The Light in the Woods

#5 – THE LIGHT IN THE WOODS – DECEMBER 2005

                                                                                 © Aubri Dennison 2005

 

12/6/05 Reflections        All my introspection lately into what I believe seems to have brought me full circle. I left the Catholic Church because it was demanding me to believe what I didn’t believe, and to disbelieve what was in my heart. The more I pray and study the more I go back to the same assertion as before – I don’t need mere mortals to tell me what to believe and how to gain heaven. Maybe others do, but it’s only because they would rather depend on others instead of going directly to God. As for me, I’m convinced that if I ask God for His guidance, He’ll give it to me. He now is advising Me to study the words of those who have already done this before me – not that I have to follow their example exactly, but from what I study I can chose what rings true. God will inspire me as He inspired them, and His inspiration is what I will follow. Same with the Bible – it isn’t perfect as some would say, because mortals are involved, but if they were inspired by God to write it, I trust God’s inspiration to me as I study it. Does our dependence on Jesus come from God’s decision that humans need a human personification of God in order to understand Him? We do lack the reasoning to understand the divine, and God in the form of the man Jesus can teach us the right way by following Christ’s example. But I strongly feel that we can also get the information by faith and contemplation – the opening up of our hearts and minds to receive the enlightenment from God we need. Then we can use our reason to apply this illumination to our lives, and our free will to accept or reject it.

12/6/05 Reflections             I wanted to get back into the Catholic Church because I wanted to feel a part of something definite; into a community that has the scholarship and universality to make a difference to all people. In this way I thought I could be a part of the good works I so desperately need and want to do. Not only was I already familiar with and attuned to its teaching, I feel that they are on the right track by using all the paints in the paintbox instead of limiting all learning to the Bible. But the Catholic hierarchy is also on the wrong track too, and I’m coming to feel that, besides the fact that I’m not welcome to full communion with the Catholic Church, there are good reasons all around to abandon my need to belong to a community, and return to worship of God in my capacity as an individual outside an established religion. That way I can go with just what rings true and leave the rest behind. Am I being arrogant in thinking I can go it alone? Maybe, but that’s where trust in God comes along. I never believed heaven was reserved for a believer in a certain religion or a certain church, or even a believer in God. I think it has to do with the love of God through how we treat our neighbor, and while religions do a good job of promoting that, God wouldn’t make acceptance of a Church the only criteria for heaven. I do happen to believe in God, and I think I trust Him enough to ask Him to point me in the right direction. It’s a church with one member, but at least it never teaches me the wrong thing.

12/6/05 Revelations       “Go to the dictionary and look up ‘mysticism’ and you’ll find the name for the kind of faith that feels right to you and that you’ve been thinking so hard about. Having a name for your personal form of worship will be the catalyst for further development of your faith.”

Within an hour of writing the last Reflections entry, while doing a weight workout and meditating, I was told in my head to go to the dictionary and look up the word “mysticism”. And so, by unknowingly using the technique that defines my method of seeking a relationship with God, I’ve found a name for that very method. It’s uplifting to know at last that there’s a name for my preferred system of beliefs — maybe my search wasn’t for a community of believers to belong to; maybe after all it was for a name to apply to my faith all along. Could I be a Christian Mystic? Or a mystic Christian? Anyway, the fact that there’s a name for what I believe is important to me; now I know what to study and I can move along. Maybe now some things will fall into place for me. Maybe some of the cobwebs will clear and I can add more grace to my piggy bank. I want to use this grace for good works – I still don’t know how but I’m more sure than ever that I’m on the right track because it just feels right. Prayer, study, good works. I’m not too far along on my spiritual journey that began a little over a year ago when I began to read the Bible as a textbook, but there’s a definite improvement in my awareness. And I can hear when God inspires me, so the work has definitely been worth it. God can come to me even if I’m a long way from worthy of Him; He did it before by coming as Christ to an unworthy world. What we have to be is receptive to Him, and I think I can make myself that way. Prayer, study, good works. Mysticism: the experience of an individual’s direct, subjective communion with God; the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience as intuition or insight; a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of indescribable knowledge; the experience of union or direct communication with ultimate reality through a process either apparent to the sense or obvious to the human intelligence and reasoning.

12/6/05 Insights from Prayer        Co-incidences are little voices of God. They get my attention. More and more God comes spontaneously to mind when co-incidences occur. For over a year I’ve been thinking about beliefs and how to fit them into doctrine. I’m obsessed.

12/6/05 Revelations       “The drawback to your devotions is that so much introspection hints at self-regard instead of the humility your negative and worthwhile examination is supposed to bring about.”

I have to work at self-knowledge to get to humility and self-disregard, but I have to keep the prize in sight; not ruin it by getting into the habit of thinking about “me” in ordinary life too. I need to put more emphasis on what God’s doing in my life; He already knows about me — it’s good to examine my conscience but I can’t stop there. The purpose must be to glorify God and bring about humility.

12/8/05 Insights from Study           John of the Cross agrees with what I figured out myself – that we all have the contemplative ability and are using it, even in a limited sense, if we’re making an honest attempt to love and serve God, because it’s interwoven in the fabric of daily life. St. John also said there must be conflict for us to advance and a dying that must precede the full life of the spirit. Through mysticism you are able to have a taste of heaven here on Earth, but to do so you have to accept purgatory on Earth also. I wonder if I’m up to it.

12/11/05 Reflections               There’s a lot of controversy in these times about the secularization of Christmas. There seems to be a group, whoever they are, that wants to take Christ out of the holy day celebrations because non-Christians might be offended. Just imagine how offended they’d be if there really was a lot of emphasis on Christ instead of who was buying what and how much they were buying! But the whole story of Christmas-tampering has to lie deeper than political correctness because there’s really no valid reason why Christians shouldn’t have a holiday, and just imagine how politically incorrect these same people would feel if they were trying to interfere with Hanukkah or Ramadan. No, there’s something else and it just isn’t Christmas that bothers them – it’s the law of God and nature. These people don’t want to be subjugated by laws that even judges can’t overturn. These people want to be free to do as they please, and to whoever they please to do it to. They don’t want any interference from God. But here’s a reality flash — you don’t have any choice in the matter of whether or not natural law applies to you any more than you can deny the law of gravity. You can deny it all right, but you can’t overturn it, and really, why should you want to? Instead of being attitudinal about God or neighbor telling you what to do or not to do, why don’t you go ahead and inspect your lifestyle and see it it’s worth losing your eternal life over? God made His laws to protect us, not to look for a way to make us unhappy or to punish us. He knows, even if we don’t, what’s at stake, and He wants us near Him, bathed in a love and peace so powerful we can’t imagine it for ourselves. We must have a higher power to guide us home. And in the end, if you’re arrogant enough to deny the need for God for yourself, at least don’t interfere with those who do want His help, because this is our eternal happiness and salvation you are toying with.

12/11/05 Insights from Study           I can’t say I don’t have anything against “Bible-thumpers”; I do – but I’d also have to say the disservice they are prone to is far less negative than the overwhelming good they achieve, especially in the realm of evangelization. And they are sincere in their love of God and hope for salvation, and in a world as mixed up as ours, we can always use as much love for God as we can foster. But they put all their eggs in one basket – a basket which has been thrown around from one to one other; rearranged, dropped, partitioned, fought over, some eggs taken out, and quite a few new ones stuck in. It’s like every other God-given gift to us – we’re sure to screw it up someway, somehow. While I do believe the Bible is inspired by God, I’m not at all confident it hasn’t been tainted by humans. Right now I’m reading “Desire of Ages” by E.G. White, a popular work that has endured. I’m reading it because I don’t believe the Bible is the only source of wisdom we need — but I’m certainly capable of reading the traditions of men with a critical eye. Bible-thumpers don’t want any system based on the inclusion of tradition to intrude because the common person doesn’t have a good critical eye for accuracy and in order to have an accurate understanding they therefore must look up to a learned magesterium to interpret it for them. They say all we need can be found in the Bible, but then they go on to interpret it for us and pretty soon they are the tradition they despise. “Desire of Ages” is a perfect example. The author is loading down this basket with eggs plucked out of thin air, filling in things never mentioned in the Bible in order to make what is in the Bible more understandable and therefore more popular. That’s a good goal, but the means belies their main premise. This is not the inspired word of God, but the imaginations of the author, and it’s only one example of this sort of hypocrisy. This book is not better and not worse than any other textbook in my journey to God’s kingdom, including the Bible. You just have to be able to sort out what God gave us and what humans have bastardized for their own agendas, no matter how good their intentions. In the end, we will be leaving it up to God to let us know His divine will. One thing I think we all can agree on – if we seek Him out we are going a long way towards eternal reward. We can use all tools available to us, and we ask God to direct our intellect towards the path of perfection – that is my religion. My faith is in the loving guidance of God.

12/13/05 Reflections         God came to Earth as Jesus Christ in order to prove that the divine and the human can communicate. Maybe He appointed the apostles and disciples not as the Catholic church teaches as priests, but instead as teachers from whose experience we can learn for our own use. Hopefully in this capacity they were inspired by God. Does the adoration of Jesus Christ take away from the adoration of God? It’s ironic that having been denied communion with the Catholic Church I’ve found a comfortable niche in communion with God — it’s a matter of semantics, but I know who I want to listen to. Reason and insights are not exclusive — all reason started out as insight in the first place, and from this we get our traditions. If it does good, it should be pursued. Many believe we can all experience the purging of sin in this life in order to mitigate purgatory after death by following the tenets of God and Jesus His Word. In other words, the more good works we do the less time we have to spend in Purgatory getting ready for the perfection of heaven. This satisfies the human need for a reason for life and a reason for work, struggle, and need to give charity, for we need a way to redeem ourselves if redemption is possible.

Why do some people have more that others — will they make up for it in Purgatory? Is this what Jesus means when He says the rich won’t get to heaven or that if they do it will be hard for them? (evening out that unfairness depending on what we went through in life on Earth) There’s beauty in the giving up of things because of purgatory — it’s selfish though but so is salvation. The goal was given us — we didn’t ask for it or the selfishness humans feel they need in order to get to heaven. This is a worldview only parts of which I can accept, but it goes a long way to explain many people’s ideas on sin and salvation. Original sin and human nature start us off on the wrong foot and make it impossible to catch up, so can catching up realistically be the goal in this life? Jesus Christ was a sinless person, but no matter how well we do with the guidelines in the sermon on the mount we will never completely get away from sin. Can God punish us for this? Should we keep our eye on ideals and not attainable goals? No moral issue is black and white. Things conspire against you that you can’t change — abortion goes against moral beliefs but it’s the law of the land. The argument of “if you don’t like abortion don’t have one” is pretty weak – it doesn’t work because in this society you have to pay for that some way. It isn’t right to have to pay for something you believe is immoral. Some things erode the morality of our society whether we do them or allow them. The medieval mystics tried to purify themselves on earth – no wonder they got scruples; it can’t be done. But it had to be tried, because perfection is the only way heaven made sense – who wants to spend eternity in an imperfect heaven?

12/13/05 Reflections             Although the goal of mysticism is communion with God, adoration of Christ is for me an important part of it because without the intervention on Earth of God’s offspring, communion with God would not be possible. That privilege used to belong to man but he lost it to original sin. Once man tried to exalt himself to God’s level by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he not only earned the suffering such knowledge brings, but also he lost access to the tree of life, which means communion of man with God. From that moment until the time of the Messiah, all man could do for his salvation is to receive God’s orders and obey them – this was the old covenant, and it was forever being broken by man because then as now, we think it’s our right to occupy a status in the universe which belongs only to God. Sometimes it seems unfair that in those days God spoke to certain of His people face-to-face quite a bit – how wonderful it would be, we think, if He hadn’t quit doing that, so modern man too could have the privilege of witnessing brilliant clouds and burning bushes. The fact is, we now have something better – Christ was sent to us with the message of a new covenant. No longer will we have to rely on stone tablets from the sky to tell us right from wrong – because of the life and obedience of Jesus as our scapegoat, that information is now imprinted on our hearts by God. Because of this switch He now, through Christ, has restored to us the tree of life denied to man because of his sin of pride. Now we know good and evil innately, and if we need help we can now go directly to God. Man was created in perfect harmony with his creator; all God wants is a return to that state. Because of Christ we are saved – we are still liable for punishment for our ways, but communication with God can give us the grace we need to recognize and avoid new sin, bringing us back into the harmony and peace with God He had always meant for us to enjoy.

12/13/05 Insights from Study          In Matthew’s account of the sermon on the mount, Jesus gives instructions to His disciples on how to act and what to teach. It was a list of prescribed behaviors suited to a perfect world. Christ knew the ideal is unattainable and that He Himself would be the only man who could remain sinless. His word was meant to describe the ideal behavior, and if there were repercussions God would be the judge and take up the slack. But this world is never perfect – if you give a bum money he will probably spend it on booze; if you turn the other cheek to a terrorist he will see it as weakness and destroy you. We wonder what good it is to have trust in God to take up the slack if we’re all dead. So the world at large can’t mirror the ideal – wars must be fought to ensure the greater good; parents must be materialistic to provide for their children; governments must hold back handouts to the merely lazy – but the ideals remain good guides for us to use in our personal relationships. The more we aspire to the ideal the less sin there will be to be purged from us on our way to the perfect worlds that is the kingdom of God.

12/14/05 Presentations        I was watching a boat come to the shore. They must have brought back fish, because behind the boat there was a tornado of seagulls whirling and shimmering and weaving and revolving. Extra bright against the darkening sky and extra desperate to get what they need in time to lay low during the approaching storm. Then suddenly their formation flew apart and disappeared, so in the sudden stillness I was left with the feeling that I was in the wrong place there along the shore and urgently needed to get inside to safety. Easy enough for me, but for most of God’s creatures there’s no inside to get to. You can argue that they can’t long for what they’ve never experienced, but what a blessing we as human beings have to be able to imagine what might happen, and to plan for our own comfort.

12/14/05 Reflections         I’ve always wanted to own a huge, expensive, heavy gold cross necklace, but my fear of idolatry and covetousness have held me back from getting one. I’m not that certain of my motives for wanting one; I don’t want to commit to owning one only to find out I’m too guilty to enjoy having it. I can do without it I guess — what’s around my neck is only a symbol of what’s in my heart and it’s what’s in my heart that’s really important to me. The only thing God wants us to covet is a perfect relationship with Him – that’s a hard thing to accept because, unlike the gold cross necklace, it isn’t attainable in this life. I want something no one else has; something I can take out and look at once in a while; something I can have in this life and not wait for. I want this because I’m human and I can’t hope to ever successfully destroy my covetous nature. So I will tell myself this – I own my spirituality, and it is a beautiful and awesome thing. No one else has it — it was built especially for me out of the grace of God I’ve been honored to receive. Although God’s grace is available to everyone, my spirituality is unique because I’ve accepted it and thanked God for it, and I wear it in my heart, where it becomes one with what is in my heart. I can take my spirituality out and look at it wherever and whenever I want to. Other people know I have it even if I don’t show it to them, and it’s OK if they covet what I have. God wants them to have a spirituality of their own, and if they ask for it they can have it — in the right size and color and style for them. And not only can I enjoy the benefits of my spirituality in this life, if I take care of it and enhance it’s treasure to me, it will serve me well when I go to enter my eternal life. In my weaker, human moments I may still think I want the cross as a symbol of my spirituality, but it’s evidence of how far I’ve come that I no longer need outward signs, because I’ve come to recognize the value of the actual gift in my heart, and wearing the symbol might just be gilding the lily.

12/15/05 Reflections       We tend to think of vices as things we want to do but can’t because these things are an affront to God. But we should inspect ourselves a bit closer — do we really want to be angry, envious, and lazy? Are the virtues of patience, kindness, and diligence all that bad? All God’s laws are good gifts that show us the way to the greatest prize of all – heaven. We’d be at a loss if God’s guidance was withheld from us, so why do we hide from it? Envy is the best example — this vice harms the victims and the perpetrator too. It’s opposite virtue, kindness is the perfect remedy because it turns envy into a win-win situation — not only are you not envious, you are also kind. There is nothing to be gained by this vice, yet we run into it all the time and it can be devastating to everyone involved. It permeates every social strata and condition — politics, religion, academics, marriage, business, family. You name it; the green-eyed monster is there. And it doesn’t even make you feel good, like gluttony or anger. It’s just a lousy way to ruin lives all around. It offends God on two fronts – the harm it does to oneself and ones neighbor and the fact that you’re coveting something when the Lord should be your most important desire.

12/16/05 Revelations           “There’s too much talk and not enough listening. You should be evangelizing not to teach, but to show people how to listen to what God is teaching.”

I was urged to do a contemplation in which I divined that there’s too much talk and not enough listening. Should I be evangelizing by fostering the talent of listening to God? How could I teach that to other people? I need to be writing all these things down so I don’t lose them; although I’m finding that the more absent-minded I become, the better I am at retaining the spiritual thoughts I need to record until I have the time to finish recording them. This has to be a special grace, along with the way the words seem to find themselves independent of my finite abilities.

12/16/05 Revelations        “I’m here; I’m near — put away your fear.”

12/16/05 Revelations      “Isn’t it nice to have someone on your side for whom nothing is impossible?”

12/16/05 Revelations     “It isn’t that these phenomena have never happened before, but that you’re looking at them with new eyes, wide open.”

12/17/05 Revelations        God is the air we breathe. He is inside us; he is outside us; without him we can’t live.

12/17/05 Insights from Prayer         He made us creatures out of the dust of the ground, but it wasn’t until He breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life that man became a living soul.

12/17/05 Revelations           God knows, and I know, I have to suffer the slings and arrows of those who don’t understand. But these are troubles in this world and aren’t important, because I’m preparing for my eternity.

12/17/05 Revelations         “When you submit your will totally to God you become like a good dog — he knows he has no supreme control over his comforts or his losses, and so all is accepted indifferently.”

In reference to the revelation about the good dog — in this way he is innocent and loved especially for his innocence. He can be only what his creator has designed for him and he doesn’t go about trying to change that, or wailing because things aren’t going smoothly for him. He lives only for the moment, and as long as he is in his creator’s loving eye, all is well.

12/17/05 Revelations        “Pay attention — I have wonderful things to show you; some for your brain and some for your eyes”

12/17/05 Revelations       “Forget your need to organize — trust God will decide what you should do with the information I give you and how to preserve it.”

It isn’t easy to keep each thought in the front of my mind especially when they’re pounding at me one right after another. Sometimes I take rough notes; sometimes I dictate onto tape, but either way it spoils the mood to try to get everything down at the time it comes to me, and in fact many times it feels like an affront to God to do so. I have to relax and trust Him to help me remember the important things.

12/17/05 Revelations        “Don’t be afraid to differ with the mystics you admire — they weren’t infallible either. You are not “nothing” in my eyes.”

God created me perfect, living in heaven on earth. Just because sin lost that heaven for me doesn’t mean I’m nothing to God as the mystics sometimes say. The finite can’t be compare to the divine, and the mystics were finite and not to be held as perfection. So are the ministers who say there’s nothing we can do to merit heaven except accepting salvation. But God reserved for me a home in another, better place — I feel I’m being told it’s OK to think I can purify my soul during my earthly life and mitigate the need to go to the lower levels of heaven after my death. God wants us closest to Him, and it’s His design that I be rewarded for my work in bringing other souls to that state by instruction, work and example. I think of someone like Mother Teresa and I feel she would not need to go to Purgatory (or a lower heavenly level in my doctrine) as much as someone else might.

12/17/05 Insights from Study           When I need enlightenment on a question of morality that didn’t exist in the time of the Bible authors, I don’t want speculation, interpretation, philosophy, etc. — I want revelation from the source of morality. The Bible’s all right as far as it goes if a person can understand it’s ethereal nature and glean the gist of it along with the meat of it. But if I allowed it to be my only source of study, I would miss a lot that I’m getting now with my own system. My own system needs validation and constant updating, but so does the Bible. I refuse to feel guilty about that if I’ve discussed it with God and He has not contradicted me. Maybe someday He will, but until then I will use the Bible as a good source of information but not an infallible one.

12/17/05 Reflections          It’s all coming at me too fast – too many revelations, too much thought for me to itemize, not enough opportunity to catalog the spontaneous results of my devotions. No wonder there have always been hermetical religious orders – it would be great to have no obligation other than to think about the Lord. I need to relax in the trust that if it’s important, God won’t let me forget it, but that’s hard to do at the exact time where forgetfulness has become a major problem for me. I have to see the design in this – maybe it’s been fixed for me so I forget the unimportant in order to allow the truly important thoughts to come through. If only I had a foolproof way of getting them down in words.

12/18/05 Revelations          “Just as I’m doing now, I don’t need your help if I want to talk to you. Your desire to listen pleases me, but be on the alert because I can come at any moment. I’ll make the rest of the world all right while I do this so it doesn’t disturb you.”

12/18/05 Revelations        “You don’t have to have the Holy Eucharist with you in order to experience my presence — did you forget I’m with you always anyway?”

12/18/05 Presentations        Two revelations during Sunday devotions remind me that I might hear things as a mystic that I don’t want to hear. The first was a presentation which came during my full meditation; not connected with what I was thinking about in the meditation. It forced me to go into a contemplation to receive it. How it happened was I started to feel that rolling dizziness you get when you’re just falling asleep and you’re still awake enough to know you’re aware that you muscles are involuntarily relaxing and you’re losing your hold on wakefulness. The revelation was that God doesn’t need my help if He wants to talk to me; I should be vigilant because He can come to me at any moment. If conditions aren’t ideal as far as too much going on around me, He’ll fix that in His own way. The second revelation came during a reflection I was doing on Christ instead of the adoration of the Holy Eucharist I would be doing if I’d had the opportunity. I heard distinctly that I don’t have to have the Holy Eucharist with me in order to experience His presence; that I’ve forgotten that as God He’s with me anyway. I’d been having confusion about Christ’s place in my devotions so that was on my mind although not a part of that reflection. I just know what’s a revelation and what’s a product of my reason. I don’t know how I know it – I just do.

12/18/05 Insights from Study          As long as there are some righteous in every age who walk with God the human race is worthy of preservation — evangelism is obliged of us. God recognizes that man’s wrong use of his freedom has made a world in which God’s high purpose cannot be fulfilled. He will accept man on those terms and permit him to exist, but guilt and penalty are the atonement. Fear of retribution (hell) is the only thing that keeps us in line. God is constantly showing us how to get back to Him and without His mercy and grace we would have died out a long time ago — but God wants us with Him as continually shows us mercy and grace to that end.

12/18/05 Reflections         God is already everywhere with, around, and in me; He is always giving of himself completely. My part is to give myself completely to Him, setting aside time alone and quiet without my thoughts, even spiritual ones, distracting me. He said “Less talk; more listening.”

12/18/05 Reflections           Dieting and exercising seem to have become much easier since I started Mysticism. Could my spiritual introspection have taken the emphasis off my bodily introspection? My faith is being tried because I’m not used to success and this is too good to be true. Or should I just accept that it’s true what God says about “ask and you shall receive”? That seems so easy.

12/18/05 Reflections        I see I’m developing a patience I never had before, born of my new agreement to give everything up to God, even my hang-ups — God knows the right thing to do with hang-ups.

12/18/05 Insights from Study        I’m not doing well with the Holy Spirit. I had trouble with the notion as a little girl and I still do. It’s not that I disbelieve the works attributed to Him, but I balk at His being another person in the trinity. I never understood why God can’t dispense the knowledge and grace that the Holy Spirit is usually credited with. I’d like to change my mind and come around to the conforming belief because it fits nicely that I could have one part of the trinity devoted totally to the mystic gifts I’m interested in. But it doesn’t feel right.

12/18/05 Reflections          I’ve been having questions about feeling alienated from Jesus. Protestants on the radio and TV emphasize Jesus and when they do, I get the creepy feeling they’re making less of God’s importance. I understand it isn’t a popularity contest in heaven and that the oneness of Jesus and God is sacred in the divinity. But that’s what my problem is — I understand it too, intuitively, and it bothers me to have human beings separate them. It’s such a human thing to do — put qualities you don’t understand into a personification you do understand. It’s OK for God to have done it, but once He did, it’s over. They treat Jesus like a watered-down version of God. I don’t want my God watered down, yet I have a friendly relationship with Jesus too and want to further it. I get it that God figured Jesus was necessary because humans are too sinful and ignorant to communicate with the divine. But Jesus came, taught, redeemed, and saved us, and now he’s gone. He’s back to being God so we should be worshiping God. To worship Jesus alone is like letting the stink of humanity into heaven where it doesn’t belong. I get it that Jesus was fully divine and fully human, but the human part is gone now that it’s earthly work has been done. We have to do his work now, but people cling to Jesus’ man-ness as if His mission was a failure — that we still can’t communicate with God even after all of Jesus’ suffering. To me Jesus was an offshoot of God, a tool which is no longer provided because it did it’s job well. Now Jesus is in heaven and I want to keep all human qualities away from Him. We have all the tradition we need to perpetuate His teachings, so I’m very uncomfortable with praying for Jesus to intercede for us to get to God. It’s like saying His stay on earth didn’t do what it was supposed to do — it can only be a failure like this if we insist on beseeching Him to do for us what He already did. I want Jesus back to being God again. I will pray for enlightenment on this issue — it’s the one that bothers me most because if I’m wrong I may not go further.

12/19/05 Presentations        I’m so privileged to have seen what I just saw – just as I started my morning devotion and the sun was rising underneath a bank of snowclouds, a huge ray of sunlight shot up, and in the light of it I could see snow hanging suspended but falling just so slightly. When we see snow falling, we see it because it’s contrasted in the background of the colors of the Earth; nothing much is lighter than the snow. But the snowflakes in the sunray were visible because they weren’t being contrasted by the light sky and absorbed into invisibility like normal. They were backgrounded by something lighter than them and so they took a collective form I’ve never seen before – darker than their background. I could see every flake as it left its cloud until it dropped onto the Earth. God’s creation in a new light, literally, shown to me personally.

12/19/05 Insights from Study         We have to have a higher motive for our goodness than fear of the consequences of our badness. It’s the difference between living by law or living by love. Respect among neighbors is key to this attitude, because only in this way are others receptive to the love that God requires us to give them. It’s like raising a child — if there’s mutual respect between the child and his parent, the child will obey the parent because he doesn’t want to sully that relationship. So we are with God and with our neighbor.

12/20/05 Insights from Study

History of God’s relationship with man:

Creation to the Fall — perfect unitive relationship between man & God

Fall to Flood — man left to his own devices

Flood to Abraham — covenant to do the best we can to save ourselves

Abraham to Moses — Jews get preferred covenant & divine protection

Moses to Jesus — Jew to be catalyst to draw all man to God

Jesus to ? — Our salvation is assured but our penance must go on

Final judgment — all will be gathered to heaven or hell

 

 

12/20/05 Insights from Study         The final judgment is the parable of the vineyard workers. The first to come in the morning agreed to be paid a penny a day. The last ones only worked an hour but also got a penny. As long as we get what we were assured (salvation) it doesn’t matter how long we’ve waited for the final judgment. Besides, time has no meaning after we die.

12/20/05 Inspirations            The “Way” (the right being towards God and neighbor) is all bound up in our desire to walk to God in perfection — once we are attuned to this desire (even though showing it to God is our need, not His) we will receive all the grace we need to accomplish this. Ask and you shall receive. No works can I do for God, but I can use the grace He gives me for my neighbor — bringing both me and him to the “Way”. This is like God giving us money to buy Him a present, but that’s the way God is.

12/22/05 Inspirations           At last I’ve put in place the final preparation for my full devotion. Not without challenge; at first I took it as a sign of God’s disapproval of my methods but instantly I saw it in a different light, and my soul is free and right with God now even more than ever. I hope nothing ever spoils this joy. In returning to civilization I felt as out of place as I anticipated – beyond my family and my devotions the world has little to attract me. I now feel a dullness for the things of ordinary life, as well as a certain haughtiness to realize I’m now beyond the petty concerns – I sure hope this isn’t pride. But the challenge to the rightness of my new position, after the initial doubt, made me realize that I can let go of the old worship without sadness – it really does represent what I suspected it did when I found myself pulling away; something basically diseased in the smugness of the faithful – any way but ours is wrong. Have I really been to my last mass today?

12/23/05 Insights from Study           When God made the Hebrews from the Semite family the “chosen people” it wasn’t to honor them above all other people for favor; it was that He had chosen them to be the cultural, sociological, religious background to which His Messiah would be affiliated. They weren’t more deserving of grace than others – they were players serving His divine design, part of which was to showcase their failures and wrong-mindedness as an example and focal point to believers and a rally point for non-believers. We aren’t holy because we belong to one group or the other; we’re holy because we were created by God. If this were the focus of the behavior of everyone on Earth it would be a good start towards global acceptance. I believe the better way lies in individual worship, for then we don’t need to live within the boxes we set up to insulate ourselves from divergent tendencies. If all of our thought converged on God, we would find that we have His father-ness in common and don’t need for anything more, because nothing is better.

12/24/05 Revelations         “Of course I can’t expect you to have the faith I require without telling you what you should have faith in. You look askance at the Bible, but I had to give you something to believe in. You want a revelation as to whether you should give Christ his due — wasn’t I telling you what to have faith in through Him? Why do you think it might all be a lie, when you know it would be no less believable if you were to tell of the revelations you’ve received, and you know those are true.”

12/25/05 Insights from Study            Jesus is gone from the earth, but He wants us to continue His work; to be the incarnation for our neighbor. We can make Christ real to him and he can pass on the Word too.

12/25/05 Insights from Study          We’re told to become like children to receive the gift of heaven because children are humble in their irresponsibility, and dependent on obedience for acceptance just like we should be. This is what God showed us when He sent Jesus as a child. He could have sent Him on a cloud as a full-grown prophet, but only as a child could He show us the way we can follow. Humility and obedience are the ways to eternal life, and because Jesus was human, we know we can achieve what we need even through the adversity which is life on earth.

12/25/05 Inspirations        Dear God, thank you for your Christmas gift — I will cherish Jesus always in gratitude.

12/25/05 Insights from Study            (Mark 4:11-12) Though it was obvious humanity wasn’t getting the idea, Jesus did not come right out and give new commandments — He spoke in parables so the people would have to consider them carefully in order to understand and, understanding, to convert and have sins forgiven.

12/25/05 Insights from Prayer         My self-centeredness brought about my doubt and confusion as to the role of Jesus in the Churches. Just because I feel I can talk directly to God doesn’t mean everyone has this faith. Because my innate understanding of God as Jesus makes it less important to stress His human role, I was blinded to the reality that maybe others don’t have that clarity. Jesus has performed His work for me, but others need Him now more than ever — He wasn’t sent to earth just for me. I also need to take His life out and review it now and again to remind myself of how believers avoid pitfalls. I’m still using Him as an example and always will need to research His teachings. Now that I’m assured God approves of the worship of Jesus, I can relax and enjoy my Christian studies again. Merry Christmas! May I pass this gift along by perpetuating His work and following His example.

12/25/05 Insights from Prayer        In denying my desire to acquire the living presence of Christ for my own, I felt like Peter when he denied Jesus. The lie is bad enough, but the failure to stand up for our faith when given the opportunity says we have a long way to go to devoutness. I should not only have the utmost conviction of the rightness of my devotion, but also convey that to others, or at least comfort myself with it’s truth when I’ve failed to declare it when confronted.

12/25/05 Insights from Study           (Psalm Do we really understand the size of the commitment we have to guard the things of nature? We must use it, because it is an explicit gift of God, but we must also protect it because it’s a gift of God. We need to reflect on the fact that God entrusted all His creation and good that followed throughout history. He never took back that gift, nor the responsibility to protect it. Do we really understand the enormity of the responsibility we’ve been given as lords of all God’s creation? What we’ve done is discover the science behind it, thinking we’re so smart we don’t need to think of a creator; that there’s a scientific answer to everything. Can people so smart not understand that science itself had to have a creator?

12/26/05 Reflections        I can see a danger in that in opening up my mind completely to let God into my consciousness, I have no choice but to give the devil the same pathway. He has a great motivation for claiming me first, because if he doesn’t I can become a great force against him. There’s no doubt that mystics fall prey to all sorts of suffering and pleas for abandonment of faith; physical and mental anguish that has to come from the devil hating them so. Is there that much difference in discerning possession from visions and ecstasy? How many times have people committed unspeakably horrible acts, claiming they were told to by God? I have to really watch for the devil creeping in to my devotions; to weigh any intuitions I get against what I know to be right. Here is where study of the mystics is important for they’ve been through it and I can see it in hindsight for them; foresight for me.

12/26/05 Presentations            It takes real introspection to overcome the very human tendency to think we know better than God. Most of the time the things we think are good for us are the things we merely want. Having been told a thing I thought I needed wasn’t really necessary for true devotion, I went ahead and got it anyway. I’m glad my stubbornness hasn’t seemed to have done me harm, only showed me that God was right – I didn’t need it to fulfill me. The joy I expected is not there, only the feeling that all joy and fulfillment resides in God; in His love for me and my desire to have Him in my heart. All blessings will flow from that and that only. My needs aren’t a result of my free will but of God’s divine plan. If the Eucharist teaches me this it’s done it’s job. I don’t need it to complete my devotion any more than I need organized religion and the Church to dispense it. That is the revelation I was given, and the proof of it God has allowed me by letting me test it out anyway and come to the exact same conclusion.

12/26/05 Insights from Study        It’s very comforting to me to read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila because although she was much more advanced in mysticism that I am at the moment, she went through many of the same things I’m going through now. Also, because I feel an affinity to her, I can look at her experiences with the feeling that I’m looking at what’s in store for me. So much of what I’ve picked up intuitively is right there, affirmed in black and white. We also share the fears of unworthiness and failure. But right now what I needed to find is that she was no better than I am in one respect — though it hardly seems possible, when you’ve dedicated everything to God’s will, you can go against a clear, concise directive coming straight from the Almighty. Holy as she was, she also could fall prey to this. God didn’t give up on her any more than He gave up on His chosen people after generations of them had turned their backs on Him. He merely turns our rejections, born of human pride, into learning experiences. His mercy is so immensely infinite for us – He gives long after we’ve stopped deserving.

12/26/05 Insights from Study        Many times St. Teresa’s thoughts so exactly match mine that I’m glad I didn’t start to study her until after I formulated my own devotion and received some revelations, otherwise I’d always feel that subconsciously I was merely copying her. Knowing I wasn’t copying her, I’m free to enjoy our similarities and don’t feel bad that I’m not nearly as advanced as she became; there’s plenty of hope for me.

12/27/05 Revelations       “You live in the now. Your sins are forgiven because now you have the desire to love Me. All sins that came before are as if they never happened. What matters is your desire now to serve Me.”

12/28/05 Insights from Study         Reform sects are “Religion Lite — Great taste, less filling”. This is religion for the evangelism of the uneducated common people; it asks for nothing except reading the Bible and proclaiming acceptance of Christ. It allows more converts, although they may be lazy believers in that once saved, no more is required. They don’t believe in good works being the embodiment of the message of Christ’s salvation, and they ignore the fact that this salvation can be lost. What is it about accepting Christ that assures you salvation if you don’t act like Christ? And what good does it do act like Christ if you keep it to yourself? We have to stop being afraid to spread the news that you can bring yourself into union with God. Pray like Christ if you want to be like Christ. I go to the Father because that’s what Jesus did; only, because I have sin, I first have to purify myself. Some preachers treat those who are beyond acceptance and into actively seeking God as wasting time and effort. But the fact is, you cannot serve Christ’s purpose with your own salvation, and there aren’t enough evangelicals to reach everybody even if they used all the tools they have. Christ’s purpose is to be the provider of grace so that His example can be followed and more are brought to the salvation He provided. You cannot do this with only the knowledge of the Bible, for Christ’s message is being applied to situations for which we have yet to be instructed. You need God’s knowledge, not just your own or another humans, to understand His desires, and His grace to spread His word with authority.

12/28/05 Insights from Study           It’s an odd feeling to see the words I’ve already written in the printed words of people I admire and who wrote their words centuries ago! To me, it’s an affirmation dispelling my worry that instead of being inspired, I’m only repeating something I’ve learned and retained subconsciously. I know for a fact I’ve never before heard those words except in my own mind. I think mysticism is universal – that our instinct is to seek God one on one. I want to take it further, but I don’t know if I can take it to the plane of St. John of the Cross’ devotion.

12/28/05 Insights from Study        It’s human to aspire — mystics need to fight against loving the privileged relationship we have with God as something owned. We should instead love our relationship with God because it’s what God wants for His children. Once we’ve advanced in purification so we are comfortable with God’s dwelling in us, we fall prey naturally to a secret pride in this. The next stage breaks down this pride and true perfection in humility is reached at last.

12/29/05 Reflections            Selfishness is paradoxical — I don’t like myself and I have trouble knowing that God does. I do intercessions, but I wonder why, if God wanted to help someone, he’d wait for someone as lowly as me to ask Him to help the other person. It comes to me that in the divine plan it’s good for us to ask for help. We’re constantly bombarded with God’s favor, but it isn’t until we ask for it that we appreciate that we’re on the receiving end of something wonderful. This gives me somewhat of an answer to “What is life for?” Our job is to first understand in our own heads what God can do, then go out and tell others. You can evangelize and you can pray for others, or you can do good works, because good works at some point will be the answer to someone’s prayer. Then they and you will know that God works through His children — not because He has to but because that’s His plan. I must keep this in mind during mystic devotions — the reason I do it is to purify myself so I can receive His grace and use it to spread His word His way; not mine. Jesus still wants salvation for all God’s children, and God’s children can help each other in many diverse ways. In all of them, we try to make a good example by going over His life and using Him as the picture of perfection.

12/29/05 Reflections           I asked God for help with my diet. I don’t have the self-respect to succeed for myself, but I’d do it if it was what God wanted. So I thought, well, maybe it isn’t God’s help that’s making me succeed; maybe it’s that I want so bad to think God’s helping me that I’m doing it on my own. But if that’s the case, then He really is helping, just in His own way.

12/30/05 Inspirations           My faith doesn’t get publicly validated by a church, but privately by God and through study. It’s a good envy, to be jealous of those who love God and show it, and do good works, as long as I’m happy for them. I need to be patient in waiting for my calling — I realize I’m not ready yet. Instead of bewailing that, I’m grateful to be in the process of getting my body, my brain, and my heart in shape for it.

12/30/05 Inspirations         My big wonder is how I would answer if someone says “If you believe we must do good works, what are they?” Right now I think I would answer “First, we don’t do them in order to gain heaven but in gratitude for having been given the gift of heaven. Second, the good works will be assigned to us by God, so some more than to others according to our abilities and grace given.”

12/30/05 Reflections         I’m coming to believe again in the Holy Spirit — for a long time it seemed to be a watering-down of worship that should be reserved for God. But now I see him as an instrument by which God gives the knowledge and grace which I seek. He is needed because this is a hands-on thing which needs to be understood in my own “language”, which can’t envision properly the language of God. Like Jesus, the Holy Spirit is a manifestation of God, charged with dealing with humanity directly. Even Jesus, the man, received the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe in angels, but I think those who do are actually thinking of the Holy Spirit.

12/30/05 Insights from Study        St. Teresa says don’t wait to be free from sin before you begin to pray, and continue praying even in times of aridity. We can always connect by prayer no matter how far we seem from God.

12/30/05 Inspirations           You can’t purify your own sins — the most you can do is acknowledge your sins and ask for grace to overcome your human proclivity to sin. Jesus, though human, didn’t sin and didn’t have the tendency to sin — his actions, coming from purity, are our example. We can’t obtain perfection, but good comes from getting as close as we can.

12/30/05 Insights from Study           The three effects of grace given during mystic experiences evolve exponentially. First comes having the grace, then comes understanding the grace, and finally comes the explaining of the grace to others.

12/30/05 Insights from Study         In the first three stages of Teresa’s four states, sometimes Memory and Imagination (images) comes to the fore and creates doubt and distraction, though it can’t really harm the graces already given. It shows that peace comes from the Will being given over, but the Intellect and Memory, being retained, only serve to disturb. It’s really an affirmation that true giving over of Will has been successful, otherwise the Memory and Understanding wouldn’t need to strive so.

12/30/05 Reflections         The world would be a different place today if the Jews had accepted Jesus. When God chose the Jews to be stewards of the land of Israel and the revelation of the true faith, He of course knew they would fail miserably. This was His way of telling the rest of humanity throughout history that we must turn to the divine if we want to be party to the truth, because in all ways men’s humanity will show through and deceive us. If the Jews of Jesus’ time, especially the learned leaders, had seen the divinity of Jesus, the spread of God’s word would have progressed much more quickly and peaceably, for God had given Israel the means for it and the promised grace to make it happen. But in this as in our personal lives, our failures serve to underscore the path we should have followed. We need to see through Jesus’ humanity, which we can relate to by nature, into His divinity, which we can relate to by faith. Jesus is our example by which path we travel back to God and join Him in the kingdom He has prepared.

12/31/05 Inspirations        In mysticism you have to learn to let go – to give your will over to God for His care, because He knows so much better than you how to treat your soul. Today, especially, it’s hard for us to relinquish control. Our society rewards power, self-determination, personal freedom to pursue happiness and gain, pride of self-enrichment, sexual freedom, materialism, competitiveness – all the things that mysticism requires you put on hold. Also, we tend to think of our God as a disapproving God, a judge and executioner who doesn’t really want to be bothered with you; an almighty who holds back His gifts and even throws down a disaster here and there. The way we sin, it’s no wonder we don’t want to become acquainted with this Old Testament God. If not for Jesus, the gentle God who came down to make things right between us and the trinity, we’d all be in hiding. But the ones who need Him most; who’ve bought into society’s normalization of self-gratification, would be the least anxious to seek God out – out of guilt or fear of being made to give up what they’ve become accustomed to. In the short term, I don’t think this is what’s required. I think if we first gave up our entire wills to God through mysticism, the glimpse of heaven we would experience would be enough to make us want to go further. It isn’t easy to give up our wills to God, for our nature is to run from powerlessness when we all could use a rest; to retain control with all our might because we don’t see the blessings of letting God have our responsibilities. We’re told to stand up straight and keep a stiff upper lip; don’t cry, and pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps and founder on with grim determination, when the relief from all our trials and sufferings is so close and so effortless, if we could only reach out for it. Sure, we want salvation in the next life, but there is so much more to this one that we aren’t getting. God will do it all for us; He wants to do it all for us. But we don’t get it, because He hasn’t taken an ad out in the New York Times. We don’t have to wait until we’re at the end of our rope for rescue. We can, with just a little effort and a lot of desire, get a taste of the joys of heaven, here and now, by becoming right with God. To become right with God means to give up your will and accept His – I think this is what Jesus wanted of the rich man who kept all the commandments. Laws are fine, but God wants you to come to Him out of love; to make that union with Him the most important thing – because you may not know it, but unity with God is the most important thing, in this life as well as the next. You don’t have to give up what you are right away; give up your will to Him and you will glimpse such joy that you will find what you have pales in comparison, then it’s not so hard to live without. For now all you have to do is accept God and allow Him to do the rest. He will show you how to advance, and you will certainly know why. We must trust that God is love.

12/31/05 Insights from Study       I’m so overjoyed to be getting into the writings of the mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, because I now see in their words things I’ve already figured out on my own — it’s a great discovery to know that your ideas are shared and then to compare them with the experiences of those who went through it long before. The intuitions I have had are born out by my study, and in the case of Teresa I feel a great affinity with her because she had the same doubtful reserve as I do. For instance, she too felt the tepidity of organized religion. She felt hers while in the third state while mine dated back to my life before mysticism, but she was a dedicated nun and would not feel the disillusionment as deeply because religion was reinforced in her every day by people she admired. She too lived in a time when organized religion was going through a major upset, but she never gave her affiliation up like I did. I did it because the church was holding me back and in no other way could I come into union with God; she did it because she was prone to devotion already. John seems more strict in his definition of the process — like John is a teacher and Teresa is a friend telling of how what John is teaching felt to her. I need to remember the intuition I had that things may not go with me exactly as they did with others, and so far this is bearing up. There is no right or wrong in this process provided my desire is genuine. I will just record as best as I can how it feels from this end, and not worry about fitting into anyone else’s pattern. It’s just good to know that when I do experience these things, they do belong to the pattern I hoped they would. I’m used to wanting things that don’t work out for me; I accept that because I feel the will of God working in me. But it’s great to know something is coming out the way I hoped, and that I’m getting to it honestly by leaving it to God. This is no struggle — it just happens. So many times I’ve tried to go the way I thought I should and had obstacles put in front of me that, had I not realized came from God, I would be in awe in wonderment of. That things could naturally line up so completely against my success seemed to go well beyond co-incidence.

12/31/05 Insights from Study         David of the Bible had mystic experiences. In a way I feel three ways: Fundamental because I’m rooted in the Bible, traditional because I follow the Catholic tradition of mysticism and the communion of saints, and progressive (not politically, heaven forbid, but spiritually) because I can find my path outside organized religion.