The Light in the Woods

1/19/10 Inspirations             The more I experience God the more I would need to know in order to do Him justice. I can’t explain the unexplainable, yet this is exactly what a believer is expected to do. This is a world where all you have to do is show skepticism and you appear to have wisdom. But those who have wisdom of Reality — that is, a world more attuned to the Creator than to what He has created – tend to remain silent and waiting.

The first thing you learn when you become truly enlightened is that there is a God and He is in control. You may object to feeling like a pawn in a chess game, but if you do you’re reacting with your ego whereas God is dealing with your spirit. To be spiritual is to be fully free; to accept God’s control so that you may exercise your free will from within the condition that truly responds to human free will — God’s desire to show love and be loved.

This cosmic consciousness is the key to true joy and deep peace. To a humanist happiness for all is a noble cause; to a mystic it is an inheritance from God. It takes acknowledgment of divine control to attain real peace; it will not come about through human desire for it to be so. But our free will can be used to accept recognition of God as Creator and to guide our actions toward working from within God’s master plan.

This master plan cannot be known except generally – the specifics are left to the mind of God, which we cannot probe deeply enough for now. But this is how creation works best; with enough mystery to encourage our participation in God’s plan, and enough knowledge to accept the wisdom of its Creator without question.

As each individual is blessed with mystic perception the fire spreads even more quickly. One day all will grow to abandon ego and embrace spirit – at this point the world can end at last, and we may all awaken into true life of perfect joy in the full presence of God.

1/5/10 Insights from Study            Yes, God created evil, but to Him it isn’t evil. We have come to see it so, but to God all of His creation is goodness. We are not God, and we see things through human perspective; not divine. We wouldn’t think of calling medicine evil because of its bitter taste, but when it comes to God we expect Him to arbitrate justice without pointing out sin. We expect God to extend His mercy without our having to concede we were wrong. We want His peace without admitting we brought about the conflict. We blame God for what we see as evil, but want Him to overlook consequences of sin, which is something of our own making. How is it we can choose to turn our backs on God, then turn around and blame Him for not preventing us from making a mess of things?

Earthquakes are not evil — they are a natural part of Earth’s regeneration process. When one swallows a car with your loved ones in it, an earthquake appears quite evil to you. But the earthquake did not sin against you, and God is not evil for not having prevented the deaths. If a hungry bear attacks your child, it isn’t because it is evil, nor is God remiss in creating the bear’s need to feed.

Only human beings can perceive God’s created things as evil, because only human beings can create sin out of good and accrue the consequences of their actions. It isn’t that evil is doled out to us as punishment in proportion to our sins so much as it’s that we are simply seeing life as a condition of imperfection. We “know” things as evil because we are used to ordering matters to our own specifications, and often they don’t co-operate.

We insist on exercising our free will and God allows that even when we harm ourselves by it. Unless we are mystics, we would not be willing to give up our free wills, even when we know we often use them with harmful results. Unless we are spiritually enlightened, we are unaware of all the cases where God has in fact intervened to save us. We are just as unaware of this as we are unaware of His reasons for permitting us to witness evil. Opportunity, correction, guidance, education, conversion, grace – all good things can appear to us as evil when directed by God’s hand, because we do not understand divine intellect. We cannot assimilate the intensity of God’s love for us and the steps He takes because of this love.

This is why mystics are always encouraging a person’s abandonment of will. It’s saying this: “I’m not divine and can only haltingly absorb divine reasoning. But if I make a point of accepting God’s will as good, no matter whether it seems to me to be loving or evil, I will certainly be at peace knowing my way won’t be wrong. If I unite my desires to God’s, even if I don’t understand them, I’m confident that I’m doing God’s will and showing Him love. And if I do this sincerely, humbly, and obediently, I will be shown by insight what I need to know, and be given the means to do what I need to do. When I am in sync with God all decisions are God’s, even the ones He has subjected to my free will.”

In this desire for union with God we’ll not only have assurance of following the path our Creator means for us to follow, but also we will have a more proper perception of the worldly, temporary nature of suffering and evil.

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.

11/24/09 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.

11/9/09 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8/30/09 Inspirations           It’s not about worshiping Jesus – it’s about worshiping God as Jesus did, for God has manifested Himself in Jesus so that we may know of our Creator. Day after day, in small things and large, Jesus lived with God as His focus – showing us the way to peace of mind for ourselves and all peoples. I often wonder what would be Jesus’ response to the way we conduct religious services these days. We worry more over the state of the church parking lot than the state of our souls.

I love my time alone with God. That’s the time when it doesn’t matter what any human, especially myself, brings to the altar. The real altar is my spirit; my sacrifice must be the only thing I really own outright – God’s gift of my free will. When I’ve given that, I’ve given everything; as long as I’m offering that to God, no other sacrifice is necessary. In fact, any other sacrifice would be a danger of cheapening my original gift to God.

I can worship God through prayer, reflection, and good acts, but these things only make the abandonment of my free will useful to my life on Earth. It’s the abandonment itself that is what God wants from me, and even this I couldn’t have initiated without God’s help.

This is how Jesus worshiped. He worshiped perfectly, because as God’s manifestation His purpose was to make our own perfect worship possible. So few of us have taken Him up on it; our human need to control things is overwhelming.

God doesn’t help us because we go to church or read the Bible or meditate or give to charity. And He doesn’t withhold his help because we don’t go to church or read the Bible or meditate or give to charity. God’s help is independent of reward or punishment for what we are or what we do. All we can really offer is our control over our spirit. This is hard for us, but it begins our sanctification – anything more serves to make it real for us, as Jesus makes God real for us.

If you need all the bells and whistles of religion, you might consider that what God has done for you is, in your opinion, not enough. No amount of outward worship will fix this delusion.  Only doing what God asks of you will please Him – shut everything else out and you will hear His call. Answer His call and your worship will be perfect.

8/1/09 Insights from Study       Rejoice in the good things; rejoice in the bad – for all changes are designed by our Creator for our good. It doesn’t matter how things look to us – God sees it how it is, and orders it how He knows is best for us. We should be grateful for our release from responsibility as long as the true master is all-powerful and all-loving. It’s our humility that brings us inner peace; the allowing of our acceptance of God’s work, and our position as obedient receivers, that results in happiness with all God’s decisions.

God allows and welcomes our participation, and free will makes life interesting. But when we start to believe that human free will is all there is, that’s when we see God’s beneficence as something working against us. We and our pride are the cause of our misperception of reality, and our misperception of reality is the cause of our spiritual unease. Regaining the humility of our place in God’s plan brings us back into proper perception, and proper perception eases the soul and restores inner peace.

Pray to receive this most basic favor, the gift of humility, that allows you to release yourself from responsibility for what you cannot control. God will welcome such a prayer, for it honors Him and brings to you the peace God desires for you.