The Light in the Woods

2/28/10 Inspirations                  Meditation, contemplation, scripture study, litany and liturgy – all processes done to remove the world from our thoughts long enough to bring the Creator to the forefront are things good for peace of mind. But to acquire pure inner peace that lasts because it becomes the nature of our spirit, this is the ultimate comfort state.

We begin by ascribing all that is to God. We see Him as a loving God, ever merciful and ever forgiving. Only this kind of God makes us worthy of this kind of love. Then we acknowledge that if we give over our lives to God first and foremost, we will not only honor Him but gain for ourselves knowledge and grace through a new perception of His ongoing gifts to mankind. We will see too the nature of God’s reality – the kingdom to which we were born and still wait for our faulty, worldly perception to catch up to.

We live assured of pure joy, and we catch glimpses of this waiting reality. Through God’s loving attention we get heightened sensory input triggered by seeing the things around us in a fresh, God-toward way. The more attuned we are to things that are important to God, the more willing we are to receive these gifts from Him, and the more adept we are at appreciating them.

This, finally, is how we maintain a constant inner peace – by armoring ourselves against worldly strife with our focus on the bliss of reality that’s being covered up by worldly influences. When we recognize the joy of God, we immerse our spirits in Him to the point where we can exist happily even within the stress of our daily lives. This is inner peace, available to all.

2/23/10 Inspirations          Politics is the ultimate reality show – hype disguised as the real thing. We watch it because it’s real enough to be thrilling and fake enough to be safe. The trouble is we never seem to learn that when politics makes its own reality it takes on a life of its own; the power-people can twist things whichever way they want them to be, and that is the basis on which they make laws. And how they love to make laws! When there’s an opportunity to make another law, if the facts don’t support it other facts must be manufactured.

The same can be said about any facet of life on Earth – politics, religion, science, finance, health, history – the power-people decide reality, and present it to the rest of us as truth so there’s no conflict in their control.

When I think about the fraud on us that might never have been revealed if not for a brave few, I can’t help but think of the deception that is not discovered and how we’ve formed our beliefs on it. I get to the point where it’s wiser not to believe anything anyone tells me, but the yammering is so intense I would have to retreat into an empty cave to get away from it. What good am I in an empty cave? Are we really put on this Earth to be good to one another? If we are, why is power so historically oppressive?

Maybe we do all need an empty cave; one containing an empty chalkboard on which to write only what we can believe for sure. There in the depths of quiet we may have a chance to capture truth and reality. There where there’s only one Power we might begin to receive what we really need to know and something we can really believe. There where we live on only what we’re given without striving on our own, we become humble enough to see clearly what is necessary for us to see.

Mystics enter this empty cave of contemplation whenever they can. With no distraction and no voice other than The One Who Knows, the empty chalkboard receives truth direct from Reality. The hard part is for the mystics to retain this truth and this focus on reality when they leave the cave to return to the world. But that is precisely what keeps the mystic going back to contemplation – the intrusion of a discordant world that never seems to fit right. The more the world yammers at us, the more mumbly it sounds and the clearer God’s voice comes through. That’s the Power I can believe, the Truth that’s without conflict, the Reality that feels right, the Light for which I long.

2/22/10 Insights from Prayer              The trouble with biblical religiosity is that it never encourages us to take what Christ afforded us and use it to get beyond Christ and into God. Fundamentalist Christians, while rightly seeing Jesus as our means of a right-relationship with God, think it demeaning to Jesus that we then aspire to go beyond Him and on into the exact realm for which He interceded.

Yes, we are too immature to start with a unitive relationship with God, and need Christ to win that ability for us. But Jesus is a manifestation of God, and having freed us from our limitations God wants to draw our focus when we’re ready so that we may communicate directly with Him. A direct relationship with God is the whole point of salvation and sanctification – to hear some churches say it, seeking such a relationship is the work of the devil; not of the Christ.  The suspicion is that if we all cashed in on our mystic relationship with God won for us by Jesus, there would be little need for the power of the churches.

Mystics run into trouble with fundamentalists because mystics embrace the goal of Christ’s work instead of worshiping the work itself. Christ’s humanity is not the purpose of His existence, just as it isn’t the purpose of ours. The exercise of our divinity, our worthiness to desire union with God, is the end game. Jesus wants us to aspire to that. To a parent at the moment of letting the child go, if the child keeps running back it’s an indication that the work is not done and the child is not ready. Likewise, to the mystics it’s not blasphemy to thank Jesus and accept the relationship with God that Christ won for us – it only means advancing our focus from Christ the man to God who loved us so much He manifested Himself as Christ. The blasphemy is when we are admonished for not worshiping Christ the man.

We worship Jesus along with God each time we communicate with Him, for this is the purpose of Christ. Fundamentalists de-emphasize God’s call to contemplation and personal communication, drawing the focus back to the Bible and the church’s interpretation of it. Mystics use the Bible as a step to the real purpose of Christ. We may still be too weak to take full advantage of Christ’s work, but to deny those who are ready for it direct access to God implies that Jesus somehow failed, and the job of the church is to cover that failure with dogma.

2/21/10 Reflections              God is not just another experiment for scientists, for He will never be known completely on Earth. This is not a failing; this is His plan. His plan keeps us seeking, keeps us praising, keeps us grateful for the small hints of heaven that we see all around us when we cultivate awareness of them. If God were not a mystery we wouldn’t be in awe of Him as we are.

Now and then I play at pretending there is no God in my life, just to see how it feels. After all, I put in many years of not thinking of God at all, and I made out OK. But I always come back to the welcoming of my relationship with God, because of what it adds to my existence. I don’t need to understand God completely. What I need is to accept that there is something very much worth seeking, and that even if I don’t fully appreciate God because of my human limitations, the desire for that relationship keeps what I can know ever before me.

God is constantly bringing me towards acceptance of what it is I need. He puts before me what He wants to give; sometimes I reach out for it hungrily and sometimes I’m not hungry enough to reach out at all. In one way I’m better off than in the other, but God doesn’t force me. In the same way, He works with what he withholds from me – fear, despair, disease, calamity, guilt, my own sin. Whether I’m thankful, oblivious, or aware yet without gratitude, I’m not forced to acknowledge the source of my protection or my provision.

Yet if I do choose awareness of God I learn easily in proportion to how much of the process I give over to God. Once I begin, I see results. Once I see results, I want more of the same. The more I ask for the more I get – my asking shows that I’m humble enough to use God’s graces effectively. Even though my role is small, it’s an integral part of God’s master plan and therefore significant. Yet I don’t have to perform it flawlessly; I shouldn’t even aspire to that. I merely need to keep desiring the right attitude for my way to be made sure.

That’s why it’s so important for us not to exclude others’ paths or disdain others’ works. We don’t know what assignments God has deemed appropriate for others. We cannot do His desire while judging His gifts.

1/19/10 Inspirations             The more I experience God the more I would need to know in order to do Him justice. I can’t explain the unexplainable, yet this is exactly what a believer is expected to do. This is a world where all you have to do is show skepticism and you appear to have wisdom. But those who have wisdom of Reality — that is, a world more attuned to the Creator than to what He has created – tend to remain silent and waiting.

The first thing you learn when you become truly enlightened is that there is a God and He is in control. You may object to feeling like a pawn in a chess game, but if you do you’re reacting with your ego whereas God is dealing with your spirit. To be spiritual is to be fully free; to accept God’s control so that you may exercise your free will from within the condition that truly responds to human free will — God’s desire to show love and be loved.

This cosmic consciousness is the key to true joy and deep peace. To a humanist happiness for all is a noble cause; to a mystic it is an inheritance from God. It takes acknowledgment of divine control to attain real peace; it will not come about through human desire for it to be so. But our free will can be used to accept recognition of God as Creator and to guide our actions toward working from within God’s master plan.

This master plan cannot be known except generally – the specifics are left to the mind of God, which we cannot probe deeply enough for now. But this is how creation works best; with enough mystery to encourage our participation in God’s plan, and enough knowledge to accept the wisdom of its Creator without question.

As each individual is blessed with mystic perception the fire spreads even more quickly. One day all will grow to abandon ego and embrace spirit – at this point the world can end at last, and we may all awaken into true life of perfect joy in the full presence of God.

12/30/09 Insights from Study                   If you want things to focus for you spiritually, consider how much human knowledge you have in your brain; clear that out completely in moments of contemplation and give room to let God-knowledge fill your head. You cannot understand the limitlessness of God-knowledge until you temporarily throw out your dependence on your own intellect.  What you know of the world takes over and limits what you can know of heaven. Trapped by issues of time and space as it is, your brain doesn’t use but a fraction of what it could.  If you mentally remove thoughts of sense and emotion and place yourself sincerely at the will of God, you make your mind receptive to what is divinely possible. Don’t hold back out of fear of evil or delusion – these are worldly functions from which God protects those who invite Him in.