The Light in the Woods

10/28/09 Insights from Prayer            The world is only as good or as bad as our perception of it. Therefore it’s different for everyone, which means perception can be changed.

Besides the differences in what our experiences are, we also interpret experiences differently, based on pre-learned attitudes. Therefore we sense that if we could bypass our own attitudes we could perceive more clearly.

If we can empty our faith of preconceived notions and go with only what we intensely and interiorly feel to be real, we can concentrate on that in certitude, because God places truths within our spirits. What God infuses is pure; far from our own ideas and free from the influence of lesser things. This purification of spirit involves active and voluntary examination of thoughts and the discarding of anything that doesn’t have God’s blessing.

In devotional prayer we put an idea before God and make ourselves willing to be receptive to whether or not God accepts it into our pure spirits – spirits from which we guard against ego and Earthly matters. Any sensory input can be placed before God for His inspiration.  From a snippet of scripture to a contemplation of a beautiful stone – when we place it before God in wondrous prayer we can be sure He will grant us the knowledge and grace we are meant to glean from it, even if His answer lies below our consciousness.

Pure prayer is our personal affirmation that, independent of our own intellect and will, whatever is of the essence of God should ideally reside in us as well. The giving over of our free will actions to the divine default is the most perfect free will decision we can possible make. It cannot always come to pass perfectly in this imperfect world, but the desire alone is in harmony with the joy of the Creator.

The ability to wipe the spirit clean of ego influences is a gift of God, opened and used by our co-operation. As in everything good, it is granted by God but is only fully effective when we use our own free will to accept the gift.

10/26/09 Insights from Study                          In demanding self-determination, mankind has gotten what it’s asked for – something less than the perfection of God-determination.

That’s how it is; it cannot be changed by us and it will not be changed by God. Life is the hell that we get and keep, and the best way to get through it is to be able to hope for what lies on the other side of it – the perfection of heaven. This can arrive as an unexpected gift. More often, though, it comes to pass by us going to the One Who Knows and asking for perception. This honors Him and allows His grace to give us a glimpse of life to come; a return to the reality of life as God meant it.

Communication from Reality happens all the time, but without the divine grace that makes us able to hear it, it doesn’t provide its full benefit. To listen for God’s word in every piece of creation He has set before us is called “practicing the presence of God”. To desire this lifestyle is to worship the Creator perfectly. God is goodness itself, and as long as our prayer is that we honor God in desiring His will for our own, we will perceive goodness even through the worst of life’s hell.

This is the hope that makes life livable. We realize that here is not reality; that reality lies beyond the nightmare. We see the absurdity of agonizing over something that is not eternal. We see that life can seem better when we are able to see beyond it. We see the love of God at work and know that one day that is all we will see.

10/17/09 Insights from Study             Asking God for something is the simplest and purest form of worship there is. The more you do it, the more convinced you will be that this is what is most pleasing to God. Forget about the human hesitation that asking is self-centered. To ask something of God is a selfless act because you are being humble in your petition; admitting that you need God to provide. From this base a mountain of trust can arise.

Don’t think that in choosing what to pray for you are dictating to God which road He should take. These things never enter into the mind of God. It’s enough for Him that you have a need and you recognize that it is He who must fill it.

Goodness will come from prayers of petition, even if it’s nothing other than the warm feeling of doing your best in what God has asked of you. Prayer is never useless. The more you pray the more you understand of the One to Whom you are praying. It’s your need, and God’s willingness to provide for you, that brings you closest to union with the Divine. But don’t be surprised if human-minded miracles do occur anyway.

10/9/09 Reflections        The purpose of study is not to find out what others believe so we can design our own beliefs after theirs. We study in order to become exposed to various subjects so we know what to ask of God, for ultimately God decides which seeds must take root and grow in our spirits.

No matter how inspired by God, the authors of spiritual reading have human weaknesses and human agendas. For this reason, modern mystics will study spiritual writings all across the boundaries of religion, picking up subjects here and there, and consult God in trust that He will enlighten the individual with truth. This is opposite from the fundamentalist, scripture-based religions which deny that God can impart any new knowledge; that if a person insists they have received God’s inspiration, the proof of that will be that it’s already found in scripture.

The problem with this is that scriptures assigned as the bases of various belief systems often don’t agree with one another. For the mystic, the Creator – being of one mind and that being the only necessary consideration – is the ultimate source of knowledge, who places His wisdom directly into the spirit of the individual – every and any individual. We earn discernment by placing ourselves before God in humility and obedience, firm in the faith that the Creator would not deceive us as another human being would. We can then, with trust in God, retrieve the wisdom that resides within us by willing God to release it to us – this being the highest, most-productive level of gaining spiritual knowledge that’s possible.

Spiritual reading from many sources blesses us with the “seeds” of interest that will bring us close to our Teacher. Contemplation with the Ultimate Inspiration will spur us on to discern well and act on what we learn. If we could not rely on God in all His ways, all hope would be lost for our enlightenment in wisdom and grace.

10/9/09 Insights from Study          I could never work up a good dose of animosity toward atheists even if I needed and wanted to. They are so wrong-minded that I feel sorry for them. They are missing the greatest gift available to mankind – love from his Creator. The love is there, but they are missing it.

You cannot be angry with someone who insists the moon is made of green cheese. They are so content to be deceived that only the supreme joy of discovery of truth can conceivably be in the works for them. It’s the same sort of uplifting mystic theology that welcomes humility because only the humble person can accept and enjoy God’s rescue.

It seems like every time I hear atheists use science to prove the non-existence of intelligent design, they always wind up validating my belief in God. The most recent example is the declaration that science, having found that all life forms stem from a single cell structure, has proven we all evolved from the same source. But without considering intelligent design, how then, if it all began with a single type of cell, did some of us become scientists and some become liver flukes? If evolution begins with only one cell, what force kept us from all being great white sharks?

For me as a spiritual person believing in the immanence of God in the world, science is interesting but not necessary. And atheistic beliefs cannot alter God’s master plan, so in the great scheme of things, atheistic hatred for that which it denies exists is pitiful. Atheists do have a role to play in God’s design, and I defer as always to God’s plan. We all occupy the same place in the mind of God – we are all understood, and loved anyway. If he’s good enough for God, the atheist is good enough for me to accept. It’s just too sad when his hatred makes him so nasty he can’t afford to accept enlightenment.

10/8/09 Inspirations             It’s come to me to understand that life on Earth is life away from God – living hell; the imperfect state that exists outside of heaven, which is in contrast the perfect state of being with God in His full glory. This Earthly state of being is all we can now perceive, and so we naturally tend to perceive it faultily. When we are able at death to let loose of this illusion, we will have in heaven the perfect perception of reality. Only then will we witness for ourselves that God is indeed perfect goodness; His will is always and only for goodness.

There is no suffering in the Creator’s desires, and therefore none in reality. But we certainly see it here in our disillusionment, and it certainly feels real. What then is God’s place in our Earthly nightmare? His place is to allow us to exercise our free will, yet guide us toward His desires — that is, the rightness and goodness that is the reality we can’t now fully experience on our own.

Though God guides, He never insists that we decide against our own free will. What He will do, and what He does very well, is gift us with the grace to want our free will to match up with His as much as possible.

For each of us who decides for God, there is no lack of those who decide against Him, using free will in ways that don’t glorify the Creator. This is not the same thing as God creating suffering – suffering is illusion created by our demand for autonomy and exercise of free will.  Our demand for a right to sin makes it necessary for us to live in a sin-filled world; there’s no sense in blaming God for the consequences of our seeking to be free from Him.

We choose between evil and good. If we choose good it’s because we are attracted to God’s desire to reclaim us. If we choose evil it’s because we reject God’s desires. We are in control of our free will, but in no way can we change reality through what we do; all we can do is affect this illusion apart from reality – this imperfect state of being we live in. But once we exercise free will, God can use our decision to affect His push toward goodness. This doesn’t mean God uses some of us as instruments of good and some as instruments of evil. It means we decide which role to play and consequently God uses that to fit His own purposes.

As one example: Every time the need to control power makes a war break out, it causes people to flee for safety. Every time there’s a gathering of refugees, there’s an opportunity for others to help bring God to the forefront of their lives.  The warmonger and the helper are what they are not through God’s wishes but through their own free wills. What God does is use the circumstances of their decisions in ways known only to Him and those with whom He wants to share this knowledge.

10/1/09 Reflections               It’s hard for us to just be. It’s natural to be cooking dinner, be preparing for a meeting, be disciplining a child, be checking out what’s on TV. But in the midst of life as we live it, everything we do is constantly measured by what came before and what will come after. We never seem to just be.

If you were suddenly snatched up from your place on Earth and plunked down on Mars, you would be forced to live in that present moment because Martian past and future is meaningless to you. The present is all you would have and it’s there you would live. In such a situation, where you are stripped of all faculties of intellect, will, and memory, it becomes just you and your Creator and the very moment that is existing. Is it any wonder that this is the situation which is conducive to communication with God?

We make this escape, sometimes unconsciously, by projecting ourselves into a scene far removed from reality. A driver in rush-hour traffic may longingly imagine being instead in a field of gently-waving grass, where all that needs to be done is to “just be”.

If we’re lucky, we have an actual place we can go to hide ourselves away from activity – a quiet garden, a forest trail, a dark closet smelling of cedar. In these places we experience life as it is without us or the cares that move us. If, for example, you are gazing at a rock in a stream, you might realize that the rock exists only in the present. It doesn’t change its being no matter what goes on with the rest of the world. Financial needs, political mayhem, mental meltdown, the next terrorist attack – the rock will still be there where God put it, doing what God asks of it. What a wonderful thing if I, with my free-will capabilities, would choose to be as complacent as this rock!

For mystics, the retreat that recharges our living in the present is contemplative prayer. Here we place ourselves in front of God and away from the things of the world, receptive to God’s input far from the distractions of time and space. Here, with no action of our own, we exist as God would have us; totally attentive to him and doing what we are supposed to do.  It’s a liberating feeling to be pleasing God, and what we get from this prayer we can take back with us to our everyday lives so that we are in effect praying constantly.