The Light in the Woods

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5/6/09 Reflections           This being abandoned to God’s desire instead of to mine presents added difficulties as I continue to practice it. The more I tell God I want only what He wants, the more I convince myself that God agrees then with my desires. I’m guilty of turning the principles of abandonment around, because I’m more familiar with my desires than with God’s. By doing this I’m in danger of forsaking the very nature of giving love back to God without precondition.

So I want something, and because I think I’ve abandoned myself to God’s desires, I assume that’s what God wants as well, and that it will certainly come to pass. But while God loves my desire to please Him, He doesn’t always share with me the understanding of His desires or give out strong signs of approval. Therefore, I may never know if I’ve truly given my self over to God even though I fervently want to.

What I have with which to measure that accomplishment is so imperfect I can’t trust the results. The default seems to drift toward holy desires being merely my own desires no matter how perfectly they fit with what’s holy in my spirit. So if it doesn’t work out the way I think God should be wanting for it to work out, either there’s a flaw in my abandonment of will to God, or there’s a flaw in God.

That distinction, at least, is not hard at all to reason out. I am the flawed one, and often I need reminding of it. In fact, the more proficient I am in my mystic journey, the more dangerous the obstacles, for if I’m to teach, I must know as much as possible about my imperfection and limitations.

5/3/09 Inspirations                The God who gave you existence and who created everything that sustains your life certainly wishes for you to go to Him above anything else in order to ask for what you need. And the God who knows you better than you know yourself certainly wishes for you to go to Him for understanding of your existence. When you do His answer is likely to be: “Wait on Me, for I give you all you need and teach you all you need to know.”

Are you humble enough to accept what God gives and quit trying to appease anyone at all but Him? In many ways, this is against our human nature, but it may be that going against human nature is the same thing as picking up on your divinity. Did you know that having been made in the image of God you are a divine creature? Naturally this gets lost in human pride and the illusory importance of the temporal world. But it fits with the word of God, and it fits with what is in our spirits should we ever think enough to put the world aside and concentrate on our inner selves.

It takes a special person, one who is especially favored by God, to be able to see through the falsity of human nature and strive to develop their divine nature. This is the nature that is perfected in the eternal world – it is why God and those who have received God’s knowledge and grace put a supreme importance on things that those who are Earthbound pass over as unimportant.  We are all busy running around doing things, oblivious to the fact that all that needs to be done has been done; that we, what we do, and those we do them for have already been provided for in the ways that matter.

Those who understand this are especially favored by God. They do not live on a higher plane because they are being rewarded for being holy, but because they are appreciated for their very desire to be holy. To desire to be holy implies that one goes to God to ask for the favor, and receives knowledge and grace simply because of this desire. Anyone can do it; everyone is welcome. You must set aside human nature first and put yourself in front of God in humility and obedience. This shows your desire. When you feel a closeness to God that surpasses any relationship you have elsewhere, that shows His response.

3/8/09 Insights from Prayer           There is one time when we are perfect, and that’s when we are alone, away from others in deep prayer to our noticeably-present Creator. In a moment like this, the light comes without effort and our ability to receive God’s grace is heightened. There is no consciousness of body or the body’s needs. There is no intellectual musing – the mind is focused on God and not for once on anything less. Our place and time suddenly feel just right. Vision seems to stop just ahead of us – we see but don’t need to process what we see. We are emotionally flatlined, with no input allowed but the encompassing love force-field in which God clothes us when He especially wants our full attention. We have the satisfaction of passively experiencing the state where we are doing exactly what we should be doing; knowing within that we are pleasing almighty God. In deep prayer we are perfection because we are existing with and for God only – a state in which the imperfect world does not play a part. Just think of it – through God’s gift of free will we are in control of welcoming this state of deep prayer; of ordering things so that we can be ready for it. We can make conditions right for experiencing the presence of God, and our mere desire to do so calls on God’s help to complete the experience. We are wonderfully made, deeply loved, and worthy of a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe. This, then, is real peace – honest and humble solitary prayer with nothing in mind but God.

3/4/09 Insights from Prayer            Enemies you can effectively eliminate by refusing to think of them as anything other than God’s children. Once this is fixed in your mind they are no longer enemies because you do not allow them to be enemies, and you can begin to deal with them as God wants you to. It will not be the same for everyone, but what you do will be based on the same consideration toward all — that if God loves this person that should be your default position as well.

This sounds Utopian, and people would scoff at your naivete – the point is not for you to destroy an enemy but to reject his hatred in your own mind. This is something the weakest among us can do; from there you’re able to leave justice to God where it belongs. Your enemy may still want to destroy you, but that has always fit into God’s plan. What’s different is that you are putting yourself into the relationship with God and not with your enemy. In this, the relationship that’s the one of real importance, you are already justified by God – the race is run and you have won. You do not have to hate your enemy just because he is nurturing a hatred for you. Instead you can do the right thing and so put God in your corner, where you will recognize His guidance as to what you must do to deal with your enemy from this point on.

2/10/09 Inspirations       I am just small, Dear Lord, in my own eyes. Teach me to pray so that I’m reminded how precious I am to You. Then, and only then, am I certain that I am what You make me, and You make me holy and whole.

When I run out of answers, and the strength to find answers, teach me to pray so I remember where answers really lie. If I should feel abandoned by those I thought cared for me, teach me to pray so I know again how much You love me and how fulfilling this love is. As darkness falls over the world to the point where morality and initiative is a thing too well hidden, teach me to pray so I want to remain pure for You despite what others think is right for me.

This life isn’t easy and sometimes there’s ugliness on all sides, threatening innocents. Teach me to pray so that I can form a bond with others on Your behalf. That is when we may together understand that beauty is more precious when snatched out of the claws of despair.

I thank you, Dear God, for the visible signs of hidden glory as yet to be exposed. Teach me to pray so that all can see Your work in nature and in circumstances. That way all may trade pride in for the humility and obedience that is the divine part of our human nature.

My one request is that all of us may become tuned to the frequency on which You transmit. Teach me to pray so that I never lose Your gift of inspiration; always ready to pass along the secret to joy.

When I feel my enemies closing in, Dear Lord, teach me to pray so that I can welcome them with courage and soften their hearts with revelation. If I find that someone is in need in body or in spirit, teach me to pray so that Your own spirit can give me the words I need to comfort them. As it becomes harder to swim against the tide of self-regard in today’s society, teach me to pray so that I can always return to what is important to You. Then, and only then, can I feel satisfied that I have found the way; that it doesn’t lie in me and what I can do, but in You and the spiritual gifts You give me.

I want to walk in Your ways, Dear God. Teach me to pray so that I may always have a place to go where I can recharge, refocus, and remember from where my strength originates and to where my journey is taking me.

1/15/09 Insights from Study            I frustrate myself before I give myself a chance. Why give what little I can give to a beggar? Even if he didn’t use it for something self-destructive, my contribution does very little for that person’s welfare and is a drop in the ocean in the great scheme of things.

Maybe I’m not going to turn the beggar’s life around, but maybe my contribution added to those of others just might. And beyond that, even if I brighten just a minute or two of someone’s day, it’s a sign of God working through me. If I stop to reflect on the enormity of what this really means, we are both receiving an awesome gift in an awesome way.

I never liked that Bible verse: “Him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.” What are we supposed to be – doormats for anyone to wipe their feet on? Yet if I turn this around it suddenly strikes a chord. If I think about this verse in the light of what I do for others voluntarily instead of about the bad others do to me, it makes perfect sense.

I think about my stint in the tourist industry, and I remember how I used to tell myself about forbearance when I was in a bad mood, or in a hurry, or just exhausted; many times I was all three at once. I used to remind myself internally: This person and this transaction are insignificant for you because you will handle this kind of thing over and over all day and every day. But to this person, you are a big part of his vacation – don’t let your hang-ups ruin it for him when with a little effort you can make his experience even better.

Any of us can find ways to not only deal with people or situations without rancor, but consciously go the extra mile to make the casual contact special by allowing God’s light to shine through. There are many ways to do this – the situation will lend itself and God’s spirit will show the way – and giving not only the cloak but also the coat as well becomes a habit that fosters peace and contentment of spirit.

What starts out as an experiment could turn into a way of life. This is what mystics mean by practicing the presence of God – living in such a way that no task is mundane because it’s an opportunity to honor God through His creations.

12/21/08 Insights from Study             True peace is not the absence of war – the opposite of peace is pride. The abdication of pride brings true peace – inwardly in essence and outwardly in effect.

The current peace movement misses the mark by a wide margin. You only invite chaos by allowing an aggressive entity to ride rough-shod over anyone who will not oppose him. Only a response can stem the tide of aggression, for if the aggressor wins the entire world, opposition to him is guaranteed to well up forever. Our best hope for outward peace, as long as human greed for power remains supreme, is mutual polarization – you stay on your side of the fence and I’ll stay on mine.

This balance becomes upset by globalization and globalization seems unstoppable. While the benefits of world commerce are great for the greatest number of world inhabitants, artificial attempts to regulate the various interests with no safeguard of mutual polarization invites the spoils to go to whoever strikes first without regard to morality. Global control is even more attractive than regional control, and the constraint against any righteous response insures immorality wins out over morality on a global scale. While this is not war, it certainly isn’t peace.

True peace begins in the individual – the smaller the field the higher the success rate. Even a megalomaniac, when confronting his Creator, must feel a certain twinge of humility. It’s why God asks us to go to our inner room, closing the door and praying where no one can see us. A man who has met his God face to face comes out a better man, and better men make better societies. With the underpinnings of humility and obedience in place of pride and power, whole cultures can peacefully influence the world in the name of God. In this direction lies true peace; deep peace in which all men want the right things; the holy things that God desires for them to want. This sounds like a hopeless utopia, but remember that when human beings share the same will as God, God will perform miracles.

Pay for power with pride and you have the kind of power that does not diminish when given away and so cannot be coveted. Power from God is available to all without rank or rancor, in immeasurably more quantity than we could ever use up. Therefore it’s unnecessary to aspire to more by climbing over someone else. Pride is not there to motivate when everything we desire is given free for the asking.

Peacemakers themselves can act out of the pride of self-righteousness in order to make others live the way the peacemaker has deemed to be right. It only brings resistance, no different from the resistance to the goodness of Christianity; resistance that comes from exposure to the intolerance of radical evangelicals. It doesn’t matter if the message is right when the messenger is motivated by human pride and exclusivity. Human pride engenders prejudice in peacemakers as well as in warmongers.

The deep peace of individual, inner humility and abandonment of will is the only peace that is up to you. It’s limited on its surface, but it’s extremely contagious when spurred on by almighty God. Sharing God’s power by being one with His desires, it has unstoppable potential. But we must not use this power out of pride or others will run away in fear. We must passively emit this grace while going about our business. It’s God’s business if He wants to spread your individual peace along. It’s God’s decision whether peace will reign among nations. It’s God’s master plan that allows you to contribute by asking for your own right-relationship with God. Beyond that you regress into the persistent realm of pride, and will only interfere with God.

12/6/08 Insights from Study                     Since creation God has dealt with the world in various ways – sometimes sternly with the “tough love” of the Old Testament, sometimes with great hope and sympathetic direction, as when He came to us through Jesus, and sometimes with the great loving mercy we often feel today as we more and more realize our dependence on Him.

He doesn’t leave us or turn His back on us. No matter how He chooses to deal with us, we are aware that He is present and working in our lives. We love Him in response to His love for us. And our love in turn brings us closer to Him, repeating the cycle of give and take until perfection is reached.

In Christianity we believe we inherit this right through the sacrifice of Jesus, and when Jesus had to leave us He sent the Holy Spirit to guide us to perfection. We don’t expect any other manifestation of God in our lives – to use the Holy Spirit to our full potential is only logical and gratifying.

Christian Mysticism is all about welcoming, recognizing, receiving, and accepting the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This work is a gift from God, but what’s really important to remember is that the ability of humanity to deserve the Holy Spirit is a gift from God too. It’s the direct result of Jesus having taken on the sinfulness of humanity, dulling it with His own humility and obedience, vaporizing it with His death, and showing us by His resurrection what, as a result, is now possible for us. So if you distance yourself from God because you don’t feel you deserve His love, you are not being virtuous – you are being ungrateful.

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus shows us how much God love us, and makes possible our entry into eternal life with Him.

Now, the full mechanism by which God reconciles His perfect justice with His unfailing mercy is not shared fully with us. Since it’s not shared fully with us, it’s one of those things we do not need to know or pursue. Remember, for each glimpse of the mind of God we are able to assimilate for our use, there is an awesome balance of infinite mightiness that’s none of our business. I tend to think that most of what is the Creator’s mind-force will never be known to us even in the afterlife, because in eternity with God the need to know and the satisfaction of learning will not follow us there. When you have perfect joy you don’t seek more – one can’t accumulate more than all.

Having been gifted with the presence of God, we realize more clearly that He is a personal God; a loving God. The wrath of God displayed in the Old Testament is no longer necessary after the passion of the Christ. The Old Testament sacrifices are no longer necessary because Jesus was the scapegoat for all our sins. The Old Testament law made way for the new covenant. No longer are sins of the father visited upon the son, or the sins of a nation the downfall of the individual. This is an expansion of the law – now, because God’s mercy benefits the individual, it’s the individual who must desire virtue and act consistently with it.

To impart this virtue on us, God again manifests Himself to us just as Jesus promised He would. For Christians, the Holy Spirit is God’s spirit working with our own spirits. It’s a shame to gloss over this phrase just because as theology it appears to sound like it’s beyond our understanding. We should roll these words around in our minds every day – in them is said all of what’s really necessary to realize about our relationship with God, whether we welcome that relationship or are running away from it.

The most precious thing you own, your spirit, is being visited with loving care at every moment by the almighty Creator of the universe. If that doesn’t appear at the top of your list of most valuable assets, I feel so sorry for you.  You are not experiencing the joy that God wants for you; the peace which is achieved merely by the asking.