The Light in the Woods

2/27/10 Spiritual Presentations           I love You my God, for making it clear that You are here, You know me well, and You love me enough to let me know something about it. I must have prayed sincerely and properly for the release of my pain, because it happened immediately and decisively. Much more than my healing, I value how You have given me Your word, letting me know that it’s right to believe, to ask, and to offer.

I worship You and I honor those mystics who have come before me. They have told of their experiences as well as they could, and You have guided me to study their lesson. All this love is not lost on me. Thank You for Your love – I want, more than anyone but You can know, to have the chance to pour out my love to You in return. I promise to take every opportunity to do this, and still, as always, I ask for Your help in every aspect of my life to be whatever pleases You.

You created me as Your child. Everything You do is for my good, even pain. I don’t need to know nor am I likely to find out what purpose you have for my pain. Sometimes I feel like it’s there so that I can know great relief when the pain passes. Sometimes pain reminds me of all the things in my life that can be painful but aren’t, because of Your mercy. Sometimes my pain makes me compassionate towards the pain others are going through. Even when the agony goes on despite my prayers, I at least have a higher comfort – that of knowing I am accepting of Your plan without complaint; proof that I hold You in higher esteem than I hold myself.

2/19/10 Spiritual Presentations        

For quite a while now I haven’t believed heaven to consist of anything other than pure joy. To me this means that nothing of our earthly lives is needed to complete our heavenly lives – friends, relatives, pets, or places that we loved on Earth. Even if you discount that the presence of acquaintances must cause disruption as well as joy, just as they did on Earth, it still seems that they would not be necessary and therefore would be redundant.

It’s my intuition that only God’s presence is necessary for complete joy. But there is something endearing about the possibility of being greeted by loved ones as we approach heaven. After all, the fear of death makes us cling to the thought that we will be helped into the transition by people we know and trust. Yet it doesn’t ring true to me, as the concept of “God is All” is so ingrained in my mysticism, and wishing for something else in heaven seems sacrilegious.

I guess there would be no harm, though, in speculating about these wondrous things, much in the way we review what we would do with a million dollars if we won the lottery. I think it’s human nature, since we don’t know for sure about something that’s inevitable, to make up what we would like to be true just as an exercise.

Tonight as we were ice fishing we were discussing how the people in the stories we tell all seem to have passed on. I mentioned that I’m old enough that I think I know more deceased people than living ones. This got me to thinking that the moment of death must not be too hard to handle, since so many have done it. From there I began to reflect on how people might envision their entry into heaven.

There standing on the huge expanse of lake, the enormity of God’s work came to mind. As wondrous as it is here, how awesome it must be in heaven, where we get the full effect of God. I began to play with thoughts of what I’d like to witness as I pass over, even though it’s my theology that the presence of God will comprise my ecstasy and that alone will be enough for me. I went from being able to eat whatever I want without fullness or guilt to having unlimited opportunity to spend my own time however I want. I thought of the things on Earth I didn’t like and gave some thought to how it would feel to not have to worry about them.  I envisioned a lack of responsibility; the freedom to have my head in the clouds instead of on worldly considerations.

At the end of this exercise I looked out onto the lake and was struck by something I don’t remember ever having noticed before. I never realized how beautiful the smell of warm snow is when the sun starts to go down and the cold starts to bring all the senses into sharpness. It’s like a prayer, a gift, and a comfort from God that all is well because He wills it to be. When we see how God presents beautiful things like the smell of snow to us here on Earth, we can be comforted that He really does want only good for us and is capable of providing it in His mercy – now and on into eternity.

1/31/10 Reflections          I’ve been thinking a lot about the children’s ward lately — about how it tested my faith in God’s mercy plan, and how it returned me to my faith tenfold over the years through the deep peace of supernatural insight.

While visiting my brother, who was bedridden with multiple sclerosis and in a nursing home, it was necessary for my other brother and I to go to the office on some business. The home was doing some renovations, which made us have to detour through the children’s ward to get to the office. As we were admitted we were told walk straight through, not to interact, and to make as little as noise as possible so as to not disturb the children.

What I saw in the children’s ward is almost beyond description. There were small misshapen bodies in all sorts of contortions; blank expressions on faces that didn’t look like humanity so much as things closeted away until no longer needing care. Their beds or wheelchairs lined both sides of the hallway — as we walked the gauntlet of unspeakable aberrations, in the midst of what the coldest-hearted human would call insufferable, there wasn’t any noise; just the silence of tolerated existence.

When we finally got through the opposite doorway, I told my brother this was a real test of my faith, which depends on the love of God for all His creation. It did one thing, though – it caused me to keep coming back to reflect on what little I know of God’s reasoning, and how I can only believe that what He does He does for our good. Then slowly the lesson of the children’s ward was taught to me within my spirit, and has given me a deeper, more peaceful intuition of the working of God’s love than I think I could have ever had without the experience.

I see now that we cannot care for each other properly. No matter how dire the circumstances and how tirelessly we work for our fellow human beings, we cannot give them what they truly need. Only God can do that. The most dedicated nurse on the children’s ward can only comfort the bodies of the children, and help them remain emotionally neutral.

Their bodies may be decimated, but who knows what they’re seeing inside? Only God can offer that comfort, and somehow I’ve come away with complete assurance that He does. Behind those distorted shells, could the children be experiencing the golden glowing joy of God’s perfect love as do those who have already passed on into His kingdom? If real meaning only exists in another world where God is the only god and our spirits gather Him fully and ecstatically, could those that are physically dependent and mentally unencumbered with worldly priorities be blessed with heavenly bliss here on Earth and unable to tell of it?

In fact, I’ve come into the knowledge that those children are experiencing the beauty of God the way God meant humans to experience Him — how we all would if our minds and bodies were disabled and given over solely to God’s care. In this condition of having nothing else, we enjoy the one thing we do have, unconditionally and without fail — the love of God.

Mystics are able to see the logic of their detachment from the world and negations of self-interest. To them the loss of selfhood is not debilitation so much as essential to experiencing something much better and closer to God’s desires. And those who study the Bible know well the scriptural plea for decreasing so they may increase, giving up all they have and following, taking no scrip for the journey, becoming like little children, the last being first, choosing the good part, letting them deny themselves, taking up the cross, losing their life for God’s sake, having their treasure in heaven, being poor in spirit, crying in the wilderness, the stone the builders rejected, casting in all they had, taking the lowest seat at the feast, seeking the kingdom of God, and entering at the narrow gate.

God should like us to be what we were at creation, before free-will and the sin and suffering that comes from it. For truth, that’s the state He has planned for us to return to in glory. Now, in the world, the independence we asked for has become a thing of strife. The only way to alleviate it is to allow ourselves to become totally dependent on God again so we may look upon His kingdom with joy and hope.

In the children’s ward this has been done for them and they live in the perfect presence of God without effort. Only those who give too much credence to the world and how we perceive it will miss completely what I missed momentarily – that the only thing that matters is the love of God, and whatever state we are in that we can perceive this love the most is the best state to be in. In the measure that we can’t assimilate this, we suffer from our lack of perception. That, then, is true and needless suffering.

I’m not suggesting that those who take care of the residents of the children’s ward don’t provide a heroic service – the need for care of these children’s bodies and emotions is enormous, and I hope for the caregivers’ sake that part of their compensation is the feeling of being blessed to be near these special temples of God’s love. But I am confident that God makes up for suffering by opening up the spirit to supernatural consolation. And this, being the better part, is what God encourages for all of us by our offering of our very selves to Him — a disabling of the ego so as to make His love our spiritual sustenance.

Mystic vision is not apparitions caught by our human senses. Mystic vision is the ability to see things as God sees them; a gift given because we want it badly and allow it freely. Through mystic vision we are able to “know properly” — not the things of this world but the reality of this world as seen from a higher plane. This is a comfort not only to the residents of the children’s ward, but to anyone who can learn exactly what it is they are experiencing. What we can know of God comes down to one necessary specific – that when we seek God we see Him, because that’s what we were made for. And when we see Him we know at once that no matter who we are, or how we look, or what we have or don’t have, without His love we would be nothing and with His love we are everything.

12/20/09 Spiritual Presentations             

Last night I shut off the light and settled down under the covers to pray. It was zero degrees, making the ice boom like cannons – a nice sound, like thunder without the fear of lightning. The stars were many and beautiful; as always they remind me of the immensity of the universe, and that always makes me wonder about God’s works.

I was thinking about the fall of man, away from perfection and exiled here, where the ugliness of life stands side by side with the beauty of nature. The only way God, who doesn’t create evil, would allow us to exist this far away from Him is if the agony of this life is somehow a good thing. To me, this life is an illusion anyway; maybe the evil inherent in it is even more than an illusion. Maybe the illusion that is our suffering here exists to bring us greater joy. Did you ever look back on a bad time in your life with that curious relief that comes from realizing that life is better because the bad time is over? Did you ever have pain that was almost worth it because of the relief it brought you when it went away? Maybe that is the reason for our worldly existence – to make the transition back to reality even more wonderful than if we had never left. Maybe God gets something from this on our behalf. Whatever insight I was poised to get, I never got any further than this in this reflection.

I was about two minutes into my thoughts when I heard a soft, swishing sound come out of nowhere. I sat up in bed and listened but there was nothing but the sound I couldn’t identify. So I got out of bed and went over to where the sound seemed to be coming. That’s when I realized that during my meditation, for no reason at all, my old radio had started to play even though it was turned off.

It hadn’t been tuned to a valid station – what I heard during my meditation was white noise coming from a dead radio. Happening when it did was like God acknowledging that I was finally understanding something that He wanted me to understand. I fiddled with the power switch to see if there was a short in it, but the switch was working perfectly. Once I started messing with the dials, the radio no longer played when the switch was off, but that’s without a doubt the way it was when I heard it. It’s been over nineteen hours and the radio hasn’t repeated it’s unasked-for performance, and the switch is still working properly.  I can’t duplicate the miracle.

I still need more inspiration on the initial thought that set off the radio. I will put myself in front of God and I’ll reflect on this with patience, and eventually I will have more insight on it if that’s God’s will. But for now the important thing is to stress that God does give us signs to encourage us to come to Him for enlightenment. Some signs are less subtle than others, but we should be amazed at everything anyway. Our first thought when given a sign should be to go before God and thank Him for His wisdom instilled in us, and to pray that we will use this wisdom wisely.

“Dear Lord, I am so small, but it’s OK, because I belong to a great God who can do anything to show His love for me.”

All mysticism does is bring you before God – God will inspire you as to what to believe, and it will be right because it’s God’s work. While we do not ask for signs, it’s a valuable gift to be able to receive them.

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.

12/10/09 Inspirations              Given infinite time and resources, can science ever know everything? In even one small area, if we knew all there was to know, what we’d want to do with such knowledge would far surpass the ability of our hands to work or the Earth to supply the raw materials to take us from knowledge to usefulness. But beyond that – would we be comfortable, or even survive, without the mystery that keeps us striving and thriving?

I hope that we accept with gratitude the knowledge that is doled out to us. I hope we never despair to think that we’re not meant to know everything. Most of all in this matter, I hope we welcome that there will always be a mystery to life, a quality that cannot be supported by facts.

The cloud of unknowing is a gift; not a curse. It gives us something to aim for and something to occupy our minds. It assures us that no matter what we achieve, we can always become even more excellent. It keeps hope alive, and yet it keeps us humble to know we cannot have this knowledge without asking for it. It gives us joy whenever the fog of unknowing lifts a bit and lets in the tiniest ray of light.

There will come a time when we are gone from this Earth and no longer need knowledge in order to experience satisfaction. Until then, we need the mystery that keeps us centered while we wait for the promise. In keeping with the tenets of the subject of science, I haven’t mentioned God in this piece so far, but there isn’t anyone reading it who doesn’t know in their hearts that God is what this article, as well as the mystery of life, is about.

With the stupendous achievements we’ve experienced in science and technology, what would normally seem miraculous becomes commonplace. Supernatural miracles do not behave this way – they are usually not meant to prove a point so much as to enlighten our lives with joy. They appear when we are ready and receptive; that’s why they are not recognized by everyone or accepted by everyone in the same degree. But the best part is that they never become commonplace, because God has at His disposal infinite ways of communicating His miracles. We are blessed if we understand this, because the mystery keeps us looking. The next week, the next day, the next hour or the next minute may display something wonderful if we are watching.  Though we strive for knowledge, we thrive on mystery.

12/6/09 Inspirations                Belief or disbelief in God is probably the most analyzed issue in the world. It is of interest to everyone, it crosses national boundaries, it transcends the political, it concerns many parts of our lives, and it’s an emotional issue to anyone who has it brought out into the open. We all have an opinion about God, even if our belief system beyond that might be confusing and incompletely analyzed.

Even among those who believe in God, there is diversity of opinion, or maybe it’s better to cite a diversity of emotion. There are different gods, different paths to the same God, differently perceived attributes of God, different scriptures, different beliefs as to God’s interaction or disinterest in human affairs, and many other differences that make each of us unique.

I believe in the Creator because there’s no other alternative that I can find. We know next to nothing of all there is to know, so it stands to reason that somebody knows, and that somebody must be very powerful, because we are here. All we see for certain is that we are the most advanced civilization on Earth that’s ever been, and we did not and cannot create a planet, let alone the universe.

In mysticism, the theology is that God may make something of himself knowable if it fits His design, but as soon as we know something about Him we also come to understand how extremely far we are from even scratching the surface. This brings us reverence for the awesome work of God, and hope that when we return to Him we will be sharing in His greatness.

It’s as if someone were to put a pinch of sand under a microscope and tell you to count to see how many grains there are. No sooner do you come up with a number than they put a spoonful of sand in a bowl and request the same thing. Now you’re uncomfortable, because the job is hard and the hours are long. But you do it — and then they come in with a cup of sand on a plate. As you start in counting, you think of the Sahara and the nature of mathematics.  Even though more are being made as we work, there are a finite number of grains of sand in the desert yet an infinite supply of numbers with which to count them. In other words, the job is possible, but we can’t do it. We feel that God, on the other hand, is powerful enough to know the number of grains of sand in the universe. To mystics, this is a cause of great joy; not despair.

Yesterday I heard the results of a poll of those who believe in God. The question was: how big a part of your life does religion play? I’m sure everyone who answered the poll came up with a reasonable answer. But think about the question very carefully; mull it over a bit in your mind. Is anyone really qualified to say? Isn’t God the only one who actually knows?

12/4/09 Reflections           Quietism believes that we merely exist. Everything we truly need is gdiven to us. We have no responsibility other than to God. World affairs must be ignored, and the risk of contamination thereby avoided. Self-annihilation brings perfection, which is enough in its own right. It’s just one person and God – everything else might as well be non-existent.

It’s a radical mysticism, even though “radical” seems contradictory to everything Quietist. In every principle above, there is merit and truth. But as a whole theology, Quietism doesn’t add up. It’s too much like the way we would like life to be – a utopia without the provision that if God wants us to be active for others we could comply. And if we can’t comply to God’s desires, we are certainly no mystics.

I would love to feel justified in a life of total contemplation and isolation; to have absolutely no other responsibility. I would be content to know that in complete passivity I am pleasing God; I could easily enjoy living in blissful abandon. The trouble is, as much as the world can turn without me, I must make myself available and ready to be active when and how God wants me to. That is an inseparable part of abandoning my will to God – the acceptance that His will might be to use my action for a greater good.

So while I agree with the Quietist premise and would like to live a Quietist life, I could never get past the intuition that though God doesn’t need my co-operation, He wants it. It’s in this way we honor Him, for it isn’t enough to abandon ourselves to Him if we will not abandon our abandonment should He ask us for that as well.

One of the first insights of mysticism is that God wants to be asked for His favors. Without this attribute of God’s, intercessory prayer and works on behalf of others would make no sense, as we’re aware that God is capable of anything He desires without our input. We couldn’t even honor God if He didn’t feel the need to be loved by us. So Quietism doesn’t sit well because it takes mysticism further than it should go. In the same way as God wants us to ask for favors He would have given us anyway, He asks us to love Him and honor Him in our care for others, even though He has no needs and is capable of caring for His children Himself. Mysticism is an unequivocal “Yes” to God’s desires; Quietism limits what those desires can entail to what can be done passively. That sounds like “No” to me.

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..