The Light in the Woods

12/24/09 Inspirations              When I was a child I believed in hell. You went there when you died unbaptized or in mortal sin; there was no hope – there you stayed for eternity. If you were baptized but in lesser-than-mortal sin when you died, you went to purgatory. This was a place of suffering where you paid for your sins, but also a place of hope because when you were purified you went to heaven. Your friends and family and even total strangers could help you get out of there and into heaven by praying a certain way, and if during life you did this and that you could build up indulgences that would be redeemed against your time in purgatory – a sort of time off for good behavior. Limbo was a kind of purgatory where unbaptized babies who knew nothing of sin were stored. Heaven was for the baptized who hadn’t committed any sins since the last time they ate a wafer blessed by a priest.

Later on, when I began to analyze my beliefs, little of this seemed plausible so in my feeling of having been duped, I went as far as I could the other way. I stopped believing in most everything. I still believed in God, but I had no relationship with Him because He was tyrannical and distant and the less I had to do with Him the safer I was. I didn’t have much trouble being good – for the most part I was a natural goody two-shoes who wanted to be left alone. I treated my neighbor as I wanted to be treated myself — I left him alone.

Then a little over five years ago God took me in hand; He showed me wondrous things and told me about Himself. I found out He was a loving God who was familiar with every aspect of me, because He lived in me and all around me. I found out how to recognize Him in His works. I learned that heaven is all there is and we’ve all been there all along – our perception has been so clouded we don’t experience things as the really are. There isn’t one thing I can do to gain or lose heaven – it is what it is and will not change. It is very, very good because it is what God made, and God wants only good for us.

Life on Earth is an exile – not from heaven but from our proper experience of heaven. For God’s good reasons we can only experience unreality here. It’s a dream, sometimes better described as a nightmare of our own making. We are causing our own thoughts to be fogged up. Somehow through our own free will we made our own delusion, and only direct knowledge and grace from God can be trusted. I haven’t been shown how this exile happened, except that it must have originated from God’s goodness. Life on Earth is in God’s master plan and not to be feared because God’s master plan only leads to reality, and God’s reality is wonderful.

So God’s spirit infused in me not only told me things outright, but showed me how to interpret other things with a view geared towards His will and the reality He made for us to live in. For instance – do my inspired thoughts make the Bible a pack of lies? No, God inspired others long ago just as He inspires us today. There is much to be gleaned of the inspirations found in the Bible, but it has to be ferreted out by means of my own personal inspiration from God in order to find in it what is meant to be found. We can look at our own times to see how truth gets battered beyond recognition – the government, the media, the education and justice systems are always rewriting history to fit their own agendas and spinning statistics to fit their own theories. The Bible is a holy resource that has been handled by human beings to conform to human needs, just as all inspirational literature is. It is not purely God’s original word – for that one has to look to one’s own spirit, where God’s truth is written. And why wouldn’t it be this way? God loves us and wants to deal with us directly.

It was in the midst of scripture-abuse that God came down as Jesus. He set the record straight on what we were doing that was not conformable to God’s wishes. He demonstrated the joy of having a right-relationship with God by abandoning our will in favor of matching His. Jesus taught us how to live in prayer; to be prayer itself in our very words and deeds. He showed that the harshness of humanity seems very real to us the way we see it, but we will be resurrected from this bad dream and return our perception to the reality of heaven. He made an example for us by His very life – affirming that God’s spirit is here with us; that His inspiration is the only truth we have, and that only God’s knowledge and grace can be relied upon. If we need to know more, we can always come to God to ask.

Jesus proved that though we tend to focus on the wrong thing in this foreign environment, the right thing is always available to everyone and is as close as our own spirits, which God fills with Himself out of love for us. God wants us to break through the heavy curtain that separates us from Him and that keeps us from realizing the pure joy of our existence. His light does come through, encouraging us to take advantage of the kind of relationship Jesus identified for us, but we need to put forth the effort by letting God prepare our spirits.

We can know a bit of our joy which is hidden, and bask right here and now in the kind of glory that is ours in full after our own resurrection into reality. We were made for this and all God asks is to be asked to reveal it. Even with a right-relationship with God and direct communication with His word, we are still only works in progress and far from an all-encompassing insight into truth while we are in this world. But if we are sincere, obedient, and humble we can be Christ-like. When you think of the meaning of Christmas, you understand how it must satisfy God greatly when we are willing to be Christlike despite the nature of the world around us.

12/19/09 Inspirations               When it comes to the things of God, how much can we human beings really know? What portion of what our ancestors said is really true? Given what we know of the history of mankind, and through our own experiences of human nature, what are we to believe?

As in everything pertaining to the mystical life, the first thing necessary for reflection is to put God first, ahead of worldly considerations and human input, because through this door lies only what God desires for us to hear. That means mystics, because they come from many beliefs, must as always pare down dogma and build up intuition. As we honor the Creator, we honor His methods, which are shaped to the individual and are varied beyond our comprehension. Our trust is in God’s word to us and through others with God’s inspiration in our spirits.

Remembering that Devotional Mysticism is an attitude of worship and not a religion itself, we must also remember that it is a practice open to all faiths, all denominations, and all individuals – excluding no one, as does God. Many mystics are Christians, and many non-Christian mystics believe in Jesus. Because of the varied interpretations God gives us, a discussion of Jesus and mysticism, to be relevant to all mystics, starts out simplified in the masses and will be built upon by the individual from within his own belief system.

A mystic interpretation may be that in Jesus God was saying “I will meet you where you live. I will come to you; to be among you and within you. In doing this, I will show you the things that I admire so you can follow my wishes through your free will. I will show you that if all in this life is not pleasant, you can look with joy to your own resurrection. From My manifestation on your level – separated as you are from Me by deception – you will find I’m a loving God, a merciful God; dedicated to you even when you turn your back on Me. I teach you compassion for others; I show you your own weaknesses so you too can be merciful to My other children. I bring you the promise that I will keep coming to you asking for your love — being pleased anytime you show it and merciful anytime you don’t. In other words, I have the capacity to communicate with you, and I do it in many different ways – ways that conform to what you can relate to. You call these manifestations of Myself by the names that mean something to you – Son of God, nature, Jesus, miracle, inspiration, Holy Spirit, co-incidence – because if my glory is beyond you I can have no real meaning for you. I am first your Creator, and I care for you in many ways while you’re away from me. Nothing pleases me more than that you would wait patiently for me with total confidence, see what I am to you, dedicate yourself to my will, and most of all love me with all you have.”

The important thing is that God can speak to us as Jesus and we will hear a powerful message. Christmas is a perfect time to reflect on this message in awesome wonder that God can and does put all His love into mankind despite what mankind can do.

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.

11/22/09 Insights from Study              The way the world destroyed Jesus is the way it tries to destroy those who avail themselves of Jesus’ blessings. There are those who think of this life as all there is and because of that they live only for worldly desires. These people despise the thought of the real life to come, because they assume preparing for it would mean giving up their Earthly ways.

When they encounter someone who ascribes to a higher plane of spirituality there is resentment and a need to test this focus. There are many forms of persecution, and the more secular the society, the more extreme the justification for the persecution.

Buy my spirituality cannot be realized by anyone other than me and God. It cannot be measured in worldly increments and cannot be tested against worldly standards. You can kill me to prove that God will not save me, but God might not have worldly purposes in mind when He saves. The realm of reality to which I go is not a place where you can follow me, and so you’ll never know the results of your test.

It was not the death of Jesus that enlightens us to God’s design so much as His resurrection. If you do not see beyond this world, you cannot reasonably test someone who does; you will not recognize the promise of the resurrection unless you yourself experience it. Your persecution of the spiritually-minded will be counter-productive because it only validates the righteousness of those you persecute.

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.

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..

9/4/09 Inspirations            I honor Jesus as the perfect mystic – aware of divinity’s presence in us; unreservedly willing to allow this perfect love to guide all that’s tried. In showing how the practice of the presence of God is done, Jesus is God’s model of a life lived in divine union; how God can be in us and we can be in God.

This can go a long way in addressing my stubborn doubts about intercessory prayer, which always vaguely seems to me like asking God to do a circus act for the folks. “Tell me what you need and I’ll have God wave His magic wand – that’s how righteous and powerful I am.”

I can fight this feeling if I concentrate on what intercessory prayer is really designed to do – make me feel like I am contributing to the oneness of all of us as God wishes for me to do. I can always use more compassion, and asking for God’s help on behalf of another person is an honorable way to cultivate it. The trick is to see things as God’s work, not mine. If I wind up more aware of the link each of us has to the other, that would be a good result of prayer no matter what takes place in the life of the one I’m praying for.

Jesus handled this attribute of compassion effortlessly, because he had the virtue of humility to make it all blend in together. He obeyed the intuition inside Him, because He was a manifestation of God’s love, as are we all. His whole life was an intercessory prayer of the first order, and His reflections taught generations that God speaks to us through insight. Jesus was the perfect mystic.

8/30/09 Inspirations           It’s not about worshiping Jesus – it’s about worshiping God as Jesus did, for God has manifested Himself in Jesus so that we may know of our Creator. Day after day, in small things and large, Jesus lived with God as His focus – showing us the way to peace of mind for ourselves and all peoples. I often wonder what would be Jesus’ response to the way we conduct religious services these days. We worry more over the state of the church parking lot than the state of our souls.

I love my time alone with God. That’s the time when it doesn’t matter what any human, especially myself, brings to the altar. The real altar is my spirit; my sacrifice must be the only thing I really own outright – God’s gift of my free will. When I’ve given that, I’ve given everything; as long as I’m offering that to God, no other sacrifice is necessary. In fact, any other sacrifice would be a danger of cheapening my original gift to God.

I can worship God through prayer, reflection, and good acts, but these things only make the abandonment of my free will useful to my life on Earth. It’s the abandonment itself that is what God wants from me, and even this I couldn’t have initiated without God’s help.

This is how Jesus worshiped. He worshiped perfectly, because as God’s manifestation His purpose was to make our own perfect worship possible. So few of us have taken Him up on it; our human need to control things is overwhelming.

God doesn’t help us because we go to church or read the Bible or meditate or give to charity. And He doesn’t withhold his help because we don’t go to church or read the Bible or meditate or give to charity. God’s help is independent of reward or punishment for what we are or what we do. All we can really offer is our control over our spirit. This is hard for us, but it begins our sanctification – anything more serves to make it real for us, as Jesus makes God real for us.

If you need all the bells and whistles of religion, you might consider that what God has done for you is, in your opinion, not enough. No amount of outward worship will fix this delusion.  Only doing what God asks of you will please Him – shut everything else out and you will hear His call. Answer His call and your worship will be perfect.

8/5/09 Inspirations           If it were possible to designate the term “Christian” with a small “c”, it would go a long way towards clearing up an anti-Christian bias that persists because Christians are always talking about how the Christian way is the right way, and all else is unnatural.

To Christians the meaning of this is clear but to non-Christians it’s confusing; it’s degrading to be told one’s way is wrong. And even for a Christian there’s confusion – if you’re told all your life that the Christian way is the right way, you would naturally think that no religion other than Christianity can produce good people.  We know there are good people everywhere – only the most fundamentalist Christian would deny their salvation on the grounds that they are simply not baptized Christians, but they do this consistently through a misrepresentation of the Bible.

Innate goodness in the heart of any human being is christian, because there’s no difference between goodness and what Christ taught us. In other words, it is christian to be good, no matter what your religion or lack of it. People of all beliefs can welcome being called christian if they take that to mean they live life loving their neighbor as themselves. Even an atheist can be christian in this manner.

The entire ministry of Christ is meant to exemplify a right-relationship with God – how it looks and why it’s the way to inner peace and contentment. This ministry is a gift from God showing us the way to happiness; others’ happiness as well as our own. Christ’s death and resurrection is meant to show that we are destined to recover from life on Earth and claim the relationship with God that is lost as long as we’re here.

But as long as we are here, there’s a way to feel close to God in the here and now by pleasing Him with our free wills, and interacting with others in a beneficial way. This way is to be Christlike – not necessarily Christian, but humbly and obediently christian. It’s the way, not the religion, that matters to God.

6/26/09 Insights from Study                So often we worship Jesus as man instead of God. Son of God? In the kingdom of reality there are no fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, spouses, cousins, aunts or uncles. All are of one mind and that is the mind of God. Jesus is God – plain and simple. God comes to us in any form He chooses; as a hummingbird like the one this morning looking through my screen, or as Jesus 2000 years ago. It is God, coming to interact with us out of love, out of His care for us, out of His desire to usher us peacefully into His kingdom, purified by death to this world. The father/son thing – it’s an analogy anyone who has a relationship with God does not really understand because the fact that Jesus is God is so ingrained in them. It’s a prop for people still so obsessed with life in this world that they must gauge everything by human standards.

Religion is ruined for me because of its labels – once we label something we claim to know it to the point where we can judge it. Who cares about human constructs, human likes and dislikes, human judgments and condemnations, human laws and legislatures, human wants and needs, human sins and weaknesses and failings and misunderstandings? God cares for none of this so much as for even the most sinful of us. He could eliminate any of this or any of us all in the wink of an eye. God cares for each of us alone as a beloved creation – beyond that we are not labeled, because beyond that there is nothing of importance.

If only we treated God as faithfully – to know what He’s saying to us as much as we can and loyally assuming the rest as something God does to our benefit. Then labels wouldn’t be needed to prop up our love for God because God’s love will come through loud and clear. It’s not a formula devised by humans to prove you are saved — it’s a connection desired by God and put into force in you by His wishes. It’s this relationship you must claim in order to experience the fullest joy you can obtain, and when you make it all there is in your life, you are as complete as you can be.