The Light in the Woods

2/22/10 Insights from Prayer              The trouble with biblical religiosity is that it never encourages us to take what Christ afforded us and use it to get beyond Christ and into God. Fundamentalist Christians, while rightly seeing Jesus as our means of a right-relationship with God, think it demeaning to Jesus that we then aspire to go beyond Him and on into the exact realm for which He interceded.

Yes, we are too immature to start with a unitive relationship with God, and need Christ to win that ability for us. But Jesus is a manifestation of God, and having freed us from our limitations God wants to draw our focus when we’re ready so that we may communicate directly with Him. A direct relationship with God is the whole point of salvation and sanctification – to hear some churches say it, seeking such a relationship is the work of the devil; not of the Christ.  The suspicion is that if we all cashed in on our mystic relationship with God won for us by Jesus, there would be little need for the power of the churches.

Mystics run into trouble with fundamentalists because mystics embrace the goal of Christ’s work instead of worshiping the work itself. Christ’s humanity is not the purpose of His existence, just as it isn’t the purpose of ours. The exercise of our divinity, our worthiness to desire union with God, is the end game. Jesus wants us to aspire to that. To a parent at the moment of letting the child go, if the child keeps running back it’s an indication that the work is not done and the child is not ready. Likewise, to the mystics it’s not blasphemy to thank Jesus and accept the relationship with God that Christ won for us – it only means advancing our focus from Christ the man to God who loved us so much He manifested Himself as Christ. The blasphemy is when we are admonished for not worshiping Christ the man.

We worship Jesus along with God each time we communicate with Him, for this is the purpose of Christ. Fundamentalists de-emphasize God’s call to contemplation and personal communication, drawing the focus back to the Bible and the church’s interpretation of it. Mystics use the Bible as a step to the real purpose of Christ. We may still be too weak to take full advantage of Christ’s work, but to deny those who are ready for it direct access to God implies that Jesus somehow failed, and the job of the church is to cover that failure with dogma.

 1/23/10 Insights from Prayer                      I just thought – there isn’t one person in the whole world who doesn’t have a problem, large or small, at the moment, and who couldn’t use a prayer, like it or not, from me. There are billions of us, going about with our own thoughts and fears and sins and doubts. I wish that each time I’m taken to prayer I could have one person to concentrate on – what a prayer that would be!

I was just praying for a specific friend with a specific problem at this very moment of need. Thanks to instant messaging my prayer is in the present – what a miracle that is! A message has traveled to me by satellite that a prayer is needed, and so I pray while I wait to find out if this friend is OK.

Our God is great Who cares about each of us and watches over every one of us as if there were no one else in the world for Him to love. And He is wise to let me know the scope of humanity and human need which He attends to without fail. I’m blessed to feel welcomed into partnership with Him in this.

12/27/09 Insights from Study           It’s pretty amazing, when you give it the thought it deserves, that God in His power would choose to use it to bring Himself as low as He did in taking on man’s nature and walking the Earth with us. What can we learn from this except that God never wants to remain aloof from us but to insert Himself as much into our lives as we will let Him? If only we could have this much humility and love for mankind, everything else would become clear to us.

God is our King, and should be respected as such, but how much better we know Him and love Him because He chose instead to come to us as a helpless baby.  Do you turn your back on the unconditional love that made this act of selflessness possible? What can you do to match it in your own abilities? Just thinking about it seriously is a giant step in God’s direction. Will you meet Him all the way by becoming as humble and helpless as a baby yourself?

And if the important thing in our lives is that God is with us, what does it matter what else we believe? For being with us God enlightens us – some one way and some another – but only to get us through this world and on to reality, where belief is not needed because perfection reigns over all. I look forward to being with God as He is in His kingdom, without the need of His concealing His glory in order to cater to the baser needs of human beings.

12/25/09 Insights from Prayer              Christmas proves what every mystic knows from experience – God has many ways of appearing to us. It’s not always about majesty and power – our connections with God’s word are usually no more spectacular than another baby being born. But what mightiness there is in small things when we can recognize them as the presence of God. I feel sorry for anyone who can’t grasp the workings of God for their own experience. That God walks among us even here and now should inspire awe in us all. Life is a house of cards in the wind – it’s only God holding us up that makes us possible. We really are seeing God, but we see Him in an unfamiliar way – with the eyes of the spirit. Lately I feel as though we have drifted so far off the trail again that it’s time for God to come to us in a way we can see with our bodily vision. Would we greet Him with relief and joy, or crucify Him once more?

12/24/09 Inspirations              When I was a child I believed in hell. You went there when you died unbaptized or in mortal sin; there was no hope – there you stayed for eternity. If you were baptized but in lesser-than-mortal sin when you died, you went to purgatory. This was a place of suffering where you paid for your sins, but also a place of hope because when you were purified you went to heaven. Your friends and family and even total strangers could help you get out of there and into heaven by praying a certain way, and if during life you did this and that you could build up indulgences that would be redeemed against your time in purgatory – a sort of time off for good behavior. Limbo was a kind of purgatory where unbaptized babies who knew nothing of sin were stored. Heaven was for the baptized who hadn’t committed any sins since the last time they ate a wafer blessed by a priest.

Later on, when I began to analyze my beliefs, little of this seemed plausible so in my feeling of having been duped, I went as far as I could the other way. I stopped believing in most everything. I still believed in God, but I had no relationship with Him because He was tyrannical and distant and the less I had to do with Him the safer I was. I didn’t have much trouble being good – for the most part I was a natural goody two-shoes who wanted to be left alone. I treated my neighbor as I wanted to be treated myself — I left him alone.

Then a little over five years ago God took me in hand; He showed me wondrous things and told me about Himself. I found out He was a loving God who was familiar with every aspect of me, because He lived in me and all around me. I found out how to recognize Him in His works. I learned that heaven is all there is and we’ve all been there all along – our perception has been so clouded we don’t experience things as the really are. There isn’t one thing I can do to gain or lose heaven – it is what it is and will not change. It is very, very good because it is what God made, and God wants only good for us.

Life on Earth is an exile – not from heaven but from our proper experience of heaven. For God’s good reasons we can only experience unreality here. It’s a dream, sometimes better described as a nightmare of our own making. We are causing our own thoughts to be fogged up. Somehow through our own free will we made our own delusion, and only direct knowledge and grace from God can be trusted. I haven’t been shown how this exile happened, except that it must have originated from God’s goodness. Life on Earth is in God’s master plan and not to be feared because God’s master plan only leads to reality, and God’s reality is wonderful.

So God’s spirit infused in me not only told me things outright, but showed me how to interpret other things with a view geared towards His will and the reality He made for us to live in. For instance – do my inspired thoughts make the Bible a pack of lies? No, God inspired others long ago just as He inspires us today. There is much to be gleaned of the inspirations found in the Bible, but it has to be ferreted out by means of my own personal inspiration from God in order to find in it what is meant to be found. We can look at our own times to see how truth gets battered beyond recognition – the government, the media, the education and justice systems are always rewriting history to fit their own agendas and spinning statistics to fit their own theories. The Bible is a holy resource that has been handled by human beings to conform to human needs, just as all inspirational literature is. It is not purely God’s original word – for that one has to look to one’s own spirit, where God’s truth is written. And why wouldn’t it be this way? God loves us and wants to deal with us directly.

It was in the midst of scripture-abuse that God came down as Jesus. He set the record straight on what we were doing that was not conformable to God’s wishes. He demonstrated the joy of having a right-relationship with God by abandoning our will in favor of matching His. Jesus taught us how to live in prayer; to be prayer itself in our very words and deeds. He showed that the harshness of humanity seems very real to us the way we see it, but we will be resurrected from this bad dream and return our perception to the reality of heaven. He made an example for us by His very life – affirming that God’s spirit is here with us; that His inspiration is the only truth we have, and that only God’s knowledge and grace can be relied upon. If we need to know more, we can always come to God to ask.

Jesus proved that though we tend to focus on the wrong thing in this foreign environment, the right thing is always available to everyone and is as close as our own spirits, which God fills with Himself out of love for us. God wants us to break through the heavy curtain that separates us from Him and that keeps us from realizing the pure joy of our existence. His light does come through, encouraging us to take advantage of the kind of relationship Jesus identified for us, but we need to put forth the effort by letting God prepare our spirits.

We can know a bit of our joy which is hidden, and bask right here and now in the kind of glory that is ours in full after our own resurrection into reality. We were made for this and all God asks is to be asked to reveal it. Even with a right-relationship with God and direct communication with His word, we are still only works in progress and far from an all-encompassing insight into truth while we are in this world. But if we are sincere, obedient, and humble we can be Christ-like. When you think of the meaning of Christmas, you understand how it must satisfy God greatly when we are willing to be Christlike despite the nature of the world around us.

12/19/09 Inspirations               When it comes to the things of God, how much can we human beings really know? What portion of what our ancestors said is really true? Given what we know of the history of mankind, and through our own experiences of human nature, what are we to believe?

As in everything pertaining to the mystical life, the first thing necessary for reflection is to put God first, ahead of worldly considerations and human input, because through this door lies only what God desires for us to hear. That means mystics, because they come from many beliefs, must as always pare down dogma and build up intuition. As we honor the Creator, we honor His methods, which are shaped to the individual and are varied beyond our comprehension. Our trust is in God’s word to us and through others with God’s inspiration in our spirits.

Remembering that Devotional Mysticism is an attitude of worship and not a religion itself, we must also remember that it is a practice open to all faiths, all denominations, and all individuals – excluding no one, as does God. Many mystics are Christians, and many non-Christian mystics believe in Jesus. Because of the varied interpretations God gives us, a discussion of Jesus and mysticism, to be relevant to all mystics, starts out simplified in the masses and will be built upon by the individual from within his own belief system.

A mystic interpretation may be that in Jesus God was saying “I will meet you where you live. I will come to you; to be among you and within you. In doing this, I will show you the things that I admire so you can follow my wishes through your free will. I will show you that if all in this life is not pleasant, you can look with joy to your own resurrection. From My manifestation on your level – separated as you are from Me by deception – you will find I’m a loving God, a merciful God; dedicated to you even when you turn your back on Me. I teach you compassion for others; I show you your own weaknesses so you too can be merciful to My other children. I bring you the promise that I will keep coming to you asking for your love — being pleased anytime you show it and merciful anytime you don’t. In other words, I have the capacity to communicate with you, and I do it in many different ways – ways that conform to what you can relate to. You call these manifestations of Myself by the names that mean something to you – Son of God, nature, Jesus, miracle, inspiration, Holy Spirit, co-incidence – because if my glory is beyond you I can have no real meaning for you. I am first your Creator, and I care for you in many ways while you’re away from me. Nothing pleases me more than that you would wait patiently for me with total confidence, see what I am to you, dedicate yourself to my will, and most of all love me with all you have.”

The important thing is that God can speak to us as Jesus and we will hear a powerful message. Christmas is a perfect time to reflect on this message in awesome wonder that God can and does put all His love into mankind despite what mankind can do.

12/4/09 Reflections           Quietism believes that we merely exist. Everything we truly need is gdiven to us. We have no responsibility other than to God. World affairs must be ignored, and the risk of contamination thereby avoided. Self-annihilation brings perfection, which is enough in its own right. It’s just one person and God – everything else might as well be non-existent.

It’s a radical mysticism, even though “radical” seems contradictory to everything Quietist. In every principle above, there is merit and truth. But as a whole theology, Quietism doesn’t add up. It’s too much like the way we would like life to be – a utopia without the provision that if God wants us to be active for others we could comply. And if we can’t comply to God’s desires, we are certainly no mystics.

I would love to feel justified in a life of total contemplation and isolation; to have absolutely no other responsibility. I would be content to know that in complete passivity I am pleasing God; I could easily enjoy living in blissful abandon. The trouble is, as much as the world can turn without me, I must make myself available and ready to be active when and how God wants me to. That is an inseparable part of abandoning my will to God – the acceptance that His will might be to use my action for a greater good.

So while I agree with the Quietist premise and would like to live a Quietist life, I could never get past the intuition that though God doesn’t need my co-operation, He wants it. It’s in this way we honor Him, for it isn’t enough to abandon ourselves to Him if we will not abandon our abandonment should He ask us for that as well.

One of the first insights of mysticism is that God wants to be asked for His favors. Without this attribute of God’s, intercessory prayer and works on behalf of others would make no sense, as we’re aware that God is capable of anything He desires without our input. We couldn’t even honor God if He didn’t feel the need to be loved by us. So Quietism doesn’t sit well because it takes mysticism further than it should go. In the same way as God wants us to ask for favors He would have given us anyway, He asks us to love Him and honor Him in our care for others, even though He has no needs and is capable of caring for His children Himself. Mysticism is an unequivocal “Yes” to God’s desires; Quietism limits what those desires can entail to what can be done passively. That sounds like “No” to me.

12/3/09 Insights from Study           God became visible to us as Jesus. When we look upon Jesus we see God in a way we can understand. This is done because God wants us to share in His nature so that we may honor Him and take our rightful place in His kingdom with Him.

Human beings wanted God’s intellect; to partake of the tree of knowledge. Jesus confirms how what is goodness is always known to us. God puts that in our hearts and through Jesus and His Holy Spirit God shows us how to live what is right. We are privileged to glimpse God’s infinite knowledge – some believe Jesus won this right for us; some believe that Jesus demonstrates this right. Whatever our belief, Jesus reminds us that God is knowable to us in the degree to which we can handle this knowledge.

We human beings also wanted autonomy; to feel the power of self-determination. God gave us free will and Jesus shows us how to give it over to God. Jesus is our affirmation that the Creator cares and, because He cares, He participates — in the universe and within each individual. We are worthy of our relationship with God – some believe Jesus won us this right; some believe that Jesus demonstrates this right. Whatever our belief, Jesus reminds us that God is personally and continuously involved in our lives, and we recognize this in the degree to which we welcome it.

We wanted the knowledge and grace that belonged to God. We didn’t exactly get what we wanted, because we wanted things that weren’t wholesome for us. So God gave us something better than what we wanted, and of course God does know what that is. God is still with us; it’s God’s Holy Spirit which gifts us with knowledge and grace as He sees fit.

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.

11/7/09 Reflections             Jesus was God manifesting Himself in the world in order to reach out to us in a familiar way so we can benefit by a divinely-apportioned measure of understanding. The Holy Spirit does this as well; it is God making Himself available to human experience in order that we may benefit from divine capabilities.

Why can’t we just leave it at that and absorb the grace in which this gift is given? No, people have to butt in and make up things so the explanation of God is sure to be done “the church way”, leaving any unchurched spirit open to judgment and condemnation.

I find the celebration of Jesus’ humanity especially disturbing the way it is done by churches. It’s as if we can never learn what the coming of Jesus was meant to tell us – that the God/man relationship is a thing perfected in heaven but we are welcome to it even if we can only experience it imperfectly in this life; that it’s not meant to be fully understood by us in order that we keep striving for it.

Instead we see Jesus treated as the Son of God with duties separate from God, as if he was not God. We humans have to give Him human attributes and human names in order for Him to be palatable to us. The Catholic faith is one kind of offender, in that it takes the essence of Jesus and then constructs all sorts of scenarios around Him so that He makes sense to us. The unknown circumstances of His humanity must be filled in and cataloged in such a way as they fit both scripture and human experience. What we end up with is not the awe and wonder of God reaching out to mankind, but a fully logical, and fully made up, explanation of God’s plans.

The same goes for those churches who think they need only to churn out Bible slaves in order to please God. Instead of filling in where scriptural information is lacking like the Catholic church does, these people take each sentence of scripture as the final, exact word, no matter how the sentence got there or how it fits in with the rest of the concept around it. The fact that there is so much infighting among them should be a clue that this method of understanding God isn’t the answer either. One would think, listening to them, that Jesus’ role was to perform a task for man so that people who don’t follow him can be condemned by God.

It all comes from trying to fit God’s plan into human understanding without consulting God. When you base your relationship with God on scripture only, you will probably be too intimidated to listen to God another way, and may never experience what God wants to say to you as an individual. Our churches frighten us with scripture in order that we do not become tempted to accept what God says to us personally. They fear losing control of us when God communicates with us directly. They tell us we open ourselves up to the devil when we pray for God’s guidance. They assure us that if it isn’t in scripture – and this is true in many religions – then it doesn’t exist, because God is incapable of having anything else to say. Really?

Many of us have tried to remain in our churches and still go to God for spiritual guidance. Many churches profess to encourage this, but we have found that when push comes to shove, we are not considered sophisticated enough to receive what God wants to give us. And so many of us have given up the pretense of church religion and gone the way our hearts have told us to go. 

I’m convinced that the Creator sees this as a step in the right direction and works with us in a special way in order to encourage this kind of spirituality worldwide. I believe this is His plan and it gives me a satisfying feeling of hope to know that it’s OK to step out of the feedlots our religions have fenced in for us. Nothing else is needed from man, because all is provided by God anyway. When God works in an individual, it doesn’t take many individuals to become a powerful, self-replicating force for good reaching across any and all human-made boundaries..