The Light in the Woods

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.

11/21/09 Insights from Study         When Mysticism is practiced as an adjunct of one’s Christian beliefs, there can be a flood of understanding released that is nothing short of miraculous. Many report reading the gospels with such new insight that they feel they have finally seen them for the first time for what they are. When Mysticism is practiced outside of Christian beliefs, there is often a logical pointing to the gospel for those who can and will welcome the experience.

There is nothing inherent in Mysticism that deviates from Christian principles – one must have the open mind of a mystic to realize this. Even if you are just beginning the mystic path you will recognize in God’s will the principles of Jesus Christ. To Christians this might seem elementary because Jesus is, after all, God. To those who know only that Jesus Christ was a “good person”, the element of goodness resonates in the spirit in perfect harmony. “Goodness” is the same principle for everybody despite the different degrees we assign it to spin things towards our own human agendas.

So it’s often a natural progression from “God is good and Jesus is good” to “God’s will is Christ’s will”. It’s supernatural how unwavering the desire for Jesus is when He is met through the New Testament. Christians believe this is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is God as well. The mystical filling of willing spirits with God’s Holy Spirit is not only mysticism’s main premise, but Christ’s ultimate purpose. The Holy Spirit as bridging between man and God is surely Mysticism’s focus as well as one of Christianity’s most important dogmas.

The beauty of Mysticism’s association with God is pure in concept for anyone. It weaves in and out of organized religions and draws non-believers into its purity of divine love infused, empowering, and passed along. The association of Mysticism with the teaching of Christ is inescapable, because they have the same source and the same purpose.

6/21/09 Insights from Prayer           How do I worship God? I worship Him when I praise Him; that is all He needs to channel His grace to me. How do I praise Him?

I praise Him when I count to ten before speaking out in anger. I praise Him when I defend someone who is the victim of gossip. He must smile when I put a dollar in a beggar’s cup, look longingly at His rainbow, swim in the ocean and think of His mightiness, buy a gift, lie in bed sick and pray for recovery, read a book to a child, plant grass seed. All these things are praise to God if I am willing to live in His presence by doing His will.

There’s something in the Bible that makes me cringe every time I read of it. In Revelation there are these 24 elders, and when something momentous happens the 24 elders immediately fall down before the throne and worship. Right or wrong, whatever it is in the makeup of western society, when we see people fall down in worship, we instantly think “brainwashed, cultists with no independent thoughts.” But because it’s in the Bible, our churches need to ritualize worship some way similar without making the general populace feel uncomfortable.

No wonder secularism is taking over the West. No matter how we spin it, worship of God is linked in our minds with human degradation. Maybe we’ve watched too many Hollywood renditions of third-world ritualism – worship by ritual begins to seem faintly backward. We don’t like to think of ourselves as inferior beings with sinful natures. To heighten our sense of atonement, churches emphasize our sinful nature, but they stop short of making us fall prostrate before a throne. We won’t do it – it seems phony. Before too long it may all seem phony – bowing our heads, folding our hands in prayer, being on our knees after the age of eight, carrying around a Bible, discussing our religious thoughts, uttering God’s name outside of profanity, attending church, going to confession.

I’m not making a judgment call — if you are comfortable doing these things you have found your path. I’m merely stating that spiritual persons that don’tfeel comfortable doing these things are no less spiritual for that. They in fact have an advantage because the privateness of their worship underscores the individual nature of a right-relationship with God; one that does not need to be showcased and therefore is open to genuineness. Behind the closed door of your spirit you are free to be as humble and obedient as you feel.

I wouldn’t argue with the objection that a true believer ought to be willing to go outside of their comfort zone if required. I’m just skeptical of how often God requires this and to what extent does it go on before it becomes ego-driven. I do not and never will, unless told to directly by God, believe that evangelizing others into Christianity is a requirement for entry into heaven, yet I would do it whenever inspired to by God’s Holy Spirit.

The point of it all is that once I am blessed to enter into a right-relationship with God, I am able to discern His will and would have His help in carrying it out.  I don’t need anything else, and God does not need anything else from me. Living the presence of God, I will do what He asks, and nothing He asks will feel degrading or uncomfortable no matter how it seems to others.  In His wisdom God may test me, change my mind, or lead me in ways I don’t understand or would rather not go. At least my praise will be genuine, my worship appropriate, and my works God-directed; all because instead of following a church I am following God’s design for me as an individual. To those who say: How can you be sure? I answer: If God is capable of leading me astray when I humbly ask for His guidance, then all believers are hopelessly deceived and we should all settle for secularism.

All faith is based on divine inspiration, and the moment this seems to stop is the moment we realize our worship and praise has not been sincere enough for God’s grace to attend to us. We need to go back to the basics – the point where it’s just God and me enjoying each other’s presence and straightening things out between us. This presence is what makes me praise God, and my praise is the worship He seeks.

4/14/09 Insights from Study             Mysticism does not fly in the face of scripture in the way some would have you believe. Anytime scripture mentions the work of the Holy Spirit in man, it’s talking about mysticism. The Holy Spirit is the power of God working through His creatures and His creations. The Holy Spirit indwelling in man is promised over and over, and how this would show up in God’s plan was predicted many times and evidenced throughout the Bible. The actual words used by the Holy Spirit to individuals visited by Him can not always be found in the Bible, but the Bible is clear in it’s teaching — that the Holy Spirit would be clear in His teaching.

Where fundamentalism and Christian Mysticism part company is that fundamentalism rests solely on the very words of the Bible with no new input acknowledged, while Mysticism allows inspirational work of the Holy Spirit in the individual as a valid way that God speaks His mind to us.

It doesn’t help that the true meaning of Mysticism has been clouded by people using the term incorrectly when speaking of the paranormal and secular self-help, and also by people, especially those in the media, who use the term “mysticism” when they mean “mysterious”.

Fundamentalists also do not like the doctrine that there are many paths to God. To them, the law is clear and all that’s needed is obedience. But “many paths” spoken of in Mysticism doesn’t mean we’re free pick and choose what we want to obey so much as that God has a role for us in His plan and He doesn’t work with us all in the same way.

Mysticism, which is a process, often gets blamed for beliefs that diverge from Biblical interpretations. But when you are on fire for the Holy Spirit it would be just as unBiblical to ignore His offerings as to deny God’s purpose in Him.  I think if the devotional aspect of mysticism were better understood there would be less objection to it. We just give our whole selves to God and are at peace because we hold Him in our hearts as we go about our daily tasks. We pray, but we contemplate as well. We read scripture, but we read as well the testimony of those who have received God’s enlightenment throughout history. We tend to be individualistic, but as long as we’re following virtue and love, we feel sure our guidance is holy.

In short, the devotion of mysticism is honest of itself. Like anything else, those who profess it are not perfect. But this can be said of any spiritual doctrine, dogma, or process.  We shouldn’t fault the faith for the sins of the faithful. And we shouldn’t miss out on the beautiful gifts of the Holy Spirit from fear of deception. Protection from deception is one of those gifts.

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.

11/15/08 Insights from Study                  Life on Earth is a bad dream — one day we will awaken to reality and find we are home. When humanity chose sin it fell into a fitful sleep; our death to this world wakes us up. Our beautiful reality with God is here and now; space and time only exist because of our imperfect perception of reality. But the consequences of having chosen to live on a lower place hides it from us – this is the cause of our trials and suffering.

This false environment has been our lot, but we don’t have to go along with it helplessly. We can choose goodness whether it gets us anywhere or not in the world – it’s in our spirits where our joy lies. Our spirits are what we have that’s connected to the wonderful reality of God. Sometimes a glimpse of that reality shines through, especially brilliant when we welcome God’s indwelling in our spirits. Then we understand the reality we are missing, which hurts because we can’t wake ourselves up. And yet, these joyful glimpses give us hope that once our time here is through we will awaken to the reality God always meant for us to experience.

What practical application does the “bad dream in the midst of reality” have? It pleads with us to slow down our furtive quest for worldly accomplishment. Time distorts how we see existence — we are asleep but all the universe around us is awake to God in His fullness. Our dream life has no importance — the best we can do for ourselves and for others is to make the state we are living in closer to reality by embracing God and letting Him shine His light of guidance through our darkness as much as He deems good for us.

11/13/08 Reflections                 It’s the poor in spirit that have needs that God loves for us to help Him fill. The poor in wealth are only temporarily comforted by the money we give. The poor in health cannot be given a vaccine for spiritual unrest. Victims of war will never feel safe until universal love is the norm. The poor in opportunity can be helped or harmed by free market practices. All of these human conditions can be accommodated by God, and they are being accommodated by God. We miss it because in our perception the world is terminally horrible or ostentatiously unjust. But we have no perception at all of how the world really is, and we would be shocked at the condition of the world if God left it alone.

But in one area God uses us most tellingly. It’s plain and simple spirituality that God deems best encouraged by one person toward another. When we successfully inspire the decision of another individual to go to God to have his spirit filled, God takes over the rest. There is no other love except God’s that is greater than the care one spirit has for another spirit. It is in the spiritual realm that we have God’s greatest desire for our participation.

God is in every spirit, but it takes an act of will to unleash the full power of His Holy Spirit in us. It takes putting aside the pursuit of worldly things to make us want to abandon those things to the place God meant for them. It takes the humiliation of our very egos to put God first and to obey His desires for us exclusively. But if we do this, everything else falls into place. Not all at once; not without setbacks, but progressively and surely with the goodness of God’s master plan behind it.

This is why I think mystic spirituality is the hope of the world – it’s a paradoxically universal prospect because it’s a relationship between one individual and His Creator God. No other human-nature based grouping enters the picture. When the love of God is nurtured in the individual, no difference of race, gender, wealth, politics, social status, nation, language education, religion, or anything else really matters at all. Putting God first changes our very focus from all these things that pull us apart, and transfers our dedication to the one thing that can and will bring us together.

We look at the world and we think universal love of neighbor could not be possible. It’s not, if we insist that human reason must be the tool used toward this end. In the absence of the protection of transcendent care, human reasoning reverts to survival and self-regard. Any goodness that lies there does so not because it’s innate, but because God puts it there in the first place. Neither is our badness innate, but put there by us. Only God has the power to effect the elevation of the human condition, because there are forces in play that humans can never reason through. God uses His power in ways that we don’t recognize because it’s often veiled in our human pride of our own part in accomplishment.

But if we instead drop this human pride and welcome God’s master plan as it is, we will have the inner peace and joy that comes from humbly and obediently accepting God’s way. When an individual has the spirit of inner peace and joy, that will be what sets the tone of his actions; as he interacts with others as a person immersed in God, that quality will be noticeably effective for others, and the primordial desire to dwell with God will strike a chord in them.

We see a reality distorted from the perfect way God sees things, but all life is eventually designed to return us to God’s reality. We never wholly feel right about our own version of Truth, because this life we live is not the perfect one God meant for us. We are aching to return to Eden; we are constantly seeking but usually searching in the wrong places. Human reason and worldly focus are the lower planes of existence, which distort reality. Self-abandonment and detachment from the inordinate idolization of the things of the world are the higher plane of life with God, which is reality undistorted. This reality is infinitely wonderful compared to life as we see it. Universal love really is possible, but it starts with the individual and works its way through many individuals. God moving through each of us transcends the problems our own solutions have caused. Opening the spirit to God brings about wonderful changes not possible through human work or human reasoning.

Now would seem to be the time to return to God and His ways, not to move away from Him in some self-righteous snit. God is not vindictive and judgmental the way humanists fear Him. He is good and love, and a more perfect mercy than we can ever imagine. We don’t need an atheist revolution to offset the sins of religious fervor; this is denying ourselves union with God because of the sins of men. We need individuals with the courage to seek a right-relationship with their Creator. If we all wanted this, we’d all get it. It doesn’t take too much effort; you can start by a simple prayer. What’s really important is that you listen to the help God wants to give us, and the world’s condition through us.

10/20/08 Inspirations                Because we don’t live on the same plane as our Creator, we cannot naturally share His perspective. This is where many people leave their faith on hold – what’s the point of God if He’s so high above us we have nothing to say to Him? But to others this is the very reason for faith – they know from somewhere inside themselves that it’s a loving God that not only knows us, He cares about us and wants a relationship with us.

The place within us from which we carry on a relationship with our Creator we call our spirit. It’s the place where God resides in us, where He places His grace so we may function, and function with a spark of divinity. Our spirit is the place within us that no one but God can touch; where we can be ourselves completely insulated against what the world thinks and demands. It’s where our relationship with God is developed and enjoyed. From here we speak to God; from here we listen to His words. It’s the place where the miracle occurs by which God gifts us with His own spirit – His perspective. It’s only a taste of His perspective, but it contains the hint of hope, peace and joy that we need to trust in the sharing of His full glory in the better world of eternity.

Science will never locate the human spirit anymore than it will ever define the spirit of God. Spirit is on a higher plane than anything we can discern through our natural senses. It’s our supernatural senses that recognize the Divine when the gift of His grace enters our spirit; it’s our supernatural senses that long for something we haven’t defined when that spark is lacking in us.

It’s from our spirits that we pray. Meditation and contemplation are forms of prayer that put us on alert to receive the communication from God that is the focal point of our spirituality. The deeper our desire to share in God’s presence within our spirits, the more God gifts us with the grace to know Him and uncover the divine perspective. In this way we know truth even though we can’t bodily detect it, and reality even though it’s hidden by our own weak position of perspective.

A mystic is a person who has been graced with the awareness of the workings of the spirit and the desire to use the spirit to experience God to the full extent that God intends. They aren’t better people, just specially graced by God. God wants everyone to experience Him through love given and love received.  The mystic state is God’s preferred state for us – we are all potential mystics. We will receive God’s grace if we ask for it. To ask for it we must withdraw from worldly things and enter the inner room of our spirit. Here in humility we share with God what comes into our minds, and in obedience listen to what God means to share with us. In this union of communication we can gain the God-given perspective that evolves our best self on the path to perfection leading to everlasting joy.

9/25/08 Inspirations               It’s been bothering me for a long time that since I can somehow see the nature of the God/man relationship so clearly, I don’t separate out Jesus, and so feel left out of Christianity. I very much believe in Christ and I understand well His makeup and His mission – it’s just that I don’t see Him as separate from God the way most Christians do, in practice if not in doctrine. It’s not that everyone else is wrong or that my way of thinking is better – it’s just that I think of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the work of God’s hands; as something God does for us to make Himself felt in a way we human beings can understand and relate to.

This disparity between my view and that of others was brought home to me quite clearly when I was taking my mom to her flight home; when she would have to deal with putting my dead brother’s affairs in order and reestablishing friendships that may or may not be strained by the specter of death in a community where intimations of mortality stalk the hallways and leap out of doorways without warning.

At the motel on the way she couldn’t sleep, and I stayed up with her trying to pass along to her the sure comfort of God that constantly washes over me. This comfort was not at all sure for her, and my attempts to fix that were inept. I’ve come to find out that I’m terrible at conveying the certitude of the presence of God, because it’s like trying to convince someone else of my own existence. It shouldn’t need explaining and cannot bear explaining – there are no words for it.

The next evening we had a little family reunion, and my mother mentioned her fears of returning to places that would remind her of my brother and the finality of his absence. My other brother’s ex-mother-in-law told my mother: “Just take Jesus with you when you go in.”

Those words were all it took — I’m convinced they are what got my mom through the next day and all the days since. She told me she “took Jesus with her” to those rough places. She doesn’t hide from the memories, but lets Jesus’ strength help her face what needs facing and therefore allow healing.

It was what I was trying to get across in the wee hours of that morning, but I was telling of using God, while what she needed was to use Jesus. Humanly, my mom separates the two unconsciously. It’s like God allowed this awful thing, but Jesus got her through because He Himself experienced horrible things and she could relate better to a sympathetic Jesus than an almighty God who was punishing her with this atrocity.

I can almost see God smiling knowingly at this human attitude. It illustrates His wisdom in presenting Himself as Jesus — God knows how badly we need this. He knows how unable we may feel in relating to Him, and just how to remedy that by offering Himself to us as Jesus.  It’s why we turn to Jesus when we need understanding and cling to the Holy Spirit when we seem unworthy of God Himself. It plays into our human weakness – it’s part of God’s wise plan.  It’s why I believe in Jesus and the Holy Spirit – because it seems exactly the way God would do things. Quietly, effectively; without the distraction of fanfare or human intellect.

Which brings it all back to my role. It seems a logical fit that God would choose to make some people as perfectly comfortable with the relationship of “friends with God” as some people are appalled by the concept. How dare I presume to be friendly with God? Well, I presume because that’s what He has put inside my heart for His purposes; what would be presumptuous would be to spit in His eye and say “No way!”

But mysticism isn’t for everybody, and it’s not something we can pass along to others if they are not ready. The best we can do is be true to ourselves, do not judge other paths or let it bother us to be judged by anyone other than God, and let God show us what He wants us to do; then do it. Our way will not be the same as the next person’s way, but the job will get done all the better for this. It’s all in the plan.

5/2/08 Reflections            Remaining at peace, once you’ve experienced inner joy and then have had it withdrawn from you, takes work on our part. It’s a continuation of our efforts at self-abandonment. It’s sometimes a hard task, especially since it illustrates that we don’t yet have union with God, but are only striving for it. Also, it goes against our nature – although by this point going against our nature should be expected and welcomed. And sometimes the task is not so hard; in this we know we’ve drawn close enough in our relationship with God that what we have to do has become “second nature”.

No matter the degree of dryness, it’s our job to carry out the right response – humble acceptance and obedient hope. I have had a bad setback, yet I know I’ll be OK, because the fact that I reacted with calm acceptance rather than flying into a rage as I once would have done shows me how far God has allowed me to progress. Knowing this reminds me who’s in charge. If God is in charge, there’s no such thing as failure as long as I keep myself away in the the background. This means giving up things which may have started out God-inspired but which I’ve allowed to become self-serving. If my ministry seems to be falling apart, it’s a sign that it truly was becoming my ministry and not God’s. Having once told God I’m serious about doing things His way only, I suspect that I’ve taken the path He’s given me and demanded something more from it than God’s glory.

It hurts to realize I’m not as “holy” as I wanted to be; that I’m not as good as I thought I was at discerning and carrying out God’s way for me. So this darkness is necessary and my correct response to it is necessary as well. Thanks to God’s help through His Holy Spirit, that correct response was found in me. Now I must work to draw everything inward so that the good that’s been placed in my spirit by God forces out the bad that I’ve allowed to creep in. My job is to concentrate inwardly and let God do the rest, as I should have been doing all along. After this purification I should be ready to once again be a tool for God’s plan instead of a hindrance, and the things I was sad about having to leave in the ditches will be replaced by the true fruits of the Holy Spirit along the path.