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.

2/3/10 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.

10/17/09 Insights from Study             Asking God for something is the simplest and purest form of worship there is. The more you do it, the more convinced you will be that this is what is most pleasing to God. Forget about the human hesitation that asking is self-centered. To ask something of God is a selfless act because you are being humble in your petition; admitting that you need God to provide. From this base a mountain of trust can arise.

Don’t think that in choosing what to pray for you are dictating to God which road He should take. These things never enter into the mind of God. It’s enough for Him that you have a need and you recognize that it is He who must fill it.

Goodness will come from prayers of petition, even if it’s nothing other than the warm feeling of doing your best in what God has asked of you. Prayer is never useless. The more you pray the more you understand of the One to Whom you are praying. It’s your need, and God’s willingness to provide for you, that brings you closest to union with the Divine. But don’t be surprised if human-minded miracles do occur anyway.

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.

8/1/09 Insights from Prayer        No, I can’t explain to you how mysticism brings me close to God, to share in His divinity even while I’m on Earth. I can’t do it because it’s between me and God, and meant for no one else.

If it were true, you sneer, I would be able to tell you of it. And if it were worth what I claim it’s worth, I would pass it along to others in celebration and joy. But what I experience, you cannot experience — as close as you come to it, it will never be the same. Why would I cheapen it by telling you of it, when you would not only fail to understand, you would see in my inability a falseness that would make you run from mysticism as fast as you could run?

No, all I can tell you is it happens, it’s wonderful, and it’s waiting for your open-mindedness to release its power for you.  If God came down on a cloud and told this to the world in words, you would believe. Yet God working through me in a mundane way with only the tools of humanity to work with, you do not believe. 

But God is God, and neither you nor I can be certain of His next move. There are things God shares with no mystic, just as no mystic can share his experience well with others. In this life, we work through faith. In some of us faith is encouraged by God more than in others. You don’t have to acknowledge that they have something you lack – you only need to go to God in solitude with enough humility to blot out present importance. The right frame of mind will afford you amazing gifts from God Himself.

This is the best I can tell you of mysticism. This is all you need to begin to experience it for yourself. Allow God to tell you Himself how much He hopes you do get close to Him.

7/18/09 Inspirations       Eternity is just around the corner. If something isn’t going to matter in eternity, why do you let it bother you now?  If God is in control and destines things this way and that, of what possible consequence are our fears and struggles and lamentations and guilt and anxiety and labor?

It’s up to you to lighten your load – God never asked of you all you think you must accomplish. In fact, it’s in your arrogance that you strive away with great showmanship in things you are only guessing God wants you to do.

The little there is that God leaves up to you can be accomplished in seconds, in private. If you don’t know what God asks of you, find out by asking Him. Then, for those who are humble, obedient and sincere, whatever it is you think you were meant to do will be accomplished. But it won’t be you doing it; rather, it will be God working through you. The advantage is, this way you have peace knowing that the task is being accomplished well and rightly.

Don’t offend God by being a man-made, self-made martyr.

7/17/09 Insight from Prayer        Love of God makes everything else tolerable. That is why mystics naturally concentrate on the presence of God in their lives; seeking relevancy that way instead of by way of the things of the world. The things of the world are destined only to disappoint, because we were made by God for better than this.

Life on Earth may be the hell God was forced to visit upon us, but His promise of our return to Him and all He created us for is what keeps us holding on. Meanwhile, we can do the works He has assigned to us without conferring on them the importance we wish they had. This humility makes us expect less, and a lower expectation fits in nicely with the lower importance of the world.

We are only waiting for better. We can improve our lives and we can improve the lives of others. But when all is said and done, these lives are fleeting. In the kingdom to come, it will be love of God that is the only consideration, and we can improve this temporary world most by cultivating the love of God here and now.

If God is supreme in our lives, all else is merely incidental and the world’s ability to bring negativity into life is diminished. The best work we can do is to shout this from the rooftops, for this is the freedom God wants every creation of His to experience.

7/13/09 Insights from Study       When we see life clearly enough to understand our own futility in the world, we paradoxically understand that the most we can ask for is to use ourselves in the way God desires. We are therefore both aware of our smallness and encouraged that this awareness itself makes up open to great abilities.

It’s an awesome privilege to be made small in the world because the smaller we are, the more room for God we have in our spirits. God works best in us when we are open to improvement and appreciative of help. When we use our independence to invite God’s guidance, we are putting to use powers much greater than our own; for a purpose blessed by the Creator.

This doesn’t require the things we’ve learned are effective; it takes a miracle. But miracles are given to us daily, if only we can recognize them. And miracles are far more effective than what we can do on our own.

To invite miracles into our lives we need to understand what pleases the Miracle Worker. It isn’t how we flex our muscles or develop our intellects – these things are good for human interaction but aren’t necessary to prepare ourselves to welcome the working of God in our spirits. What’s needed is the ability to tune out human nature and the demands of the world long enough to see our true nature. Only when we see how small and helpless we are will we welcome God’s interaction. Only when we welcome God’s interaction will we appreciate the peace humility brings.

God doesn’t expose us to trials and suffering because He’s mean and wants to cut us down to size. He wants us to learn from them that because we are vulnerable we can gather up all our troubles and offer them to God as His responsibility. It’s God’s love for us that energizes this cycle of need and provision. It’s God’s love that makes us long for the miracles that bring us closer to Him.

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.

4/22/09 Insights from Prayer             I know You care little about my small routines, and that You don’t require any kind of ritual for me in order to get Your attention. Still, I wish I would remember to call on Your help when I begin to study, because it affirms that I’m not nearly as confident in my ways as I am faithful in Yours. That is so much a part of my problem — the part of me that I’m holding back from You because of my independence, even though I know better. I know Your ways are more enlightened than mine. I know it’s through Your gift that I learn and experience. I know that it’s Your power, not mine, that moves the plan to its end. I know so much more than I used to, and if what I see so blurred brings joy such as this, I can’t even imagine the ecstasy that’s mine when I will see You clearly. But through all the things I’m privileged to know, my weakness is in what I forget – that knowledge is a good gift, but it’s wisdom that reminds me to open the gift so its grace isn’t wasted. Lord, I’m asking that You help me keep my relationship with You in the forefront of everything I do; to live with You in mind constantly. Don’t let me forget how all the good things I represent are created.