The Light in the Woods

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!

12/9/09 Insights from Study         I think my favorite image in the Bible comes from Psalm 137. Picture the miserable Jews, exiled in Babylon and longing in melancholy for home. Around them are the natives of Babylon, their conquerors, sneering and telling the Jews to sing songs of their homeland.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remember Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

How graphically this sorrow and longing for home under extreme adversity reminds us of our dissatisfaction with the way we seem to be here in this life, longing for the life we once had. Our world is Babylon, our exile this life on Earth. We can no longer sing in joy of remembrance, because we long too sadly for Zion – Reality, the perfection of life with God. We have the advantage, though — we have been promised our sure return. And maybe, if we take down those harps of prayer again and sing well enough, the sneering may stop and our captors will see the light of our joy and want it for their own.

7/18/09 Inspirations       Eternity is just around the corner. If something isn’t going to matter in eternity, why do you let it bother you now?  If God is in control and destines things this way and that, of what possible consequence are our fears and struggles and lamentations and guilt and anxiety and labor?

It’s up to you to lighten your load – God never asked of you all you think you must accomplish. In fact, it’s in your arrogance that you strive away with great showmanship in things you are only guessing God wants you to do.

The little there is that God leaves up to you can be accomplished in seconds, in private. If you don’t know what God asks of you, find out by asking Him. Then, for those who are humble, obedient and sincere, whatever it is you think you were meant to do will be accomplished. But it won’t be you doing it; rather, it will be God working through you. The advantage is, this way you have peace knowing that the task is being accomplished well and rightly.

Don’t offend God by being a man-made, self-made martyr.

7/8/09 Reflections        What does it matter if you don’t get what you want during a dream? When the dream is over it doesn’t matter what you did in it; the dream isn’t reality. What pain could you not bear for a few seconds if you understood eternity? Take a look around and remind yourself – this is all going to pass into oblivion for me; it will mean nothing then, and it really has very little of the meaning I give it now. How much more peaceful our lives would be if we could truly understand this phenomenon in the here and now.

We are conditioned by the limitations of our physical senses and the makeup of our brains. If it didn’t happen there, it didn’t happen to us. No wonder we have trouble figuring out that the world is just not that important – nothing but worldly matters passes before us. We have nothing else with which to compare our experiences, and we have probably been taught that our supernatural senses are unreliable and somewhat sleazy.

Yet like in any dream-state there is that overtone of confusion – there is something that calls to us that we can’t quite answer because it’s out of our realm of experience. We feel, however, that if we do not grasp this we will always yearn for it. In life on Earth, this thing we yearn for is the grace of the Creator. In some deep corner of what we are, we know there is One and that our lives are dependent on Him. Very few of us will experience Him even though all of us can. We just don’t know how to give ourselves over to faith that completely; we are out of our element when we try. We get distracted by the things that we have placed ahead of the Creator.

Mystics encourage you to try to communicate with God. They understand that what He has for you is superior to what you can get for yourself. They want you to place yourself outside and a little above what you think of as life now; to project yourself into real life; the life with God that is coming. Until then, the journey can be so much more pleasant because God does not want for you the trials and sufferings of this dream world if He can reach you an easier way. Because nobody knows God all that well, the next best thing is to clear the mind into a blank slate, resting our thoughts long enough to let God’s come through.

Only after God’s grace is distributed should you explore what His message to you concerning the world asks you to do. The main thing is to learn to push the worldly dream-state aside and let God give you the glimpse into reality He is aching to have you experience. With that as the light at the end of the tunnel, you will do more and do it more easily on the journey home.

7/6/09 Insights from Study            We are all equal in the mind of God because all God cares about is that we give Him glory and praise; this can be done by anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere with no other requirement. And where you are lacking in this, God helps you along no matter what you do or have, so that His desire will be met and His kingdom inhabited by all His creatures. Therefore you will enter eternity as equal to all others no matter what has taken place in your life on Earth.

Why be good then? Why worry about morality and justice and charity and the sharing of God’s attributes? Because these things bring satisfaction and peace to you in the here and now in ways that God gives you, in His wisdom. Any glory we give to God comes back to us – that is the point of what He does; He Who would need nothing from us otherwise.

The glory we give to God comes back to us as individuals and also as members of the human race, who all benefit from the praise others of our kind have sent God’s way. All human goodness comes about through the auspices of God the Creator, Who allows us to co-create with Him by offering others that same goodness by our dedication to God. God sees us collectively as all humanity – that’s why we are punished together on Earth and promised together eternal heaven. Our instructions come to us as individuals; our compliance benefits humanity as one entity.

If this cycle of glory was all there was in the world, it would be sufficient. All else is added complication which more often than not tends to interfere with the basic duty of man – to love God by setting all else aside. It’s why we are equal in our quest – there is nothing involved but our willingness. No one has an advantage over another; nor is anyone disadvantaged in honoring God’s request.

As we move about the Earth let’s keep in mind that God has promised Himself to us with a small but sincere effort on our part. That’s why we need give only little heed to what we eat or wear, since God provides what we need and what He doesn’t provide we don’t need. But we also ought to remember that the small thing God asks of us can wind up being denied to Him if in our human pride we busy ourselves with tasks we think He ought to require of us. We believe God asks too little of us and we come up with ways to improve on His demands. It’s a common stumbling block, destined to upset the cycle of glory. We get back on the right track by going back to cultivating our relationship with God first and foremost; if there is more we can do He will tell us, and it will be for our benefit. As for God, His request of us is not diminished by its simplicity.

6/26/09 Insights from Study       What are the attributes of God? They are what He reveals to you. He may reveal them to you by personal revelation or by enlightenment from those who have received personal revelation and passed along the experience. No matter how God reveals Himself to you, it is through the filter of individuality which God created when He created you from His own mind.

How close we are to the Creator just by means of our very creation; how blessed we are to be given spirits that can discern God and His attributes! It is through this filter of individuality that God’s will for us is disclosed. It is why two people can read scripture and come up with two degrees of worldview. It is why in spirituality there is no right or wrong belief once we have humbly and obediently asked for recognition of God’s presence and welcomed God’s control in our lives. If we would stop now and again to reflect on the enormity of the consequences of our ability to have a personal, loving relationship with God, we would feel His love greatly and recognize His presence constantly, all in the course of our daily lives.

We will not be deceived by God in this state – only by slavish devotion to someone else’s interpretation of God’s attributes cans we go astray. Through this well-intentioned restriction we deny ourselves the joy of fully and freely responding to God’s desire to deal with us personally. Our relationship with God becomes based on what someone other than God tells us is right. Why do we stand for this? We stand for it because it’s easier and we feel righteous for having fallen in line behind people who seem to know a lot about God. This is backwards! Better we should go to a quiet room and shut the door against the world, to welcome God through personal prayer and a desire to follow Him and Him only. Then we will be the ones who know a lot about God because we do not need anyone else in order to learn from him and to love Him.

This will be our God; the one who counts for us. God’s uniqueness to each of us is not because He is changeable, for He is what He is, but because we are changeable and confused by the diverging directions religions claim we cannot have. He is all things to all people – He adjusts the way His word comes to us because we are each unique in His creation. The more we build on this recognition the clearer God will be to us as we allow Him our very essence. Our differences don’t matter because our focus is on the only important thing – to know God as He wishes to be known and to love Him above all else.

6/19/09 Insights from Study         When you put God first, you have nothing to fear because the thing you care most about cannot fail, and the things that can fail are not your greatest consideration.

In such simplicity it’s easy to concentrate; that’s why mysticism leads to contemplation. In contemplation we put ourselves in quiet reception of the mind of God. We draw within ourselves in order to block out the distractions of anything that is not God. This is a mental clearing away, so as to concentrate on the one true thing – God’s love and care.

It’s not as if we have to do this in order to receive God’s message for us; if God wills it, His message will come to us no matter what we do or don’t do. But contemplation is prayer – it not only puts us into the mindset to receive the essence of God with our supernatural senses, it also serves to remind us that we have a loving God who welcomes our communication with Him. Through this prayer we feel the satisfaction of our seeking out the truly important, and in the simplicity of this prayer we’re open to understand whatever God chooses to give us – like white chalk on the clean slate of your open spirit.

If all you have is a minute of quiet and solitude, give God that minute. You will be surprised at how eager God is to reach out. In the middle of chaos, you can still receive God, for He is present always and everywhere. You can make a big difference for yourself it you will ask for the grace to feel God in your life despite life’s chaos and distraction. Even “Lord, have mercy!” is a prayer straight to God’s heart.

You must understand that where God is concerned there is no formula or ritual. He knows you perfectly, so the slightest acknowledgment from you is sufficient to please Him. Let God into your consciousness whenever you can, and the answer to everything will be there waiting.

4/12/09 Inspirations      I, along with everything else, am created in an instant. I am a concept in the mind of God, numbered among all God’s creation yet known and loved one-on-one by Him.  All there is, seen and unseen, exists without time or place – all I experience on Earth and in my lifetime is nothing but a state of altered consciousness within the reality of the mind of God.

We don’t know why we are this way – it’s as if we’ve been given a powerful drug or overcome with sleep. Life – a bad trip or a bad dream. But it’s not reality, and we deep inside feel the need to get back to that. We are uncomfortable this way; searching always for the feeling of being truly home. There is a reason we aren’t experiencing the state of reality – it’s a plan God also made at the instant of creation, and we don’t seem meant to know it except in deliberate drops of spiritual insight.

I’m telling you something of what God put in my heart; it’s probably in your heart as well but you might not be witnessing it clearly yet. That is, that you would do well to put aside the cares of the world now and then to place yourself in calm, silent offering of yourself to the Creator. Acknowledging the Godly wisdom inherent in your being in the imperfect state you are in, ask the Lord to lead you safely home in order to remember, at least in a small way, perfect joy and perfect peace, which is your right in spiritual union with Him. This is your true state; the reality which you have lost in the fog of Earthly imperfection. But like struggling up from a drowning dream, you want to reach up to where you know you need to be – not down into a worse state.

In quiet contemplation you voluntarily put yourself in front of God; showing respect for the right-relationship with Him for which you were created. Ask that as much of this peace and joy as possible may shine forth from your spirit – keeping your spirits up in hope for the transition out of this dream state, and transmitting this hope to others for their well-being. God will help, and the more you put yourself in contemplation the more you’ll be helping yourself as well.

As you return to your daily tasks, be ever conscious of your true state in the mind of God, be strong in the acceptance of the goodness of His plan, be patient by knowing that until you feel at home with God again you will take Him with you everywhere in spirit, be hopeful by knowing God is still fully yours even when the dark cloud of Earth appears to hide Him from you, be fortified that the sin you must rub up against here has no meaning in reality, and be thankful for the communication you can have with God that unites you to the loving Creator who makes all these virtues possible.

3/29/09 Insights from Study         Mysticism is a simple concept: a mystic is attuned to God.

Can you seek to be a mystic? Yes and no. There are things you can do to place yourself in the right attitude to be receptive to God, but the fruition of your mystic principles is a gift from God like everything else, and appears only if it fits God’s plan.  So if anyone might be a mystic and mystic intuition can’t be gotten just through striving for it – what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that not hearing God’s call is a sad tragedy common in this world. The tragedy is that the world could be a better place while we wait for reality. The sadness is that we put so much energy into things other-than-God, and those things are inferior.

The message is so simple we dismiss it – surely what pleases God the most must be harder, more painful and more elusive than this! But difficulty, suffering, and striving are worldly, human hangups that are not necessarily virtues in God’s reality. Real virtue is acceptance of God’s plan and a willingness to let God do one’s living through Him.

In this way we become attuned and united to God. What happens beyond that we leave to God’s means, whatever they may be; safe in the knowledge that we cannot fail with God in our corner, and in fact many wonderful gifts are stacked there.

3/8/09 Insights from Study               Mystic recognition of God and His infusion of knowledge and grace is like hearing a guitar or piano being tuned by an expert. Here you have a discordant sound, a scraping sense of “wrongness” not unlike what we experience throughout our imperfect lives in an imperfect world. The tuner makes a slight adjustment and the pitch changes up and down, but remains wrong to the ear. Then suddenly the perfect adjustment is achieved, the string hits the right note, we hear at last clearly, cleanly, in tune and full of the sense of innately knowing that the frequency is at last perfectly right. Sound is good at last – it fits our sense of appropriateness and brings satisfaction where before there was annoyance. Forever more, having experienced what the perfect pitch should be, even the slightest variation from perfection will be heard as discord and bring us an insistent desire for the relief of a return to alignment. The mystic principles encourage, the mystic process seeks, and mystic prayer welcomes God’s infusion of knowledge and grace into our spirits, bringing them in tune and decisively bringing about a sense of clarity and rightness into our experience. We don’t forget this feeling – we seek its perfection always, are instantly alarmed by any wavering off course, and welcome God’s actions in favoring us with the gift of being attuned to Him.