 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
August 29, 2010 What I expressed in that poem yesterday...is it for real? Yes, it is. But I have to say a word about how this is affected by the appearance of time: There is always just this moment, and it can be an experience of God, or an experience of the world, depending on where your thoughts are. It’s all happening in your consciousness. So every moment that there is a thought of the transcendent, Heaven is the experience. But since there is the appearance of the passage of time, we sense that these experiences come and go. So even for the most realized sage, the world will sometimes be the experience. But Heaven never went anywhere! It’s still here, eternally. So really, we choose, in our present moment. This is why praying without ceasing is recommended by St. Paul, and by many other saints and sages. When you pray, Heaven is here; When you cease, the world appears. It sounds hard, but it is not an effortful activity. Prayer – directing your thoughts to God, Good, gratitude, the inner spiritual light of love and peace – is magnetic. The more you pray, the more you want to. The experience of the mundane as Heaven – this is what has changed the most for me with prayer. The joyous experience of flesh and bone and muscle, moving or resting, acting easefully or strenuously at necessary tasks or idle tasks, this Life mysteriously animating me. The weightless experience of forgetting that this body is mine, forgetting this moment has a history, forgetting my misdeeds and the misdeeds of my loved ones, forgetting the misdeeds of the entire world! And just residing in the experience of Good that is provided in this holy instant, by the generosity of the transcendent power we call God. It’s not just simplicity – the love of the simple – it is the eternal, infinite Transcendent, in its entirety, in all its glory. It doesn’t have to be flashy. “Glory” brings to mind grandeur and material magnitude – the Sistine Chapel, perhaps – but the glory of the transcendent mystery is not material; it is a subtle spiritual burning, a glowing fire inside that burns to ash all worries, angers, and fears. There is a total absence of suffering in this moment to moment experience of Heaven. The experience is Good. The transcendent God force is the very essence behind all Good – spiritual good, which manifests ever so subtly in your life as love, as compassion, as peace. And this is always here, shining through as this heavenly moment of mundane living. Heaven is this very moment; not in the future, not even one second in the future, so don’t be thinking, “Oh good, I’ll try it in a second.” Try it now. It’s now or never. Don’t be thinking that your opportunity to pray is coming soon. Don’t be thinking, I’m almost ready to pray. Don’t be thinking, yes, I’ll pray in the very next moment. Pray right now, as you are reading these words. Introduce thoughts of gratitude towards everything your consciousness is touching right now. Stay put right here, mentally, and take in the spiritual meaning of what is going on right now. Even though you have no idea what that meaning is, ask that it be infused into your experience. In this moment of sitting in your chair reading on the computer, your thoughts being directed to the Good puts your consciousness in attunement with all the joy, love, brotherhood, empathy, and healing that is already here, and these become manifest through you and your consciousness. And then others see that manifestation and they respond inside themselves. The world responds, and you notice a change in your relationships, your surroundings, your health, and even the health and good fortune of your neighbors and loved ones. But don’t ever expect to be perfectly prayerful. We forget God all the time. This is what it is to be human. We forget Good and we go into thoughts of a world, and thoughts of us against it. But that’s okay. And this fact – that it’s okay – is the greatest of all God’s gifts that I know of: That it all starts fresh every moment. We sinners are given a completely new beginning every moment. Now, that’s something to be grateful for! Right now, nothing is held over from the last moment. All our sins are forgiven, everything we ever did is erased, we are completely wiped clean, given a new life by God. In this new moment, every activity is totally new; the personality, the self-image, the sins of the past, all gone; even your body is completely new; because all those things are created by your thoughts, even your body. It all starts over again, every new moment, spiritually alive and infused with all of the transcendent qualities of the spiritual Good. You are forgiven. Your brethren are forgiven; you don’t remember a single bad thing they’ve ever done, not even your spouse, your parents, your boss, your world leaders – anyone at all. This is what Jesus did, and what He is still doing now – He sees you anew, without any recollection of your past sins, or your past glories. He does not see your sin. He wipes it out, and you get a fresh start. This is what happens in this moment, every moment. So I hope you can see now that you are already in Heaven, and that when you are keeping your mind on God – on the Good, on gratitude for things you don’t even know to be grateful for yet – this brings your awareness to the sinlessness of the world and of yourself and your fellow man, and you experience Heaven. When you are not keeping your mind on God, it is busy creating a fallen world, and you experience that. It’s all up to you.  August 28, 2010 I love God’s creation so much August 27, 2010 Q: There is a lot of suffering going on. I turned to your web site and found this article on "What is prayer" absolutely beautiful. What you describe there is what I always wanted but finally let go because I did not believe it possible. I am really surprised that you mention God so much. From reading non-duality I had come to the conclusion that God does not exist! There is just this energy floating around of which "I" (the pattern called P--) am part. Not personal at all. It doesn't care about this pattern at all. You make it sound different. Could you explain? Thank you very much. A: I’m sorry you are suffering. I hear this so much that it has led me to exploring other avenues, in an effort to help with the suffering, but this does not mean I’m abandoning the non-dual message. Non-duality is clear, practical, and final: you are not a person, you are not anything but this awareness – it’s true, and everything is resolved in that. But the reason this simple message is often not ultimately freeing, in the piecemeal way it’s taught on the internet and in books, is because of this persistent sense of a material world and a personal body. I suppose this material sense is resolved if one really knocks the wind out of it, by spending some weeks with a very clear teacher, as John Wheeler did with Bob Adamson (you would have to ask John what his thoughts are on the persistent material sense, because I don’t know). But most people (including me) have a persistent material sense of self, and for them, that needs to be addressed. For me, this is where the concept of “God” comes in. For human beings throughout all of history, the need for the belief in a transcendent power has been universal. I’m not saying there is not a God or a transcendent power, but I am saying that it is so entirely mystical that humans have no way of accessing it or talking about it, unless we invent mythologies that approximate it. And that’s what religion is. That’s also what non-duality is – it is also a way of explaining the unexplainable. So, pick your myth! We are all free to pick the explanation of the unexplainable that suits us the best, and that alleviates suffering the best. I think the popular, internet-friendly version of non-duality took off as a myth because it promises the “end of the search.” It is very appealing to people who are suffering a lot and see it as a way to permanently stop the suffering, permanently stop the seeking, and then enjoy the rest of the time they have here, free of concepts about a suffering self. But people do run into snags with it, either because they do not understand it fully or because they find out it’s not what they wanted. Speaking today from what I would call a vantage point liberated from concepts of self, liberated from all concerns of the world, liberated from fear and from suffering, I can say that my study of non-duality was (and is) fruitful. I owe a lot to the teachers, both living and dead, who helped me. And now, since there is a persistent material sense of bodies and personalities that can be helped by the myth of a transcendent God, I may as well explore this mystery/myth and get closer to it, and find out what it is all about. There is no need-driven or self-centered reason to do this. If anything, there is simply compassion – the hope of helping others in any way possible. I think following the path that most efficiently alleviates suffering and encourages the maximum compassion and love for fellow beings on this apparent material plane is the best one for me. And so I keep looking for that, deepening that. Alleviating suffering (my own and others) is really a high principle, in my opinion. So to answer your question, God is really a non-dual proposition: There is one omni-present, omnipotent, eternal God. That means everything is included, and God is everywhere – one solid block of reality. You are that. There is no separate you apart from God. All good flows from your knowing of this fundamental principle. So in this way it is no different from Advaita, except that we are saying “God” instead of “Awareness.” There is no you – only God. But when your persistent sense of self and world re-enter, then suddenly we are faced with a duality: I have a sense of me. This is not saying there is a “me.” There is only a sense of one. But it is persistent, and reinforced all the time in your daily living. And so it is this dual sense that is addressed by all these things like prayer and meditation and contemplation. This is why the need for prayer is constant, if one wants to live a life in Peace: because the material sense is so persistent in every moment, and prayer reminds us that it is only a sense, and that the reality is our oneness with God. So have a personal God who loves you and cares about you personally. That is your choice. You are creating your own mythology and you are free to create anything you want. There is no absolute truth. Non-duality is not an absolute truth. It’s awfully hard to argue with the logic of it, but it is hard to argue with the logic of many philosophies, and that does not make any one superior, or true. When we read other people’s mythologies and they make us feel safe and stop our suffering, then we should do that. Everyone is at a different place in their development. For many people, reading “The Shack” brought them in touch with something that had been missing in their lives, and that’s great, but it would seem pretty rudimentary to someone who has been reading theology for twenty years. Everyone needs something different. For me, right now, the early 20th-c. New Thought healers and Christian mystics are a wellspring of nourishing waters, and they are helping me to be a more compassionate person. I feel this is useful, even though I know that all people and the entire world do not actually exist. There is only a sense that they exist. This sense is shared by the human race, and this sense is addressed by most religions and philosophical systems. A key feature of the Western mystics and healers is that the same non-dual message is essential to their teachings: There is one without a second – an omnipresent, eternal God – and you are none other than that. The material world does not exist. I’m not interested in any teaching that is not rooted in that fundamental principle. The problem with Western religions, for the most part, is that they leave out the non-dual part. They describe the one God, but they neglect to teach you that you are THAT. Jesus taught it, but most Christian churches have forgotten it. “I AM” is the name of God. That “I AM” is you. There is no dividing line. And so mostly in organized religion we end up with a powerlessness in the face of God, when that is not what the reality is – we are all-powerful. We have all the power of God, because that is who we are. All of God – the totality of God – is contained in the “I AM” – the awareness, the beingness of who we are. The healers and mystics take this principle – the principle of our infinite power – and apply it to the sense of material body for purposes of healing, both physically and spiritually. Note that this would be “a sense of healing,” not any real healing, since no healing is required in God – God is already perfect. It is only the sense of being imperfect that needs healing. This is what attuning oneself to the Christ consciousness means, and it is the same as the non-dual principle of seeing through all notions of anything being outside the one-without-a-second. It’s all the same principle. What a privilege, what a joy, to have the great good fortune to be able to explore these mysteries! It is grace, it is love. It’s purely a matter of personal preference which “myth” one focuses on at any one time.
When you’re thinking about God, August 25, 2010 I AM Exodus 3:13-14 13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I... say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? 14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you...15 this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. When the Lord says to Moses that His name is “I AM,” is he suggesting that we change it, and call him “HE IS,” or “YOU ARE”? No. He wants to be called “I AM.” Why? Why does God say that His name forever, His memorial to all generations, is I AM? So that whenever you call or name the one God, you must point to your own Self? Is this significant? Well, it obviously is significant. Jesus repeats it in John 8:58. John 8:58 58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. Why did Jesus say, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Why did Jesus not say “God has always been here, since even before Abraham”? Because he was pointing to the “I AM” – our own “I AM” that we know more intimately than we know our own heartbeat. What does the “I” in “I AM” point to? Why an “I”? It points to the fact that your very self is this I AM that God tells us is His name. Your very consciousness is this I AM. You know this in your experience right now. I AM. Can you deny it? What is “I AM”? Is “I AM” in the mind? Is “I AM” in the heart? Where does “I AM” reside? Can it be said to reside anywhere? Is it infinitely large, or is it a single point? Is it eternal, or does it have a beginning and an end in time? Is “I AM” the same as consciousness? It has been made quite clear in the East: Stay with the “I AM.” It has been made quite clear in the Bible: God’s name is I AM. There is only I AM. I AM is omnipresent. There is nothing that is not I AM. And so I AM is you. You cannot be something separate from I AM. The very name of it tells you! I AM! This I AM is you. When we talk about awareness, we are talking about I AM. When we talk about God, we are talking about I AM. There is only one I AM. Everything else is an object, but I AM is the subject. And so there can be only one. I AM. And this is you. You are awareness, you are God, you are I AM. |
|
||
|
You can email me at .
|
||
