The Light in the Woods

12/29/08 Insights from Study          Religious fundamentalists deride mysticism because it says that divine knowledge and grace can be instilled in other authority than just the Bible. Atheists scorn mysticism because anticipating divine infusion into the human spirit is the greatest leap of pure faith possible. The enemy opposites of fundamentalism and atheism can find common ground in the ridicule of mystics in that, with their heads in the clouds, mystics have nothing to offer the real world.

Mystics, who know that the real world doesn’t exist in our temporal realm at all, quietly go about doing what they do — not trying to please or convince their detractors from either side so much as to hope that the peace and joy evident in themselves draws others to want what they have. It is that very intuition of the will of divine reality, so different from what passes for reality here, that elevates mystics above the fray. Nothing we can do will convince the immovable. Fundamentalist exclusivity is just as much a denial of God’s will as atheist pig-headedness is a denial of God’s existence.

The irony is that the open-minded tendency of mysticism is the very thing that allows its faithful to “catch” the favor of divine reality when others are busy belittling the mystic’s experience of God. The double irony is that through their welcoming of communication with God, mystics are far more likely to trigger definitive proof of God than either biblical faith or science. So far only mystics, by definition, are privy to the direct experience of God that would offer inarguable proof to the scoffers on both sides of the God controversy. Yet to mystics there is no controversy and no need to offer a defense.

Mystics know they will not be the ones to enlighten others as they have been enlightened. That is a function of God’s master plan; we will know exactly what God wants us to know, and no more, for our own good. From Moses to St. Paul to Mohammed to Dawkins, no book in the hands of a seeker will enlighten him to the truth without a personal, specific, inspirational visit from the Creator. It is this miracle that introduces a person to reality, and this truth comes from God, not any human being no matter how deeply inspired or object-oriented.

Only God can prove God – He does it all the time in subtle, loving, beautiful ways. If you can see His effects, you’re too far advanced in your relationship with God to need any proof of Him. As for unbelievers, even religious unbelievers, God will provide proof when and how He wishes. Nobody receiving this gift will any longer ridicule the gifted – the great proof will be mystical; all who receive it will be mystics.

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.

10/19/08 Inspirations          We could more easily understand the mystic principle of the path to true perception if we imagine ourselves floating in space looking down on Earth. Here there is no day and night, no need for time, no weather – Earth just is, as everything in space exists passively when seen from a supernatural level.

If we were to move in closer, we would feel less alienated from what we felt in true life; more at peace in familiarity by moving away from true reality – the world as God sees it. We would experience unending light from the sun, warming us as we need to be warm and a welcome brilliance away from the darkness of the universe; yet too bright and too hot for us. The same universe as the universe as God sees it, but from a different perspective; a more human-oriented perspective.

And yet, even this perspective is not at all what we exist in if we move yet closer so that we now actually stand on Earth again. Now we are most comfortable – we are still in the same universe, but with a different perspective than that of both cold, dark space and the hot, bright experience within the solar system. Now we experience night and day, when we know full well that night and day are an illusion particular to our world – not experienced near the sun where light is not influenced by the movement of the Earth, and not experienced out in space where sunlight is inconsequential.

In the same way, much of what we gain through our worldly senses is an illusion as well, because we experience it only from a vantage point different from God’s. In other words, we’re comfortable in our own little world, but we’re far from the reality of the universe as seen by God. And the farther we get away from the world, the closer we get to the reality of supreme truth.

No wonder then that we do not understand the perspective of God, or even have the capacity to learn much of it. We are dependent on what grace and how much of it God gives us, and that is good, because God knows what we need and what we can absorb. When we leave it to Him, we may be moving out of our Earthly comfort zone, but we are relying on a greater good than we can rely on in this world, because it comes from the perspective of reality.

To a mystic, that is the only use of free will that is needed, for God can do the rest, and should. We dedicate to God the only power we really have. We do everything that God asks of us – He asks only for our love for Him and for our neighbor. Everything else that needs to be done for the good goal of His master plan flows out from this one act of an individual willing to trade his perspective in favor of God’s. If we love our neighbor, God may use us to feed and clothe him, but our abandonment of our will to God’s must be done first, and we must carry out what God desires; not conform to the action for action’s sake that seems appropriate only because of our Earthly, limited, not God-centered perspective.

9/24/08 Reflections             We were driving from town and the muscle spasms that plague me when I’ve been still too long set in. All my tricks for easing them I tried with no relief. Then something about the scenery became interesting, weird clouds began to show up, it started to spit rain and we began to make plans for how to conduct the boat trip to our island so that our groceries didn’t get wet. Then my husband asked me how my muscle pains were – that’s when I realized they were gone; as if they’d never been there at all.

God works this way with my aches and pains often, but He also works with emotional and spiritual difficulties as well.  Have you ever thought back on a difficult time and wondered: “I can’t believe I gave that so much anxiety when it turned out not to be such a big deal after all”? You think that the next time you will have learned your lesson and will save yourself the anxiety; sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t.  Either way, the realization sneaks up on you that someone has been working on the problem quietly in the background; making your pain of less or no account. That has to be either God or you yourself. Your mystic intuition humbles you; you know where your help comes from. It’s time to acknowledge God’s presence, and reap the hope and joy that this admission brings. Once again He’s used suffering to better you. Thanks be to God.

2/26/08 Inspirations       A few days ago I was lamenting over my involuntary lack of compassion; wondering what function it could possibly serve. Then without thinking about it, this morning came the answer: “It is to showcase the way things are on your human side, so that when you write about love and compassion you will not have to doubt that the word really comes from God.” I’m well aware of the importance of the mystic feeling of being guided in ways that go against my nature, but today I really had the two phenomena put together for me in a way that brings great understanding.

2/25/08 Insights from Study       As you get interested in mysticism and start to study it, you may come across areas that sound familiar to your own experience. At some point you wonder to yourself “Could I be a mystic?” Your first response might be “No, not me – I’m not worthy enough or holy enough.” Then you might figure “Besides, I haven’t heard voices or seen visions.” As you progress you will understand that God is not limited by any unworthiness or unholiness you might imagine in yourself. Then too, many, if not most, mystics never hear God’s voice or see a vision – at least not with the exterior senses. Mysticism is not about what you strive to acquire; it’s more about an attitude of acceptance. Acceptance can come to fruition no matter your circumstances, and the call to acceptance can appear in anyone at any time.

So at what point can a person feel confident that he or she actually is a mystic? It is when you closely examine yourself interiorly (that is, spiritually) and realize you have an overriding sense of being guided, especially if the guidance is taking place against your nature and beyond your intellect. This implies that there is a force in you that was never there before – while the effect is real the truth is that it was always there but not recognized. You become a mystic when God works in you to make you recognize His presence, His purpose, and His guidance, all at once. This is the evidence that you have been chosen to experience a higher plane of familiarity with divine things. It feels like a persistent force inside you beyond what you think of as “yourself”.  Because that’s what it is.