The Light in the Woods

 2/7/10 Reflections             Everything is the way it is because that’s how God wants it. Save the whale, stop global warming – do what you will, the outcome is still whatever is God’s plan. You can be a force for good, but that’s your interpretation of what is needed; unless this is the same as what your Creator deems necessary it will count for nothing. That’s just the way it is, and God keeps dropping hints that we might want to limit our interference in it for our own good. Still we insist on taking over. So what if we’re extremely incompetent? At least we feel good about ourselves!

But maybe feeling good about ourselves is not such a worthy goal. For some of us, feeling good about ourselves is another form of greedy self-regard because we do things out of human pride; circumventing the will of God. Since we do impact nature we are charged with not abusing it. But for some, that’s the green light to go to the other extreme – denying the use of nature when it should be used, being a gift from God.

Most people don’t factor in God’s wishes when taking up a cause, some on the premise that God’s wishes are unknown but surely must conform to theirs; some on the premise that there is no God so it’s all up to them. But this is the Creator Himself they are dismissing – how much simpler and more beneficial it would be to acknowledge that there is a supernatural plan in place; to concede that the care of the Earth has been in God’s hands and will continue to be this way on into eternity. No matter what we do or don’t do, His effect will be what decides the Earth’s fate. Study as we might, all we will find is the mechanics of how God is fulfilling His plan.

Put that way, we might be induced to set aside the hype and the panic talk. We might each consider getting back to the spiritual meaning behind what we do. We can succeed by being partners in God’s master plan instead of failing by conceitedly fighting against it.

7/26/09 Insights from Prayer       We do so much that God has never required of us, and we avoid what little He does ask.

Think about the people you know – does anyone live for the love of God? Sure, they may busy themselves with holy works, but I often wonder if we should analyze what we can do for others and re-assess the importance of what we can do for our own spirituality. One thing is better-handled by God; the other is one of the few things God sets aside for our participation.

We need to get this right, because from it wondrous miracles of opportunity grow. We are taught to think of others before ourselves, and we have an innate knowledge that self-regard can lead us away from God. But wrong too is neglect of our own spirituality, because that is the engine that powers our good works.

We must be right with God before we can bring others to this state. It’s God’s spirit that does the work, but God allows us to participate by maintaining the proper attitude. In this way we work in conjunction with the Creator, building up divine perceptions and keeping our spirits pure and receptive. We need to stop for a while to refresh this relationship if we want to best hold our experiences up as a good example. In this instance self-regard is a benefit instead of a weakness.

5/10/09 Insights from Study       Far from being an anomaly, mysticism as a method of Divine communication is the normal state of creation. In mysticism we gain knowledge and grace not through the senses but through the infusion of the Divine Mind into the spirit. This is how communication must be done after death, when there is no body to host the senses. It was the way we were created to receive God’s words, before sin and the need to rely on materialistic senses that resulted from this sin. And intuition infused from God is the natural language He speaks to His creatures other than us, for they never had the free will to sin and distance themselves from God as we have done.

To get back to our first language is a principle of devotional mysticism, and to do it we bypass the senses to bring ourselves to the spiritual state where the language of contemplation still reigns. We can communicate directly with God in our original language when we direct our thoughts away from our bodies, our senses, our “world beyond Eden”. It’s unnatural to worldly selves, but to our inner selves it’s as warm and familiar as returning to a quiet, peaceful house at the end of a hectic day of negative emotion.

In our pride we’ve relegated our first language to the junk heap of stuff we don’t need because human ambition is to be self-sufficient. In our self-regard it’s we who must be heard; not God. And we must be heard in our own way; not God’s.

But for those of us who perceive that what we have around us is not reality, it makes sense to speak with Reality in the language Reality speaks. We go somewhere quiet, distance our minds from the world, nestle our selves into the inner place where God dwells, and silently wait for Him to affect us. We are home at last – with our Father, listening to His familiar voice. We can’t say how it happens – that understanding is one of the many things we have lost – but we are content in God’s desire to speak to us in the pure way for which He created us. This we can do only when we think to begin our journey back to Him, for until we start on this road we haven’t understood we have somewhere to go. We should be ever thankful for this opportunity, for even though it’s available to all, few will pick up on the journey and listen to the Guide.

3/24/09 Insights from Prayer                 Sometimes I feel like the greatest sinner of omission there ever was. I try to be sinless in my actions, but my inactions scream out their evil. What is it that I’m holding back from God? Why doesn’t He just tell me, rather than make me figure it out for myself? How do I push my ego aside completely when God counts on me to present His inspirations to those who are waiting for them?

Deep down I know I’ve been gifted with a healthy self-disregard, but duty requires action, and action looks like accomplishment even when I know it’s the result of God’s power only. My response tends to be inaction — if I do nothing I can remain humble, and God’s work through me remains pure. Then the disquiet arrives — I’m not doing enough!  If I keep bending back and forth looking for the right course on which to remain, might I not break from the strain? 

Dear God, in contemplation it’s easy to put myself in Your hands. I ask that I remain the object of Your generosity so that I may have plenty to give to others. But then when I lift my head, get up, and leave my place of prayer, I begin to feel that there’s something I should be doing to make things happen. For all my acceptance of Your work in me, I still feel incapable of any steps I must take myself, or of even discerning what those steps are. Is this my sin of omission? Or is it evidence of a small piece of human pride tainting the perfection of Your work? Either way, Lord, help me overcome my self. If I rely on myself too much, help me hold back. If I need to be doing more, help me know it and advance Your plan.

11/27/08 Reflections                      To an ant, his anthill is a great skyscraper; to God, our great skyscrapers are nothing more than anthills. To understand your place in creation, you must find out in which perspective reality lies. In truth, your perception of reality is no more valid than the ant’s, because your point of view, like the ant’s, is below that of the Creator’s, which is ultimate reality.

Because your senses are adequate only to perceive the reality in which you live, you have to “think outside the box”, letting your worldly senses give way to your supernatural senses in order to glimpse God’s reality. That perfect reality, and the supernatural senses that perceive it, used to be yours before sin demoted you to a life below true perception. We all have inside us the subliminal need to get back to the way we were originally created.

But to allow God to work in us to that end, you must first give up your ego, which works faultily within worldly misperception, in favor of God’s will, which shines forth out of the faultless reality of the Creator. The setting aside of ego in favor of God’s will solves the problems your ego has created. Imagine a world where ego issues do not exist, and God’s will has its way because of voluntary self-abandonment of all egos!

11/22/08 Reflections             I get so discouraged by people’s so-called “needs”, which for the most part boil down to freedom and rights never granted by God. Where did we learn to expect our every whim to be catered to? From where comes our power to legislate immorality? Who can be so bold as to confer on us the right to pornography, perversion, public adultery, abuse, idolatry, government-sponsored theft, fetal murder, secular brain-washing, our favorite addictions, extreme consumerism, laziness, destructive activism, foul language, etc.? We detest ten commandments from God, but fall willingly into the arms of big government without questioning to have these needs taken care of.

Maybe we ought to take these human-conferred rights and examine them in the light of our relationship with our Creator, since eternity weighs so much heavier than our lifetime on Earth. Just because we’re free to be ungodly, does that mean we are excused from striving to be godly? No, in fact if enough people take a close look at the decadence of our culture, maybe enough lightbulbs will go off in our heads. Maybe when decadence comes right up to us and slaps us in the face, we will start to ask why we allow ourselves to get further and further away from inner peace just because our permissive society allows us to do so. I hope this is the way it works, but it’s just too bad we have to destroy our country and our souls before we figure it out — how badly we need God in our lives even though we’re free to deny this.

10/26/08 Reflections          It’s the creeping corruption of our society that bothers me the most. We took a good thing like the civil rights movement and got high on the drug of public protest. In affirming the liberty of the individual, we were empowered. But as is typical, we went from using that power of bettering the plight of the individual to the extreme of “If it feels good, do it”. It’s gotten worse ever since, because each succeeding generation will have it more and more ingrained in them that it’s all about “me” and what I want. And we’ve found that what we want is no longer the nobility of freedom and justice for all, but sex, money, getting high, possessions and power.

This hasn’t escaped the notice of the rest of the world. There are two factions: first, those who love us when we export the new values of “the more and the more decadent the better” and hate us when we export the old values of liberty and justice for all; second, those who love us when we provide an outlet for what they are selling, and hate us for rubbing our decadent culture off on them.

This is hard for those of us who love our country the way it was when conceived. We want everyone to have the freedom and blessings we’ve enjoyed, but we are ashamed of what’s been done to our culture and don’t want its degeneration spread to innocents.

To me, the current world financial crisis looks like the merciful work of God in that it shows us how deeply connected we are as citizens of the world. It reminds us that we not only share commerce, but culture as well. We need to be careful that, if we can’t change the corrupt moral nature of our society, at least we can guard against exporting it, even if in most cases it might seem to be too late.

Can we encourage freedom and justice throughout the world without corrupting others with our own misplaced morality? Of course we can. But when we try we are mistrusted, because word of our sinfulness has come before. All that many know of America is Hollywood, Las Vegas, Wall Street, and excess in everything. We don’t realize how conservative the part of the world is that needs encouragement to throw off the burden of the sheep mentality that leads to tyranny. All the tyrants have to do is to show them our example of how we’ve turned God’s blessings into self-absorption; to equate freedom with a slide into immorality. Better for people to allow government to live their lives for them than to risk God’s displeasure, whatever God is to them.

The only way to improve the world is to fix what’s wrong with ourselves first, and then use God’s blessings to encourage morality along with freedom and justice. We need to get back to the God of the new covenant; the merciful God who lives inside us. Once we’ve recommitted our selves and our society to the desires of God, we can count on the continued wealth and personal peace we’ve enjoyed. Even better, when we export God’s favors in charity to less fortunate neighbors, we will have the powers of God behind us – we cannot fail.

I look at the unbelievable gifts God has showered on this country and I have to believe that this is how God works for the betterment of all — through one nation.  But when I see what we’ve done with those gifts, feeding our egos and our appetites to the exclusion of God’s designs, I wonder if God will put up with us long enough to affect the change back to Him that we so desperately need — before we can offer what we are blessed with to societies that are not free to develop it. I don’t think it’s arrogance on our part, but the unfolding of God’s master plan. How I hate knowing we’ve thumbed our noses at it; how I dread the feeling that God has already begun to take His gifts away from an ungrateful nation. My consolation is that we may learn from it before it’s irreversible.

10/5/08 Inspirations          The glorification of self is a much-touted attribute in these days and in this culture. We are constantly heralded when we inspect how we feel about ourselves, and routed toward accepting our “selfness” no matter what we find there. The feeling is that if we have a noble picture of what we are, we will be better at accepting what others do; that this is the compassion that will save the world.

Both the ends and the means bear closer scrutiny. Is unconditional acceptance of everything people do really the definition of compassion? Is pursuing and welcoming one’s own wants and needs really related to peace at all? I suspect that the answer is “no” to both questions. I submit the theory that “I’m OK, you’re OK” is a knee-jerk response to fundamentalism; grasped at in time of need for want of something better.

To me, there is a logical middle-road. Compassion and peace are a result of accepting self and neighbor for what we are – children of God – rather than for what we do. To insure this, any introspection should be of the heart; not of the ego. What has been put in our hearts is the God-given intuition of right and wrong. We know from this part of us how to recognize good and evil and to react in a way that pleases God. Since we have introduced evil in our lives through the wrong use of human pride, God will use it to foster good – not by ignoring it in the name of personal freedom, but by dealing with it in dignity. To fight against this grace in the misguided hope that accepting sin is somehow pleasing to God and compassionate to others is to always wonder why something doesn’t feel right inside.

Letting evil go unchallenged doesn’t make the world a better place, and peace for the sake of peace only makes things easier for evil. By putting trust in God to make you an instrument of real, enduring betterment, you will know what to do. Your way can be exactly as God’s way if you allow it – love every child of God and hate the sin they are subject to; to use both good and evil to encourage anyone to reap the benefits of a right-relationship with God.

When we know from inspecting our hearts the grace of God that fills them righteously, that is when we may effectively concern ourselves with justice for others by welcoming them to share in this union with God. Correcting with love is true compassion and the way to true peace – the peace that only God can give us.

10/2/08 Inspirations        Slowly the picture of the reality of life on Earth is emerging, and it’s so different from what I used to think that it’s breathtaking in its simplicity.

God never created a bad thing – all creation and therefore all reality is good. Evil is something we create out of the good God gave us. With the good gift of free will came the potential to break from reality. We do it all the time – we turn our free will around to break away from the goodness of real things to the faulty perception of things as bad. We see an inordinate amount of unreality, clouding things as God made them and forcing our perception of suffering and evil.

Why do we do this? Because self-preservation runs amok when human pride turns into human arrogance. Because our reliance on self casts an unreal cloud in front of God and His reality. Because human life is nothing more than a journey towards God, and we want it to be something more interesting; something that involves our power instead of His.

No wonder we stumble on the journey – we are making it enveloped by a fog of unreality and lose our way consistently. Even our attempts to do good are misguided – the fog reflects suffering and we try to relieve it by offering what we have created; more of the unreality that caused the suffering. We offer what we can do in place of what God can do. When we’re deceived, all we can share is our misperception. What our fellow humans really need is not more fog, but the realization that they ought to be seeing beyond the fog – that not only is there really something out there, but that reality is what should be guiding us; not the poor substitute for reality we provide ourselves.

Reliance on God is all we have to develop on Earth. God takes care of everything else if only we let Him. Humbly seeking His help toward this relationship with Him is all we need to do to return to living in reality. Everything else has fake importance; importance we give it instead of what counts in the eyes of God. This seeking is our journey back to the goodness God created. Our first step begins to clear our spirits from the misconception we have made of our world. Faith, trust and prayer keep us on the right path and further clear away the fog of unreality. The journey gets easier – we see goodness and we want to be holy; this is a prayer God will answer, because it comes out of true perception and is sure to be received that way.

9/22/08 Reflections                     I think we’d be appalled to realize how often we judge God with disapproval. Think about the enormous arrogance required to do this; then think of how easily we can fall into it.

To me, the main problem is that we so often fail to recognize things as being gifts of God. If we don’t see everything as contributing to God’s master plan, that leaves everything open to human judgment. We love to judge – it feeds our self-pride. But every time we do it we fly in the face of the Creator who presented us with life and the means to live it. His judgment is perfect – who are we to override it? Our first thought is to deny we do this, but at some rate we all judge God by what we do.

When God places a child safely in it’s mother’s womb, do you condone getting rid of it for convenience sake? Do you think anyone is qualified to decide which prisoner should be put to death? Do you forget the Creator is powerful enough to adjust the climate of the Earth without our intervention? Do you think it’s within our right to dismiss God’s obvious intention that a sexual relationship be a bond between a male and a female? Are you more pious and compassionate than God when you refuse His gift of meat to eat? Do you ever complain about the weather God has seen fit to send the Earth at your particular place and moment?

This is not to say we should never work with what God has provided so it suits us better or in order to make it more available to us. If we want to live on the coast we need to build levees to keep God’s ocean water away from us. The gift of oil or ore is useless if we don’t remove it from where God put it. And we do not put medical advances away just because they open up ethical questions.

But it’s the human judgment of God’s decisions that needs to be cautioned against. We fall so easily into forgetting who God is. We are unclear as to why He does what He does, so in order to make sense of it, we grab the responsibility away from Him. What a mistake, when God is so infinitely more capable than we could ever imagine.