The Light in the Woods

11/28/09 Reflections          What’s missing in the world isn’t love, for each and every one of us is loved so immeasurably that we cannot even absorb the concept. But that’s what’s missing – our ability to recognize the immensity of God’s love for us, and our ability to expand the scope of our intellect enough to desire to experience God more than we have.

Today is a special day for me – the anniversary of the moment when God took hold of my mind, my imagination, and my ego and showed me how little I’ve been settling for. He chose me and I accepted. He chooses many, and many accept. If they’re like me, they enjoy a flurry of supernatural favors, causing them to experience extreme joy and contentment. Then just when they grow to expect joy, they’re handed complete letdown.

We are fortunate that there have been those who have gone before us and left accounts, as accurately as they might be in explaining the unexplainable, of how it feels. And I’ve been particularly fortunate in that I’ve had the means to teach myself the theology behind God’s personal involvement in my life. Because of this, I have an understanding of why we must suffer after having a taste of deep spiritual knowledge and grace. And I know that the suffering of perceived estrangement from God is followed by, not the initial ecstasy, but something more stable and more sustainable. It’s the continual awareness of the awesome presence of God and the certitude that this is but a small taste of a banquet yet to come.

11/27/09 Insights from Prayer          I’m always despairing over my lack of compassion. Last night it came to me that if, as I profess, I only want what God wants, I should be patient and trust that He leads me to compassion, even if it doesn’t seem like I’m anything other than unnecessary.

When I give money to charities, I’m still left emotionally flatlined. When I pray for others I feel fulfilled, yet only momentarily. My lifestyle is such that I seldom have an opportunity to connect with others. But when I write what comes so effortlessly to my mind when I’m enjoying the presence of God, only then is there the feeling that I do have something to do that’s purposeful.

How else will I know what is right for me unless I examine my feelings when I do it? We are all different – some contribute one way and some contribute another. My focus must be that if I truly live to love and honor God, whatever means speaks to that end must have God’s approval, no matter how it looks to me or fits in with what others are doing.

If God’s wish is mine, I should not be afraid to allow myself approval as well. In this state, I should have enough discernment to know that God is only goodness and so must be my motives and actions. I cannot rate myself on any other scale, because then I will be a victim of spiritual confusion.

11/25/09 Insights from Prayer           What greater honor could I show to my Creator than to give Him my full attention? He made me perfectly, He watches over me in my trials, and He lives with me on a higher plane, which I will again understand fully when time is over for me. He gives me His full attention and His full capacity for love, and that is a great deal of attention and love indeed. My contribution is to love and honor Him with the most of what I have to give.

This gets harder and harder as my society turns its back on God, and the culture I live under no longer resembles anything I care for. But I am full of faith and willing for God to be my government no matter who it offends. I love the allegory of the Hound of Heaven because it reminds me that no one can unbelieve the truth out of reality; no one can change truth by their opinion, or make reality disappear by willing it so.

We have an innate drive to connect with our Creator. The more others deny Him, the more we seek Him. The more we allow Him in, the better we are at it. The more others try to suppress our devotion, the greater our need to seek God.  And the more our detractors succeed in their persecution, all the more consumed we are in carrying on our worship of God from within our spirit – that secret place where only God and His child can go.

There we are not judged, but simply loved. There we finally find what we need, and our persecutors become God’s means for our joy and contentment. Therefore, love your enemy – he brings you closer to God as part of God’s design. And if he is your enemy because of your spirituality, he is an even greater blessing. Much as some hate the thought of it, there is no way anyone can stop me from praying for them, as the beauty of prayer lies in its unobtrusiveness. You can’t see me praying for you, but I wonder – can you feel the Hound of Heaven closing in behind you?

11/24/09 Reflections           Once we accept God, we realize we have been forgiven. End of subject — there’s no need to rehash the past. We do not need to make up for what we’ve done – we could never do that as God has already done it perfectly. We don’t have the ability to pay for our past sins, so we neither have the obligation to try.

In the same way, we have no right to expect others to even up their accounts with God. We deal with others as God does – full forgiveness without requiring any payback. What could anyone do to reverse the effects of their sin against God? No more than you can do to square yourself with God. Life is better when we accept God’s forgiveness and extend the utmost degree of forgiveness to each other.

Now we know it’s futile to promise to make up for our sins or to require others to make up for theirs; so what can we do? Only accept that God has done this for us, and do our best to not get into the same occasion of sin again. Nothing forces us to do this, and if we do return to sin, we’ll be forgiven as before. So what’s the motivation for goodness?

It’s that no matter how prideful and “tough as nails” we want to appear, it feels good to feel good. Righteousness feels right. There is a peacefulness in justice and serenity in living right. We don’t even have to be sure of where such contentment comes from, although it makes sense that God would supply the favor when it seems right to Him. What matters is that a good deed begets the desire of the recipient to pass along the sentiment. And forgiveness of one person spurs on his desire to forgive someone in his life. It doesn’t always come to fruition, but the desire is there where it wasn’t before.

The motivation for goodness is the good feeling that comes from doing what has been put in our hearts as “right”, and the tendency of God to acknowledge the desire for goodness on the same scale as if the good deed had actually been done. This is because all we can really do that God does not take upon Himself is to give up our human tendencies in favor of letting our free wills conform in harmony with the will of God. Having done that, we only wait for God to act upon our desire. The result will be goodness.

We tend to miss this phenomenon because it seems too simple to be the meaning of life. But it stands to reason that, as helpless as we feel, life is far less about our contribution and more about God’s. Take away responsibility for everything but what God has given us to do, and life really is quite simple.

From there, we can contribute to society to the extent that we can, always keeping in mind that the die has already been cast, the roles have already been awarded, and the outcome is sure. We feel better when we exercise goodness and make life on Earth as serene as possible for the most of us as is possible. But it’s also important to remember our limitations; leaving the impossibilities up to God.

11/22/09 Insights from Study              The way the world destroyed Jesus is the way it tries to destroy those who avail themselves of Jesus’ blessings. There are those who think of this life as all there is and because of that they live only for worldly desires. These people despise the thought of the real life to come, because they assume preparing for it would mean giving up their Earthly ways.

When they encounter someone who ascribes to a higher plane of spirituality there is resentment and a need to test this focus. There are many forms of persecution, and the more secular the society, the more extreme the justification for the persecution.

Buy my spirituality cannot be realized by anyone other than me and God. It cannot be measured in worldly increments and cannot be tested against worldly standards. You can kill me to prove that God will not save me, but God might not have worldly purposes in mind when He saves. The realm of reality to which I go is not a place where you can follow me, and so you’ll never know the results of your test.

It was not the death of Jesus that enlightens us to God’s design so much as His resurrection. If you do not see beyond this world, you cannot reasonably test someone who does; you will not recognize the promise of the resurrection unless you yourself experience it. Your persecution of the spiritually-minded will be counter-productive because it only validates the righteousness of those you persecute.

11/21/09 Insights from Study         When Mysticism is practiced as an adjunct of one’s Christian beliefs, there can be a flood of understanding released that is nothing short of miraculous. Many report reading the gospels with such new insight that they feel they have finally seen them for the first time for what they are. When Mysticism is practiced outside of Christian beliefs, there is often a logical pointing to the gospel for those who can and will welcome the experience.

There is nothing inherent in Mysticism that deviates from Christian principles – one must have the open mind of a mystic to realize this. Even if you are just beginning the mystic path you will recognize in God’s will the principles of Jesus Christ. To Christians this might seem elementary because Jesus is, after all, God. To those who know only that Jesus Christ was a “good person”, the element of goodness resonates in the spirit in perfect harmony. “Goodness” is the same principle for everybody despite the different degrees we assign it to spin things towards our own human agendas.

So it’s often a natural progression from “God is good and Jesus is good” to “God’s will is Christ’s will”. It’s supernatural how unwavering the desire for Jesus is when He is met through the New Testament. Christians believe this is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is God as well. The mystical filling of willing spirits with God’s Holy Spirit is not only mysticism’s main premise, but Christ’s ultimate purpose. The Holy Spirit as bridging between man and God is surely Mysticism’s focus as well as one of Christianity’s most important dogmas.

The beauty of Mysticism’s association with God is pure in concept for anyone. It weaves in and out of organized religions and draws non-believers into its purity of divine love infused, empowering, and passed along. The association of Mysticism with the teaching of Christ is inescapable, because they have the same source and the same purpose.

11/20/09 Spiritual Presentations

Every morning this time of year we prepare the boat and leave the dock; the same raven appears and accompanies us for miles as we make our rounds. There are other ravens around, but only one follows us throughout our work. I think this is the third fall this oddity has taken place, and I suspect it’s the same raven each year.

I’m under no delusion that most animal behavior is not food-oriented. But this goes well beyond that kind of motivation. The raven merely goes with us, and when we land at the dock again back home, it goes back to whatever it does all day and we notice it no more.

This of itself is amazing, but today it took on a new twist. As I usually do, I was meditating and praying as I rode in the boat. Today I was thinking of the morning devotional on which the prayer “Hasten, O God, to save me; O Lord, come quickly to help me.” (Psalm 70:1) was being expounded. I thought of this prayer to God in conjunction with the raven as a sign from God, and I wondered if the two might come together as one manifestation – sort of like the mystic experience as prayer and presence coming together.

As soon as I said the prayer with this thought in mind, the raven lowered its flight to just above me in the boat; keeping up with us perfectly in sync as if all else was standing motionless, and it began calling continuously. Never had the raven approached the boat this closely before, and never did it call continuously. That it chose this moment to do this was for me not a surprise, but a validation.

My husband always said his Indian family believed it possible to come back after death as an animal. In fact we’ve been calling this raven “My Old Grandmother”. I don’t believe we come back after death at all, but I very much believe in the ability of God to reach out to make Himself known to us in any way He wishes. He has put me in the state of mind where I can welcome and expect this visitation, and I have used my free will to recognize and accept His attention.

What a joy it is to be in harmony with God and to know it. It is a cycle of being loved and loving that keeps validating itself the more it goes around. I’m grateful for whatever good spins off from this cycle of love between Creator and creation.

11/15/09 Inspirations           Spirituality attends to the “rightness” of the way we are when we are wrapped up in God. Religion tells us we please God by following the rules of “rightness”.

This example of the difference came to me: A spiritual woman was so immersed in the things of God that she was seldom moved to look at herself in a mirror and didn’t feel that putting on makeup was important to her. So without giving it much thought, she didn’t wear makeup.

A religious woman was taught all her life that wearing makeup is a sign of wantonness and self-adoration, so she didn’t wear makeup because she believed to do so was to sin against God.

Both women were of a mind to do the right thing, but this “goodness” in the spiritual woman was an effect of abandonment of self to God while this same “goodness” in the religious woman was reached by adherence to law.

If you are waiting for me to tell you the spiritual woman’s way was more pure than the religious woman’s way, you need to hear about the third woman in my example. This woman belonged to a religion that didn’t put forward any tenet at all on the wearing of makeup, but the only time she wore makeup was at church. Why? Her thought was that all week long she sweated and toiled for the sake of keeping body and soul together. On Sunday she was going to church to worship her Creator and wanted to make herself look and feel special for the occasion.

And I don’t know for sure, but it seems logical that there are places in the world where a person doesn’t feel they’ve honored God properly if the ritual didn’t include full body makeup.

We really confuse ourselves when we allow ourselves to judge “goodness”, especially when we move beyond self-examination and into the realm of judging others. That’s precisely why I do believe in the purity of motive that comes with spirituality, even if religious and plain old secular “goodness” is fine as well. It’s because in spirituality we immerse ourselves in God first and exude goodness because we’ve taken on His attributes. We are good because God is good; not because God has given us rules to follow and we’ve followed them.

The less self-interest there is – when our own goodness surprises us – the more evident that we treat goodness as a gift from God instead of as a reason to be rewarded for our own work.

11/12/09 Inspirations              Imagine if there was no such thing as time or space. You would look out on the world from where you stand and say to yourself — ”This is what is. What is here and now is everything there is, just as it is.”

That’s the way things are in Reality – in God’s kingdom, the world as it is without the scales that cover our eyes. In God’s kingdom, this eternity – life without time or space – is the beautiful sum of God’s love. But to us, infinity is frightening because we have become used to the illusion of time and space, and we cannot really imagine existence without them.

And so we try to imagine heaven but fail in that we keep returning to the earthly measurements of time and space. “OK, so there’s heaven and it’s wonderful and it never ends. Except, everything must have an end!” No, just when you’ve expanded your mind to include a life that goes on forever, you’re already imagining the end that must come. You circle around infinity, trying to both embrace and erase within your understanding the concept of endlessness, but you can’t do it, and this frightens you to the point where you can no longer contemplate heaven without unease. But you’ll be back, because as frightening and incomprehensible as eternity is, you would rather face it in consciousness instead of in the black and silent nothingness that would be it’s alternative.

This is why humans, all humans, are pre-programmed for trust in the Creator, whether we acknowledge it or not. We with our minuscule capacity for knowledge can only be immobilized by fear or comforted by faith.  Without this faith that something higher than we are will make everything all right, we are lost in our own home and afraid to leave it.

There are some who claim that when a person finds comfort in faith in God, that in itself is evidence of their delusion; in “real life” we don’t get what we want by wishful thinking, we get it by luck or hard work. But those with faith in God are functioning above and beyond this temporal, worldly life, and worldly measurements do not work there. On this higher plane we do get what we want by wishful thinking. It’s called prayer, and if we pray to be in sync with God’s master plan, we will of course be comforted. The mightiest prayer is “Lord, Your will is done – help me be content in that and I will have comfort in all things.”

The antidote for fear is faith. If you trust in the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful Creator, what is left to fear?

11/9/09 Inspirations           God has everything. But there is one thing to have that is meaningless if not received from someone else. God would like to be loved. That is why He created us in His image – with free wills so that we can voluntarily love Him. For what good is love if it is mandated instead of freely given? Even if you’re God, love has to be received to be meaningful.

Here on Earth, the distortion of reality is the result of free wills used for other purposes than to honor God. But that makes the love potential all that much more significant, because our love for God can come through above human weakness and human suffering, without which there would be nothing for love to overcome.

When we come out of this coma of life on Earth and enter the reality of heaven, we will love and honor God without question, as divine beings. But here and now, love for God does not come so easily; here our humanity takes hold of us and demands all we’ve got. How specially it must please God then, when we freely volunteer to love Him despite the strikes against it! This is love in the extreme; valuable because it comes from self-willed creations who can and, indeed, are of a nature to withhold it.

To mystics then, this is the greatest privilege and the focus of life itself – to honor God by loving Him. Despite all it might take to get to that point, the commission is simple — all we do is honor our Creator by loving Him. Rites and groupings and dogmas and scriptures are redundant, because we know how to love God without all these things. To love God is, after all, what we were created for.

In this we embark on a journey that will not fail, for the moment we decide for God, all His power and knowledge is at our disposal in the measure that we allow ourselves to ask for it and to put it to use. And one spark of love sent to God is returned in a totality we can’t even grasp, but know in our hearts is how reality will feel when we reach it at last.