The Light in the Woods

2/26/10 Reflections           It’s just as easy to believe in God as not. If you don’t at least try, you’re basing your thoughts of God on your own attributes, which are pitifully inadequate. If you were to ask God about Himself you would be instructed by a powerful source. But you do yourself no favor if, after inquiring of God, you close your eyes and stop your ears against what you might learn.

Every day God guides us and protects us in ways we cannot comprehend because our minds don’t expand that far. Our inabilities should be comforting to us though – every weakness forces us to acknowledge the power of God, which must be working for our good since if God were against us we would know it all too well.

The more humble we are the more able we are to trust in God. Humility is not the same things as humiliation. Ego leaves us open to humiliation, but humility is the antithesis of ego. Humility is a state in which we are assured of pleasing God because we understand the need to make our wills subordinate to God’s.

God is our government – He makes us and He makes the rules by which we live. He gives us our rights and presents us with the circumstances that fulfill His plan. He sees to our welfare and expects us to take responsibility for obeying what He puts in our hearts as the moral way to deal with each other. His plan for us is broad; He does not micro-manage, leaving our free-will liberty to us as much as we need.

Sometimes our egos try to take God’s government over for ourselves, and sometimes we allow other egos to do it for us. When this takes place, it’s time to remember to go back to God in prayer to realign ourselves with Reality. Forget those who won’t do this, for whatever reason they have – the basis of a right-relationship with God is the individual and it’s the individual response to God that matters.

If everything else were to be taken away from the equation, our relationship with God would remain. Our spirits live on; it should be our spirits that hold our attention well above anything else. It is paramount in God’s agenda – His help guides you past the hype of humanity and sets you free to follow His morality; not anyone else’s. Rest yourself in living righteously; pledge allegiance to God and you will not go wrong.

2/21/10 Reflections              God is not just another experiment for scientists, for He will never be known completely on Earth. This is not a failing; this is His plan. His plan keeps us seeking, keeps us praising, keeps us grateful for the small hints of heaven that we see all around us when we cultivate awareness of them. If God were not a mystery we wouldn’t be in awe of Him as we are.

Now and then I play at pretending there is no God in my life, just to see how it feels. After all, I put in many years of not thinking of God at all, and I made out OK. But I always come back to the welcoming of my relationship with God, because of what it adds to my existence. I don’t need to understand God completely. What I need is to accept that there is something very much worth seeking, and that even if I don’t fully appreciate God because of my human limitations, the desire for that relationship keeps what I can know ever before me.

God is constantly bringing me towards acceptance of what it is I need. He puts before me what He wants to give; sometimes I reach out for it hungrily and sometimes I’m not hungry enough to reach out at all. In one way I’m better off than in the other, but God doesn’t force me. In the same way, He works with what he withholds from me – fear, despair, disease, calamity, guilt, my own sin. Whether I’m thankful, oblivious, or aware yet without gratitude, I’m not forced to acknowledge the source of my protection or my provision.

Yet if I do choose awareness of God I learn easily in proportion to how much of the process I give over to God. Once I begin, I see results. Once I see results, I want more of the same. The more I ask for the more I get – my asking shows that I’m humble enough to use God’s graces effectively. Even though my role is small, it’s an integral part of God’s master plan and therefore significant. Yet I don’t have to perform it flawlessly; I shouldn’t even aspire to that. I merely need to keep desiring the right attitude for my way to be made sure.

That’s why it’s so important for us not to exclude others’ paths or disdain others’ works. We don’t know what assignments God has deemed appropriate for others. We cannot do His desire while judging His gifts.

 2/7/10 Reflections             Everything is the way it is because that’s how God wants it. Save the whale, stop global warming – do what you will, the outcome is still whatever is God’s plan. You can be a force for good, but that’s your interpretation of what is needed; unless this is the same as what your Creator deems necessary it will count for nothing. That’s just the way it is, and God keeps dropping hints that we might want to limit our interference in it for our own good. Still we insist on taking over. So what if we’re extremely incompetent? At least we feel good about ourselves!

But maybe feeling good about ourselves is not such a worthy goal. For some of us, feeling good about ourselves is another form of greedy self-regard because we do things out of human pride; circumventing the will of God. Since we do impact nature we are charged with not abusing it. But for some, that’s the green light to go to the other extreme – denying the use of nature when it should be used, being a gift from God.

Most people don’t factor in God’s wishes when taking up a cause, some on the premise that God’s wishes are unknown but surely must conform to theirs; some on the premise that there is no God so it’s all up to them. But this is the Creator Himself they are dismissing – how much simpler and more beneficial it would be to acknowledge that there is a supernatural plan in place; to concede that the care of the Earth has been in God’s hands and will continue to be this way on into eternity. No matter what we do or don’t do, His effect will be what decides the Earth’s fate. Study as we might, all we will find is the mechanics of how God is fulfilling His plan.

Put that way, we might be induced to set aside the hype and the panic talk. We might each consider getting back to the spiritual meaning behind what we do. We can succeed by being partners in God’s master plan instead of failing by conceitedly fighting against it.

2/5/10 Reflections                    The knowledge we need of God is in us. Our hearts beat and our lungs exchange air without our intellectual input, and our minds apprehend God in the same way.

Lately, science is pin-pointing where in the brain that function resides, just as it has found the core location of other brain functions. This is good in that it admits the universal awareness of God we experience. But prideful man will probably interfere with this as in other things, and no doubt some megalomaniac will eventually mandate that the “God center” of an infant’s brain be deactivated at birth as a matter of course. Which all goes to show that while Creator-awareness is a normal function of a human being, Creator-knowledge must come to us in other ways; ways which science and megalomaniacs can’t touch.

God did not have to create the universe at all. His reality abides without it – always has and always will. The fact that He did create the universe implies a plan; a plan that takes place no matter how much humans interfere. Man’s need to experience God will not be impaired. What’s important is that we allow our full and certain joy of God-awareness however we can and in whatever ways God devises for our happiness. It’s hard-wired in us – what God desires is for our good, and what is good for us is what God plans from the beginning. Denying it gains us nothing, and denying it in others is impossible if the other person values a relationship with God. Need for God cannot be taken away, because it is supplied by God.

2/3/10 Insights from Study           No matter where you are on the religious spectrum, how far you’ve gone on your spiritual journey, or what sins you still hold in your heart – one thing you can always do is take a second to consult God before starting a task. No matter how small or large the endeavor, or how public the place, you can always discreetly put it before God to ask for His counsel and to promise to act according to His will.

You don’t have to wait for an answer – just by doing the asking you remind yourself of the joy of servanthood, and you honor God by your humility. Anything that brings you this close to God is beneficial, for it puts you in peak position to recognize God’s will for your work. This small exercise puts you in mind of God, possessing Him in both your worthiness and your humility working together.

It’s not a good-luck charm, because whether you succeed or fail depends on God’s will only. But it’s an acknowledgment that you desire that something important to you be within God’s master plan as well, and if it is His desire, that He lend you His power so to honor Him with your partnership. When He says you should ask so that you may be given, He speaks not only of material gifts but of good counsel. It’s such an easy thing to do and the reward is instantaneous – a feeling of closeness to the Creator and of being at oneness with Him and His plan.

1/31/10 Reflections          I’ve been thinking a lot about the children’s ward lately — about how it tested my faith in God’s mercy plan, and how it returned me to my faith tenfold over the years through the deep peace of supernatural insight.

While visiting my brother, who was bedridden with multiple sclerosis and in a nursing home, it was necessary for my other brother and I to go to the office on some business. The home was doing some renovations, which made us have to detour through the children’s ward to get to the office. As we were admitted we were told walk straight through, not to interact, and to make as little as noise as possible so as to not disturb the children.

What I saw in the children’s ward is almost beyond description. There were small misshapen bodies in all sorts of contortions; blank expressions on faces that didn’t look like humanity so much as things closeted away until no longer needing care. Their beds or wheelchairs lined both sides of the hallway — as we walked the gauntlet of unspeakable aberrations, in the midst of what the coldest-hearted human would call insufferable, there wasn’t any noise; just the silence of tolerated existence.

When we finally got through the opposite doorway, I told my brother this was a real test of my faith, which depends on the love of God for all His creation. It did one thing, though – it caused me to keep coming back to reflect on what little I know of God’s reasoning, and how I can only believe that what He does He does for our good. Then slowly the lesson of the children’s ward was taught to me within my spirit, and has given me a deeper, more peaceful intuition of the working of God’s love than I think I could have ever had without the experience.

I see now that we cannot care for each other properly. No matter how dire the circumstances and how tirelessly we work for our fellow human beings, we cannot give them what they truly need. Only God can do that. The most dedicated nurse on the children’s ward can only comfort the bodies of the children, and help them remain emotionally neutral.

Their bodies may be decimated, but who knows what they’re seeing inside? Only God can offer that comfort, and somehow I’ve come away with complete assurance that He does. Behind those distorted shells, could the children be experiencing the golden glowing joy of God’s perfect love as do those who have already passed on into His kingdom? If real meaning only exists in another world where God is the only god and our spirits gather Him fully and ecstatically, could those that are physically dependent and mentally unencumbered with worldly priorities be blessed with heavenly bliss here on Earth and unable to tell of it?

In fact, I’ve come into the knowledge that those children are experiencing the beauty of God the way God meant humans to experience Him — how we all would if our minds and bodies were disabled and given over solely to God’s care. In this condition of having nothing else, we enjoy the one thing we do have, unconditionally and without fail — the love of God.

Mystics are able to see the logic of their detachment from the world and negations of self-interest. To them the loss of selfhood is not debilitation so much as essential to experiencing something much better and closer to God’s desires. And those who study the Bible know well the scriptural plea for decreasing so they may increase, giving up all they have and following, taking no scrip for the journey, becoming like little children, the last being first, choosing the good part, letting them deny themselves, taking up the cross, losing their life for God’s sake, having their treasure in heaven, being poor in spirit, crying in the wilderness, the stone the builders rejected, casting in all they had, taking the lowest seat at the feast, seeking the kingdom of God, and entering at the narrow gate.

God should like us to be what we were at creation, before free-will and the sin and suffering that comes from it. For truth, that’s the state He has planned for us to return to in glory. Now, in the world, the independence we asked for has become a thing of strife. The only way to alleviate it is to allow ourselves to become totally dependent on God again so we may look upon His kingdom with joy and hope.

In the children’s ward this has been done for them and they live in the perfect presence of God without effort. Only those who give too much credence to the world and how we perceive it will miss completely what I missed momentarily – that the only thing that matters is the love of God, and whatever state we are in that we can perceive this love the most is the best state to be in. In the measure that we can’t assimilate this, we suffer from our lack of perception. That, then, is true and needless suffering.

I’m not suggesting that those who take care of the residents of the children’s ward don’t provide a heroic service – the need for care of these children’s bodies and emotions is enormous, and I hope for the caregivers’ sake that part of their compensation is the feeling of being blessed to be near these special temples of God’s love. But I am confident that God makes up for suffering by opening up the spirit to supernatural consolation. And this, being the better part, is what God encourages for all of us by our offering of our very selves to Him — a disabling of the ego so as to make His love our spiritual sustenance.

Mystic vision is not apparitions caught by our human senses. Mystic vision is the ability to see things as God sees them; a gift given because we want it badly and allow it freely. Through mystic vision we are able to “know properly” — not the things of this world but the reality of this world as seen from a higher plane. This is a comfort not only to the residents of the children’s ward, but to anyone who can learn exactly what it is they are experiencing. What we can know of God comes down to one necessary specific – that when we seek God we see Him, because that’s what we were made for. And when we see Him we know at once that no matter who we are, or how we look, or what we have or don’t have, without His love we would be nothing and with His love we are everything.

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.

1/17/10 Insights from Prayer               If you often start to question what you think you believe of life, that’s not a cause of despair but of celebration. For at least a few moments you have lifted your eyes from the inane preoccupation of whatever feeds your ego, and placed them squarely upon a place where they might at last truly see.

When you ponder what you think of God and His works, you could test your beliefs this way: Think of all the alternate possibilities in life and see if what you believe of God can hold true when looked at from a wholly different perspective.

Alien lifeforms, other universes, altered mind-states, past lives, lost worlds – if your idea of God can exist steadfast no matter how creation can be envisioned, then truly He is the master planner.

I don’t know what this means; I’m just writing down what was given to me.

1/13/10 Reflections          I was busy with my own concerns when this earthquake hit – by the time I knew of it many were already dead. It’s been on my mind all day, but as I go about doing what I do, it occurs to me many more are in the process of dying. And many are trapped and know that soon they will die. Then there are those who are healthy but grieving, and those who don’t even know if they should be grieving.

It seems like this country has been poor forever; I have felt compassion for these people for as long as I’ve been aware of world affairs. As a freshman at university I remember my Historical Geography teacher asking each of us where in the world we might like to go. When it was my turn I said I wanted to go to Haiti and help the people there. My teacher smiled and asked if I knew anything about Voodoo. I said not too much, but I could speak some French – meaning I might be able to empathize that way. Some kid in the class sneeringly said “Jeez, she thinks Voodoo is a language!”

Those days were full of intimations that God was directing me toward something even though I wasn’t very friendly with God at the time. These days I live for loving God and there still is this feeling of being designed to help somehow, but it seems for missionary work I would be a liability now that I’m too old and everything hurts. Back when I was young and could have gone, I didn’t take the hint. Now I get it, but I’m over the hill. Still, I wish I could go and be of service to a people who are not only economically destitute, but have been footballs in a deadly political game for so long. And victims of disaster after disaster.

It’s easy for me to say, here in my comfort and safety, but I have to pray that Haiti’s latest disaster is the one that turns things around for those poor people. They are deserving of a miracle, and my other prayer is that this brings them closer to God, not further away. Only God can bring that miracle about. But I hope there are many compassionate donors of time and money who can pave the way and work with Him.

1/7/09 Insights from Study         More than one of today’s devotionals touches upon an attribute of mine that puzzles me. I often need God’s assurance on something that has been in the back of my mind for as long as I can remember. I hate to say it out loud because it sounds like a delusion of grandeur, even though no feeling of pride actually comes with it at all. But I have felt since I was a child that I have a special mission for God and I have been waiting rather obliviously for His “go-ahead”.

I don’t usually dwell on this, trying to figure out intellectually what I know can only come to me inspirationally, but it is ever there in quiet expectation. Whatever it is I am to do, I must not be ready for it as yet. I feel like I’m actively being prepared but there’s no clue as to the progress in what I’m being prepared for. It’s as if God hides my purpose so I don’t waste my effort in bumbling attempts to gear myself toward the work.

This call for patience isn’t a cause of anxiety – in fact this unknowing brings me a certain calm because I know the answer will come surely and supernaturally. All responsibility lies in the hands of the Creator, who not only treats me with love but is also very good at setting right things into place. But I’m sixty years old – sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I could have somehow missed the ship. Yet if that were so, why would I have this feeling of preparation?

Anyway, today’s theme seems to be that I will not be going anywhere on my mission; that I will be sought out right where I am. That makes sense in two ways. First is that as the years go by my odd distaste for leaving home for any reason gets stronger and more apparent. Second, I live in a place steeped in spirituality, where the presence of God can call to a person mystically, forcefully, and somewhat continuously. Today I read reminders that this narrow path I take is that way for a reason. Maybe as I record what comes to me in God’s presence I am already affecting His plans in ways I don’t even recognize. I may die tomorrow and find my mission is already done. Stay home and love God – easy for me and what I’d choose to do anyway. God hasn’t matched my job to my temperament; He’s given me the mission and matched me with the temperament I need to accomplish it.