The Light in the Woods

12/13/09 Reflections                 The job of the world is a simple one. It doesn’t matter what your vision of God is – as long as you appeal to goodness, you love your Creator. It’s not difficult to do, and from where we are we might be amazed to know how well the world already does this. The world isn’t as bad off as it seems – much is said about its negative aspects, but then little is reported about our spiritual state. You think global spirituality will never happen, but the world has already come a long way toward it. The great religions, and most of the obscure ones, are all based on goodness. From the time human beings were created, we have looked up to the Creator in awe and wonder, looking for goodness from Him and within ourselves.

You don’t even have to believe in the Creator in order to worship Him. Even atheists show honor to God each time they do something good for others. Goodness doesn’t have to spring from religion; goodness reflects on God no matter what we believe, because God is goodness Himself. The job is simple because it comes naturally to us. We are our own reward system. Of course there are objects pulling us the other way, but while they may provide happiness, they don’t provide safety and contentment. And there are always the spoilers, who seem to thrive on evil, yet who can say how they are inside?

But global goodness doesn’t take global government – that would be sure to polarize people because government is about power, and only one power can reign supreme, leaving lesser powers resentful. It takes individuals working on a local scale with what they know and the means to advertise it.

It’s absolutely amazing how our lives intertwine and intersect, though we be total strangers. Now with the availability of instant communication worldwide via the internet it’s infinitely more possible to have an effect on someone without even knowing it. Interestingly, the probability of this being a polarizing factor is just as likely as it being something that brings us together. But the point is – it’s getting harder and harder to deny that, living under the same sun, we may have a lot more in common than the ten o’clock news might imply. We are not as diverse as we think because in God’s eyes we are all the same — everything!

Our differences can’t cancel out our overriding essence – we are all spiritual beings lost in a world of matter. Any differences we have are superficial, because only the spirit matters in the great scheme of things. Our one job is to care for our spirits and encourage, whether actively or passively, others to care for theirs. If left alone we do this naturally, because all spirits are the same and we know others’ exactly as well as we know ours. The difference is only in the degree of the grace we allow to pervade our spirits. It’s the goodness of God that wishes to live in us, and the joy we receive from His presence (our spirits are lifted) makes us tend to want to cooperate in this plan.

But we are spirits in a material world, and there is happiness to be had. Material happiness is not evil, but what it does is prevent the spirit from being filled with God through the neglect that comes from our preoccupation with worldly things. The body is the tool that moves us through the world. The mind is the lever that makes the body go. The soul is the emotion that directs the mind toward which levers to pull. All this for not only survival, but for happiness.

None of this though is the essence of what we really are – that is the spirit. The spirit is the container for however much of God we are willing to invite. In the end it is what of us survives for eternity. If it is full of God we have joy; if it isn’t, we have longing for God. The filling of the spirit with God takes place now and continues until perfection is reached. Allow God in, and seeing as God seeks all spirits, encourage others to allow God in. Make God more important to you and the effects of this will spill over to the lives of others as well.

11/7/09 Reflections             Jesus was God manifesting Himself in the world in order to reach out to us in a familiar way so we can benefit by a divinely-apportioned measure of understanding. The Holy Spirit does this as well; it is God making Himself available to human experience in order that we may benefit from divine capabilities.

Why can’t we just leave it at that and absorb the grace in which this gift is given? No, people have to butt in and make up things so the explanation of God is sure to be done “the church way”, leaving any unchurched spirit open to judgment and condemnation.

I find the celebration of Jesus’ humanity especially disturbing the way it is done by churches. It’s as if we can never learn what the coming of Jesus was meant to tell us – that the God/man relationship is a thing perfected in heaven but we are welcome to it even if we can only experience it imperfectly in this life; that it’s not meant to be fully understood by us in order that we keep striving for it.

Instead we see Jesus treated as the Son of God with duties separate from God, as if he was not God. We humans have to give Him human attributes and human names in order for Him to be palatable to us. The Catholic faith is one kind of offender, in that it takes the essence of Jesus and then constructs all sorts of scenarios around Him so that He makes sense to us. The unknown circumstances of His humanity must be filled in and cataloged in such a way as they fit both scripture and human experience. What we end up with is not the awe and wonder of God reaching out to mankind, but a fully logical, and fully made up, explanation of God’s plans.

The same goes for those churches who think they need only to churn out Bible slaves in order to please God. Instead of filling in where scriptural information is lacking like the Catholic church does, these people take each sentence of scripture as the final, exact word, no matter how the sentence got there or how it fits in with the rest of the concept around it. The fact that there is so much infighting among them should be a clue that this method of understanding God isn’t the answer either. One would think, listening to them, that Jesus’ role was to perform a task for man so that people who don’t follow him can be condemned by God.

It all comes from trying to fit God’s plan into human understanding without consulting God. When you base your relationship with God on scripture only, you will probably be too intimidated to listen to God another way, and may never experience what God wants to say to you as an individual. Our churches frighten us with scripture in order that we do not become tempted to accept what God says to us personally. They fear losing control of us when God communicates with us directly. They tell us we open ourselves up to the devil when we pray for God’s guidance. They assure us that if it isn’t in scripture – and this is true in many religions – then it doesn’t exist, because God is incapable of having anything else to say. Really?

Many of us have tried to remain in our churches and still go to God for spiritual guidance. Many churches profess to encourage this, but we have found that when push comes to shove, we are not considered sophisticated enough to receive what God wants to give us. And so many of us have given up the pretense of church religion and gone the way our hearts have told us to go. 

I’m convinced that the Creator sees this as a step in the right direction and works with us in a special way in order to encourage this kind of spirituality worldwide. I believe this is His plan and it gives me a satisfying feeling of hope to know that it’s OK to step out of the feedlots our religions have fenced in for us. Nothing else is needed from man, because all is provided by God anyway. When God works in an individual, it doesn’t take many individuals to become a powerful, self-replicating force for good reaching across any and all human-made boundaries..

8/15/09 Inspirations            You can ask God for anything and He can give it. He can give you anything and He can give you everything. But He never gives you everything, because He’s very careful to give you what you need.

A parent may be able to serve his child all the ice cream the child could want, but He doesn’t do it, because that isn’t what’s best for the child. In the same way, not all our prayers are answered in the way we want them answered. We aren’t in a position to know what’s best for us, so the wisest thing we can do is leave the decisions up to God.

This is an important concept because within it lies all the secrets to a peaceful life, not only in our relationship with God but also in our dealings with others. Think of it this way – if everyone on Earth understood God’s responsibility in providing for us each as we require, what would be the need for the human power grab that is the cause of so much human suffering? If everyone conceded that God knows best, wouldn’t that logically be the end of human striving for position in favor of human striving to honor God?

We don’t kid ourselves that such a thing will come to pass, but if we understand that God thinks of us as individuals, our individual acceptance of God and His desires should be sufficient for us. We are justified if we do our part, and we bless God when we go further by encouraging others to do theirs. But never should we take over things that are better left to God, and never should we question the answers God gives to our prayers.

8/9/09 Inspirations       Mysticism is anything you directly experience of God. It is what God chooses to infuse into your spirit; it’s independent of anything God has inspired into other spirits.  We already know we don’t all experience everything the same way – we can easily see this when we consider our individuality and our individual differences.

Consider any creation other than man. One squirrel is most likely indistinguishable from another member of its species. A plant has a certain way of growing and that is how it tends to grow. Granite is granite; gold is gold. But each person you meet is different than any other in appearance, aspirations, habit, emotional effect, opinion, and a variety of other factors. In fact, the very range of factors that can be variable in humans go a long way towards showcasing our individuality.

We are special because unlike other of God’s creations we have a divine nature; we are God’s heirs and made in His likeness. From within this special attribute God works with each of us in a way He desires for us; we react in our own way.

Your mystic spirituality is anything you know of God when you take away whatever you know only through another’s experience of God. If you were to set aside scripture and all other inspired accounts, you would still have spirituality; God’s relationship with you would remain. Mysticism is the best part of spirituality as a whole, because it’s the part that you witness yourself. Through it you become attuned to God and receive His grace into your spirit. Nothing you learn of someone else’s relationship with God matches your needs like God’s own choice for you as His child.

When we learn to trust God’s choices we are free to work with them as God meant us to, which takes away the anxiety with which so much religion burdens us. We learn what’s right for us from God, instead of trying to build our relationship with God on something experienced by someone else.

6/26/09 Insights from Study       What are the attributes of God? They are what He reveals to you. He may reveal them to you by personal revelation or by enlightenment from those who have received personal revelation and passed along the experience. No matter how God reveals Himself to you, it is through the filter of individuality which God created when He created you from His own mind.

How close we are to the Creator just by means of our very creation; how blessed we are to be given spirits that can discern God and His attributes! It is through this filter of individuality that God’s will for us is disclosed. It is why two people can read scripture and come up with two degrees of worldview. It is why in spirituality there is no right or wrong belief once we have humbly and obediently asked for recognition of God’s presence and welcomed God’s control in our lives. If we would stop now and again to reflect on the enormity of the consequences of our ability to have a personal, loving relationship with God, we would feel His love greatly and recognize His presence constantly, all in the course of our daily lives.

We will not be deceived by God in this state – only by slavish devotion to someone else’s interpretation of God’s attributes cans we go astray. Through this well-intentioned restriction we deny ourselves the joy of fully and freely responding to God’s desire to deal with us personally. Our relationship with God becomes based on what someone other than God tells us is right. Why do we stand for this? We stand for it because it’s easier and we feel righteous for having fallen in line behind people who seem to know a lot about God. This is backwards! Better we should go to a quiet room and shut the door against the world, to welcome God through personal prayer and a desire to follow Him and Him only. Then we will be the ones who know a lot about God because we do not need anyone else in order to learn from him and to love Him.

This will be our God; the one who counts for us. God’s uniqueness to each of us is not because He is changeable, for He is what He is, but because we are changeable and confused by the diverging directions religions claim we cannot have. He is all things to all people – He adjusts the way His word comes to us because we are each unique in His creation. The more we build on this recognition the clearer God will be to us as we allow Him our very essence. Our differences don’t matter because our focus is on the only important thing – to know God as He wishes to be known and to love Him above all else.