The Light in the Woods

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.

1/17/10 Insights from Prayer               If you often start to question what you think you believe of life, that’s not a cause of despair but of celebration. For at least a few moments you have lifted your eyes from the inane preoccupation of whatever feeds your ego, and placed them squarely upon a place where they might at last truly see.

When you ponder what you think of God and His works, you could test your beliefs this way: Think of all the alternate possibilities in life and see if what you believe of God can hold true when looked at from a wholly different perspective.

Alien lifeforms, other universes, altered mind-states, past lives, lost worlds – if your idea of God can exist steadfast no matter how creation can be envisioned, then truly He is the master planner.

I don’t know what this means; I’m just writing down what was given to me.

1/5/10 Insights from Study            Yes, God created evil, but to Him it isn’t evil. We have come to see it so, but to God all of His creation is goodness. We are not God, and we see things through human perspective; not divine. We wouldn’t think of calling medicine evil because of its bitter taste, but when it comes to God we expect Him to arbitrate justice without pointing out sin. We expect God to extend His mercy without our having to concede we were wrong. We want His peace without admitting we brought about the conflict. We blame God for what we see as evil, but want Him to overlook consequences of sin, which is something of our own making. How is it we can choose to turn our backs on God, then turn around and blame Him for not preventing us from making a mess of things?

Earthquakes are not evil — they are a natural part of Earth’s regeneration process. When one swallows a car with your loved ones in it, an earthquake appears quite evil to you. But the earthquake did not sin against you, and God is not evil for not having prevented the deaths. If a hungry bear attacks your child, it isn’t because it is evil, nor is God remiss in creating the bear’s need to feed.

Only human beings can perceive God’s created things as evil, because only human beings can create sin out of good and accrue the consequences of their actions. It isn’t that evil is doled out to us as punishment in proportion to our sins so much as it’s that we are simply seeing life as a condition of imperfection. We “know” things as evil because we are used to ordering matters to our own specifications, and often they don’t co-operate.

We insist on exercising our free will and God allows that even when we harm ourselves by it. Unless we are mystics, we would not be willing to give up our free wills, even when we know we often use them with harmful results. Unless we are spiritually enlightened, we are unaware of all the cases where God has in fact intervened to save us. We are just as unaware of this as we are unaware of His reasons for permitting us to witness evil. Opportunity, correction, guidance, education, conversion, grace – all good things can appear to us as evil when directed by God’s hand, because we do not understand divine intellect. We cannot assimilate the intensity of God’s love for us and the steps He takes because of this love.

This is why mystics are always encouraging a person’s abandonment of will. It’s saying this: “I’m not divine and can only haltingly absorb divine reasoning. But if I make a point of accepting God’s will as good, no matter whether it seems to me to be loving or evil, I will certainly be at peace knowing my way won’t be wrong. If I unite my desires to God’s, even if I don’t understand them, I’m confident that I’m doing God’s will and showing Him love. And if I do this sincerely, humbly, and obediently, I will be shown by insight what I need to know, and be given the means to do what I need to do. When I am in sync with God all decisions are God’s, even the ones He has subjected to my free will.”

In this desire for union with God we’ll not only have assurance of following the path our Creator means for us to follow, but also we will have a more proper perception of the worldly, temporary nature of suffering and evil.

12/26/09 Insights from Study                 It’s an honor to be despised by those who don’t believe in God. One mention of God can send them spinning into spasms of scorn – this at least is some indication of spiritual concern, which by the power of God may bring about their enlightenment. Far more troublesome is the person with no thought of God at all. That’s why I love atheists – the ones I know are at least passionate about spiritual matters.

It must be terribly frustrating for atheists, this trying to prove a negative. If I say I know of God because He’s told me of Himself, how can they argue against that? If they say God is not guiding me, they’re acknowledging that there is a God; if they say there is no God who could be the source of my enlightenment, then they must prove that to someone who is sure there is.

I, on the other hand, do not have to prove anything, because I already believe. My only task is to be so humble, faithful, and joyous that it upsets people into reflection. My work is done whether my antagonist comes around or he doesn’t – that is God’s decision; not the effect of my work. I don’t mean to make atheists mad, but I do feel a satisfaction in making them feel something. Who can feel deep emotion without wonder at how emotions came to exist?

It should be far easier to believe in a Creator than not, seeing that we and all around us definitely do exist and we can’t conceive of how. As for me, despise me all they want – I know what I know and they will never know enough about me to prove me wrong. If I were left the only person on Earth to believe in God, it would not change that belief in the slightest. Praise God’s wisdom and love!

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.

12/21/09 Reflections              I seldom watch TV but yesterday evening I wanted to watch while I had my dinner. I flipped through the channels, trying to avoid politics, and came upon a “Caught on Camera” episode that disturbed me deep down inside – even more than politics would have.

A Polish man immigrating to Canada arrived at Vancouver airport. Speaking no English or French, thoroughly confused, and eventually frustrated, he spent nine hours in the airport trying to get on the right track. His mother, who came to meet him, was told he wasn’t on any flights and she had gone home to wait for word. Finally, frustrated and disturbed, the Polish man started acting aggressively. The airport authorities tasered him and tackled him to the floor; somehow in the scuffle the man died, and his mother had to be told. It was horrible to watch.

This is the kind of thing that tests my faith. I understand about suffering, but I’m too human to not be saddened by something that to me didn’t need to happen. In my prayers last night I confronted God: “Now look – nobody was wrong and nobody was 100% right. But it was Your will and everything had to come together just so for this to happen. He was looking forward to a new life here, and ended up dead and disgraced in public. What gives?” And God answered me plain as day: “Why do you assume this man’s continued life on Earth is preferable to his life of glory with Me? He is home now – no longer fearful, disturbed, confused, or frustrated. And yes, it is My will. So what do you plan to learn from it?”

I don’t consider myself a slouch when it comes to learning from God; this is, after all, my life’s focus. But I guess I’ll never understand some lessons perfectly, because I post this in heartache for this poor man’s memory, even though the incident itself and God’s insight about it proves to me that he is in a better place than I am.

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?

10/26/09 Insights from Study                          In demanding self-determination, mankind has gotten what it’s asked for – something less than the perfection of God-determination.

That’s how it is; it cannot be changed by us and it will not be changed by God. Life is the hell that we get and keep, and the best way to get through it is to be able to hope for what lies on the other side of it – the perfection of heaven. This can arrive as an unexpected gift. More often, though, it comes to pass by us going to the One Who Knows and asking for perception. This honors Him and allows His grace to give us a glimpse of life to come; a return to the reality of life as God meant it.

Communication from Reality happens all the time, but without the divine grace that makes us able to hear it, it doesn’t provide its full benefit. To listen for God’s word in every piece of creation He has set before us is called “practicing the presence of God”. To desire this lifestyle is to worship the Creator perfectly. God is goodness itself, and as long as our prayer is that we honor God in desiring His will for our own, we will perceive goodness even through the worst of life’s hell.

This is the hope that makes life livable. We realize that here is not reality; that reality lies beyond the nightmare. We see the absurdity of agonizing over something that is not eternal. We see that life can seem better when we are able to see beyond it. We see the love of God at work and know that one day that is all we will see.

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.