The Light in the Woods

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.

12/4/09 Insights from Prayer        We are all in exile but we can stand anything when we keep our emotions centered on home. If we try to fit in with imperfection we will never be at ease, because we were made for better than that. When we put it all on the Creator we are consoled, for we know two things: He will act on our behalf perfectly, and He is honored when we give up our disordered priorities in favor of His perfect ones.

The world frightens us because it is filled with human-powered sin. It’s this sin, not the will of God, that causes us our agony. Whether it is we who are doing the sinning or not, we all suffer together because we must experience imperfection together. Sins committed, sins of omission, emotions unbridled, annoyances personified, addiction, prejudice, wanting what we don’t have, putting forth too much reverence for what we do have, making too much of ourselves – any sin we commit or weakness we give into is a sign that our spirits are in disorder. And no wonder – we were not made for this world at all.

This world is what our lives look like when we look at them wrong. God created us for perfection and so that is what we are. But God allowed us to reject Him, and we pay for it by being blind to the reality of our perfection. We are in exile; this doesn’t feel right to us at all. We’re missing something and most of us don’t understand that it is the perfect relationship with God that we’re craving. That’s why our spirits feel as if they’re never contented.

We can’t bring our spirits back to perfection here, because “here” itself is imperfection. This world is only the medium of misperception which is the result of our disassociation from God. It isn’t real, and that should be a comfort to us, to know that one day we will again have perfect vision of reality. Until then there is only hope.

What makes the world of exile bearable is God’s mercy, and His power of consolation available to us when we ask for it. Each experience of worldly beauty gives us a glimpse of promise – God’s word that He is present and wishes to remind us of the joy that reigns where we are headed. When we see this beauty, we ought to immediately connect to the Creator who brought it about. The more we think of God, the more hints He gives into our immortal existence, and the more hopeful we are. God answers the confusion and suffering we experience in this world with better perception of the beauty and perfection that is our real life. The more we honor God the easier we see through our exile and into our reality, and the less anxiety we will have with our earthly, temporary trials when we recognize the joy that is to come.

11/24/09 Reflections           Once we accept God, we realize we have been forgiven. End of subject — there’s no need to rehash the past. We do not need to make up for what we’ve done – we could never do that as God has already done it perfectly. We don’t have the ability to pay for our past sins, so we neither have the obligation to try.

In the same way, we have no right to expect others to even up their accounts with God. We deal with others as God does – full forgiveness without requiring any payback. What could anyone do to reverse the effects of their sin against God? No more than you can do to square yourself with God. Life is better when we accept God’s forgiveness and extend the utmost degree of forgiveness to each other.

Now we know it’s futile to promise to make up for our sins or to require others to make up for theirs; so what can we do? Only accept that God has done this for us, and do our best to not get into the same occasion of sin again. Nothing forces us to do this, and if we do return to sin, we’ll be forgiven as before. So what’s the motivation for goodness?

It’s that no matter how prideful and “tough as nails” we want to appear, it feels good to feel good. Righteousness feels right. There is a peacefulness in justice and serenity in living right. We don’t even have to be sure of where such contentment comes from, although it makes sense that God would supply the favor when it seems right to Him. What matters is that a good deed begets the desire of the recipient to pass along the sentiment. And forgiveness of one person spurs on his desire to forgive someone in his life. It doesn’t always come to fruition, but the desire is there where it wasn’t before.

The motivation for goodness is the good feeling that comes from doing what has been put in our hearts as “right”, and the tendency of God to acknowledge the desire for goodness on the same scale as if the good deed had actually been done. This is because all we can really do that God does not take upon Himself is to give up our human tendencies in favor of letting our free wills conform in harmony with the will of God. Having done that, we only wait for God to act upon our desire. The result will be goodness.

We tend to miss this phenomenon because it seems too simple to be the meaning of life. But it stands to reason that, as helpless as we feel, life is far less about our contribution and more about God’s. Take away responsibility for everything but what God has given us to do, and life really is quite simple.

From there, we can contribute to society to the extent that we can, always keeping in mind that the die has already been cast, the roles have already been awarded, and the outcome is sure. We feel better when we exercise goodness and make life on Earth as serene as possible for the most of us as is possible. But it’s also important to remember our limitations; leaving the impossibilities up to God.

5/29/09  Reflections              Every adversity is an opportunity to glorify God. First we honor Him by persevering and not abandoning hope in Him. Then we honor Him by using the setback to further His agenda.

God doesn’t want bad things to happen to us. It’s the nature of this phase of our lives that evil must exist, but it exists for our eventual good. Our becoming perfect glorifies God, and we cannot become perfect except by wading through this imperfect setting.

To listen to most churches tell it, we are inherently so evil and the devil so powerful that God’s love often cannot overcome our tendencies and so He is forced to banish us from His sight for all eternity, as punishment for not being good enough to win the struggle.

This hogwash has kept millions of human beings from enjoying a right-relationship with God. You cannot hope to get close to this kind of God. This God demands what you can’t give – power over God Himself. This is a false idol, and when churches demand you board this merry-go-round, they are guaranteeing that your path will be more difficult than God wants it to be. We give in to this because we’re used to trusting human words; not communication from God directly.

Religion is the greatest adversity of all; the most insidious, most persistent obstacle to a right-relationship with God. Thankfully, God doesn’t really make marks on your scorecard – He puts what He wants for you into your consciousness and pours the means to get it done into your spirit. You use your free will to respond to God’s presence in you, but that’s icing on the cake for your life in this world. It has nothing to do with the real world, God’s kingdom, that you live in but which fullness is hidden from you as long as you’re subject to the adversity of this imperfect world.

That kingdom is yours because that’s what God created you for.  For anyone to tell you God must change His mind about loving you because of what you do or don’t do here gives you a power over God that you know in your very being you don’t have.  Why do you believe anything they tell you? Run as fast as you can into the arms of God – you are welcome there no matter what you’ve done, you deserve this personal relationship with the Creator, God will not turn you away, and you will be given the powers God feels are right to share with you. Any religion which teaches of a God any less than this is an obstacle around which God wants to guide you. In adversity He demonstrates how loved and protected you are – use these as opportunities to get closer to Him.

5/5/09 Insights from Study               We always have a Father to run to in our fear and despair and pain. We are never alone. And this is a very powerful Father who makes a very powerful promise – that He will never leave us stranded and that soon we will know Him so completely that we will be conscious only of peace, love and joy. 

We would not be looking forward to this eternity if we were not experiencing suffering now, and we would not be experiencing suffering now except that sin clouds our vision to the point that if we’re not active spiritually the sinful world is all we can see. Mysticism is this active spirituality that paints a picture of God’s hope and our wonder at His good promise. When this spiritual journey towards knowing God, as He has promised we will know Him, accompanies our physical journey through life on Earth, we are given the gift of perception that sweeps away the clouds hiding our joy in God. The imperfect world is still there to be gotten through, but the perfected spirit is not only up to the job, it finds the promised peace, love and joy in small but consistent quantities.

3/29/09 Insights from Study           It’s amazing to understand how thoroughly Jesus changed man’s relationship with God. The step from sacrifice to love was a giant one that could only be made by God the Messiah. By taking all sacrifice in the name of sin upon Himself and letting it destroy His worldly presence, and man’s sin along with it, Christ took away man’s need to sacrifice himself. In its place, Jesus assured that man no longer need to fear God, but to love Him, and then He proved this by His resurrection.

Before Jesus took our sin away with Him, we didn’t realize it could be done, and man could not feel worthy to love God without sacrificing something to Him. But Jesus took away that need because He took away our feelings of unworthiness. He purified us and set us in front of God so that we might feel His love.

Mysticism is all about feeling that love is the new covenant of one purpose for God and man. Religions still insist on fearing God and sacrificing ourselves in a deal to have our sins forgiven – a bid to avoid hell. In Mysticism, the state of spirituality has room only for love of God and gratitude for the divinity He has gifted to us.  Anything we do out of love and gratitude is possible from respect for God, not fear of Him, and from joy in His free gifts, not labor to earn them.  Jesus displayed a right-relationship with God, and earned that same chance for us. We only have to practice living in God’s presence to be attuned to Him. Anything more restrictive takes away from the realization that what we need is what we already have.

3/28/09 Inspirations               God’s will is that all men come to know the ecstasy of loving Him. God’s plan is what must take place in order for that to happen. God’s will is joy and peace; God’s plan involves the trials and suffering necessary to get there. Back before sin, God’s will and man’s will were unified, and the joy and peace man was created for was a state of being; not an option. But man’s will separating him from God’s will, against God’s wishes, brought sin into reality and recovery from sin necessary.

God’s plan — to return us to the ecstasy of loving Him. It’s His will, and it will be done. Perfect union of our will and God’s will can never exist again on Earth because of sin, but the more we abandon our wills to God, the closer we come to perfection on Earth, and the more enjoyable our journey. God wills that when our spirits leave the Earth they will leave imperfection for perfection. To deny this is to not properly understand the fall of man or the resurrection of Christ.

Sin is unacceptable and must be renounced by God. Once invited in by man, all of Earth must be affected by sin. That’s why Earth is not Heaven; why pain exists. We must realize that the worst of our suffering is being stopped by God out of His mercy for us. We must realize how through Jesus God has made sure not one of us will be lost. Though worldly imperfection must go on, through God’s mercy there’s hope for a stop to our suffering. We have been assured to live again as we were created to live – God sacrificed Himself in order to make it so.

It isn’t so because we “accept Christ”. Christ made it so because that was God’s will. Our will has nothing to do with our resurrection. How arrogant we are to dictate who God meant to save and who He didn’t. Christ didn’t sacrifice Himself in order to save some of us and not others. Our free will doesn’t extend to the power to limit God’s master plan. Our sins are not powerful enough to ruin God’s plan, because none of our sins are unforgivable by God.

That’s why there can be no hell — God didn’t create it because He didn’t will it. What we call hell is what we experience in earthly imperfection. Because of sin we can’t escape trial and suffering, but God has promised that this won’t last beyond death; if we understood the life and death of Christ that would be clear. But that understanding is fogged over by the human need to have a hell in order to keep ourselves in line while we are on Earth. We do this because we over-emphasize the importance of the world; we over-emphasize the importance of the world because the world is all we know for certain. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing else certain. To God, this world has become an aberration. His plan remedied that because that is His will. Our clinging to the notion of hell must disturb God greatly.

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.

3/19/09 Inspirations              Don’t be afraid of the essence of God that’s within you. Don’t let people tell you that you can only be either a sinner or divine, knowing that you would never be prideful enough to claim divinity under the misperception that this would make you feel equal to God. No, the spark of divinity is not something we gain by overcoming sin – it’s a state given to us by God that permeates our spirits. It’s already there, but it is mystic – our sin has ruined our perception of our own divinity to the point that we can’t see it. But God sees it, and wants us to see it too.

It isn’t the amount or scope of our sin that makes us hopeless, it’s buying into the fallacy that God is the only divine being, and divinity cannot tolerate sin. It’s because we have God’s divinity within us that we can have a union-relationship with God, and it’s because we have the right to a relationship with God that we are interiorly motivated to be uncomfortable with sin and appreciative of virtue. The fact that we often set this aside for sensory satisfaction doesn’t change our makeup and therefore we always have hope.

Some religious would like to deny the existence of God’s divinity in the human spirit, but if we deny that, we lose sight of ourselves as gifted by God; our only alternative is to believe we can earn divinity by what we ourselves do. God became Christ to tell us we have been gifted with the right to a relationship with God, and that sin will not take that inheritance away. Mystics remind us that by accepting and acknowledging our divinity we welcome our unitive relationship with God, attract His further gifts of perception, abhor the sins which cloud that perception, and partner with God to bring the joys of this right-relationship to anyone else we can. We can do this only because God’s essence dwells in us – we are His children; made in His image. He will not forsake us even if we sin against Him. And we can’t be free of our divinity even if we deny it.

2/21/09 Inspirations             Truly we can chose to sin, but what we can’t do is to choose to be sinless. From our little white lie designed to spare someone’s feelings to the reality of Hitler’s ovens, sin is necessary because we cannot return to God without overcoming it.

All sin puts distance between us and God, but there is also sin that isn’t sin by intention but sin by design. If man had never sinned there would be no imperfect Earth to put him in, and no hope of the perfection to come in eternity. God has His reasons and His methods; sometimes sin and pain figure in and we must accept that if we are to accept God at all.

But neither the failure to accept God nor the sin that puts our striving to accept God in motion can keep us from God’s kingdom, for that is not what God has designed. In this world, we will not truly understand that we are already being punished for sin by having to endure living amongst it. But when we are living in God’s presence in God’s kingdom, our spirits will have been purified completely and we will know perfect love and joy and peace. Damnation isn’t the end; it’s part of the process. We all enter the world with the burden of sin as our lot, but we all come out of the process as perfect; to live forever with God.