little there is that God leaves up to you can be accomplished in seconds, in private. If you don’t know what God asks of you, find out by asking Him. Then, for those who are humble, obedient and sincere, whatever it is you think you were meant to do will be accomplished. But it won’t be you doing it; rather, it will be God working through you. The advantage is, this way you have peace knowing that the task is being accomplished well and rightly.

Don’t offend God by being a man-made, self-made martyr.

7/17/09 Insight from Prayer        Love of God makes everything else tolerable. That is why mystics naturally concentrate on the presence of God in their lives; seeking relevancy that way instead of by way of the things of the world. The things of the world are destined only to disappoint, because we were made by God for better than this.

Life on Earth may be the hell God was forced to visit upon us, but His promise of our return to Him and all He created us for is what keeps us holding on. Meanwhile, we can do the works He has assigned to us without conferring on them the importance we wish they had. This humility makes us expect less, and a lower expectation fits in nicely with the lower importance of the world.

We are only waiting for better. We can improve our lives and we can improve the lives of others. But when all is said and done, these lives are fleeting. In the kingdom to come, it will be love of God that is the only consideration, and we can improve this temporary world most by cultivating the love of God here and now.

If God is supreme in our lives, all else is merely incidental and the world’s ability to bring negativity into life is diminished. The best work we can do is to shout this from the rooftops, for this is the freedom God wants every creation of His to experience.

7/13/09 Insights from Study       When we see life clearly enough to understand our own futility in the world, we paradoxically understand that the most we can ask for is to use ourselves in the way God desires. We are therefore both aware of our smallness and encouraged that this awareness itself makes up open to great abilities.

It’s an awesome privilege to be made small in the world because the smaller we are, the more room for God we have in our spirits. God works best in us when we are open to improvement and appreciative of help. When we use our independence to invite God’s guidance, we are putting to use powers much greater than our own; for a purpose blessed by the Creator.

This doesn’t require the things we’ve learned are effective; it takes a miracle. But miracles are given to us daily, if only we can recognize them. And miracles are far more effective than what we can do on our own.

To invite miracles into our lives we need to understand what pleases the Miracle Worker. It isn’t how we flex our muscles or develop our intellects – these things are good for human interaction but aren’t necessary to prepare ourselves to welcome the working of God in our spirits. What’s needed is the ability to tune out human nature and the demands of the world long enough to see our true nature. Only when we see how small and helpless we are will we welcome God’s interaction. Only when we welcome God’s interaction will we appreciate the peace humility brings.

God doesn’t expose us to trials and suffering because He’s mean and wants to cut us down to size. He wants us to learn from them that because we are vulnerable we can gather up all our troubles and offer them to God as His responsibility. It’s God’s love for us that energizes this cycle of need and provision. It’s God’s love that makes us long for the miracles that bring us closer to Him.

7/9/09 Insights from Study         If in the beginning there is only God, then we and everything He thinks of are pieces of God. All creation is holiness spun off from the One. You may choose to think of God as, having once created, giving no further thought to His creation. Or you may choose to see God as a master chess player moving us from place to place according to His whim. To me, both views miss the mark in a very important way.

As mystics believe God communicates to human beings on a personal basis, it follows naturally that they believe that God feels for us and treats us as loved creations. To mystics this is more than a theory; it’s a way of life. If you believe this way, you will want to live your life for God. This doesn’t mean you must go off to join a monastery; it means everything you do and experience is seen through the filter of God’s attributes and God’s desires, because those attributes and desires can be known and they are recognized as superior to the demands of the world.

It’s so important to listen to what comes to your inner spirit and to take everything other than that with a grain of salt. Ultimate freedom comes from dropping your need to follow your own agenda as well as the agenda society has picked out for you. It will end up that the calling of your inner spirit and good societal morals will translate the same, but it’s the way you get there that is so liberating. When you do what you do out of humble, obedient, and sincere love for God, you are doing everything your Creator has asked of you. The fact that He has asked it defines your relationship with Him as one deeper than creator/created or master/servant. When you answer Him, you affirm that you welcome this relationship and abide by its responsibilities.

To honor the divinity that God has imparted to you, you don’t want to try to fit what you hear into a dogma that you’ve already been taught – this is being a slave to your own agenda. Instead, trust in God dwelling in you, and view everything else through this prism. Then all is allowed to fall into place because it comes from your Source.

Don’t be in despair if confusion seems to take over – God is in the process of refining you. He gradually takes out the things you’ve learned that are leading you wrong, so that a thing you were sure of one day feels wrong the next. If you’re determined to honor the Godliness in you, what comes from that humble commitment can be relied upon. Just remember that it’s a process, and only declare theologically what has been refined completely. You will know its truth by how it expands your heart and satisfies your love for God. This is the goal, and once the goal has been reached in a certain way, that way can be declared correct despite what others say.

To study how others found their path can be helpful and validating, but remember that God’s work in you is unique; His use to you is specific. Judge things by what God teaches you – if that doesn’t seem to be coming fast enough, relax and let the divine in you set the pace. Don’t fear holding on to faulty convictions too long – God uses them as standard-bearers to contrast with the advancement that is taking place within you.

What’s most important is for you to understand where reality lies. I have learned that God is all and God is perfection, so all is perfection. It’s faulty ways of seeing things that make it seem to us that this is not true. Our faulty perception is a curse, but it’s not reality – reality reigns, but we don’t see it for our clinging to what passes for reality. We can go far to remedy this, but as we go we must not despair that our learning never seems to be complete. Human experience is as pervasive as the understanding of divine existence is elusive. Don’t worry; don’t give in to confusion. You are a piece of God to be reclaimed. When God shook Himself and all creation flew from Him like sparks from a sparkler, you immediately began to return to Him. The closer you get the more you leave the state of being too far from your source. As you move away from nothingness back to reality you will become confused at the transition, but all is for your good.

7/8/09 Reflections        What does it matter if you don’t get what you want during a dream? When the dream is over it doesn’t matter what you did in it; the dream isn’t reality. What pain could you not bear for a few seconds if you understood eternity? Take a look around and remind yourself – this is all going to pass into oblivion for me; it will mean nothing then, and it really has very little of the meaning I give it now. How much more peaceful our lives would be if we could truly understand this phenomenon in the here and now.

We are conditioned by the limitations of our physical senses and the makeup of our brains. If it didn’t happen there, it didn’t happen to us. No wonder we have trouble figuring out that the world is just not that important – nothing but worldly matters passes before us. We have nothing else with which to compare our experiences, and we have probably been taught that our supernatural senses are unreliable and somewhat sleazy.

Yet like in any dream-state there is that overtone of confusion – there is something that calls to us that we can’t quite answer because it’s out of our realm of experience. We feel, however, that if we do not grasp this we will always yearn for it. In life on Earth, this thing we yearn for is the grace of the Creator. In some deep corner of what we are, we know there is One and that our lives are dependent on Him. Very few of us will experience Him even though all of us can. We just don’t know how to give ourselves over to faith that completely; we are out of our element when we try. We get distracted by the things that we have placed ahead of the Creator.

Mystics encourage you to try to communicate with God. They understand that what He has for you is superior to what you can get for yourself. They want you to place yourself outside and a little above what you think of as life now; to project yourself into real life; the life with God that is coming. Until then, the journey can be so much more pleasant because God does not want for you the trials and sufferings of this dream world if He can reach you an easier way. Because nobody knows God all that well, the next best thing is to clear the mind into a blank slate, resting our thoughts long enough to let God’s come through.

Only after God’s grace is distributed should you explore what His message to you concerning the world asks you to do. The main thing is to learn to push the worldly dream-state aside and let God give you the glimpse into reality He is aching to have you experience. With that as the light at the end of the tunnel, you will do more and do it more easily on the journey home.

7/6/09 Insights from Study            We are all equal in the mind of God because all God cares about is that we give Him glory and praise; this can be done by anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere with no other requirement. And where you are lacking in this, God helps you along no matter what you do or have, so that His desire will be met and His kingdom inhabited by all His creatures. Therefore you will enter eternity as equal to all others no matter what has taken place in your life on Earth.

Why be good then? Why worry about morality and justice and charity and the sharing of God’s attributes? Because these things bring satisfaction and peace to you in the here and now in ways that God gives you, in His wisdom. Any glory we give to God comes back to us – that is the point of what He does; He Who would need nothing from us otherwise.

The glory we give to God comes back to us as individuals and also as members of the human race, who all benefit from the praise others of our kind have sent God’s way. All human goodness comes about through the auspices of God the Creator, Who allows us to co-create with Him by offering others that same goodness by our dedication to God. God sees us collectively as all humanity – that’s why we are punished together on Earth and promised together eternal heaven. Our instructions come to us as individuals; our compliance benefits humanity as one entity.

If this cycle of glory was all there was in the world, it would be sufficient. All else is added complication which more often than not tends to interfere with the basic duty of man – to love God by setting all else aside. It’s why we are equal in our quest – there is nothing involved but our willingness. No one has an advantage over another; nor is anyone disadvantaged in honoring God’s request.

As we move about the Earth let’s keep in mind that God has promised Himself to us with a small but sincere effort on our part. That’s why we need give only little heed to what we eat or wear, since God provides what we need and what He doesn’t provide we don’t need. But we also ought to remember that the small thing God asks of us can wind up being denied to Him if in our human pride we busy ourselves with tasks we think He ought to require of us. We believe God asks too little of us and we come up with ways to improve on His demands. It’s a common stumbling block, destined to upset the cycle of glory. We get back on the right track by going back to cultivating our relationship with God first and foremost; if there is more we can do He will tell us, and it will be for our benefit. As for God, His request of us is not diminished by its simplicity.