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Monday, October 31, 2016

Cosmic Christ

My beloved friend of many, many years, Pat, gave me Matthew Fox's new book, coauthored with Episcopal Bishop Marc Andrus. It is entitled "Stations of the Cosmic Christ." The book is quite wonderful. I've only read the first 39 pages so far, but I have to share a bit of my thinking.

First, many of the things written mirror my own conclusions from years on the quest, the study of various religions, mystics and my interest in new physics. Some of the ideas in the book contribute a leap of thought that is exciting.

I will write more about the book in a day or two. I want to begin with contemplation on a quote from Einstein that is on page 23. It is regarding humanity.

Now moving into the third phase of religious experience: cosmic religion. With his growing knowledge of the vastness of the universe and its trillions of stars, each one many times larger than our planet, stars whose light takes hundreds of years to reach our eyes, man must consider it an insult when he is told that his conduct should be motivated by fear of punishment or hope of reward. And it is just as much an insult to the God who created all these marvels, to be lowered to human level. The true religious genius has always been endowed with this sense of cosmic religion... This oneness of creation, to my sense, is God. This concept of God will unite all nations... A new age of peace will be inaugurated when all people profess a cosmic religion, when the youth have become laymen with scientific minds.

Let's mull over these profound thoughts for a bit.

I'll get back to you.


Tuesday, October 25, 2016

To be Numb or Not...

This morning I awoke with thoughts of desensitization and numbness. The gang member gets desensitized to violence. The abused becomes numb to the abuser. We get accustomed to our ruts. Then my thoughts turned to spiritual awakening, the spiritual hunger in our souls, and why are so many turning away from church, why did I for periods of time?

Thoughts flooded in: too many "clergy" are not called, just have a church job; many teach fantasmal things that common sense and science scoff, that offend our intelligence; many just want our money; many think they already know all there is to know about the Infinite Deity; many cannot see the Presence in all paths and times and so do not honor others; many come from ego rather than Presence; they know about what others have said about God, but do not KNOW God; and on and on. We become desensitized to the true spiritual journey because for the most part spiritual leaders are just doing a job and not alive and on fire with the Knowing. Most people don't even know this is what is happening or that they can awaken to live in awareness of the Presence.

I guess, for me, the key to dwindling church attendance across the planet is heavily leaning upon the unknowing clergy and denominations. Universes apart are the two positions: I know theology, I know about what others have said about God, I know scriptures, I know how to put together a joke, a couple of quotes, a scripture, a story or two and make a sermon, I can make you laugh and sometimes shed a tear --- BUT I have not had a direct, personal, pure experience of being in God's Presence, so I cannot lead you there.

It's kind of like trying to describe a food to someone who has never tasted it or even seen it. You can hint, but you cannot give them the essence. They have to eat it themselves. If our leaders only give out second, third or fourth hand information, we cannot be led to the essence, at least by them, for they do not know the way.

Perhaps "church" needs to be re-booted. What if the mystics were studied, discussed and considered? What if contemplation and meditation and journaling were usual practices? What if the leaders knew what they were talking about so that they could lead others to the edge of knowing and let them go forth those last steps into the Great Mystery? What if the sincere goal were to be the experience that we all live and move and have our being in the Presence? What if we came to know in every fiber of our being that wherever we are, whatever we say, whatever we do is all done in the Presence of God?

Instead of being desensitized to the true path, we would be rejoicing as we began to walk It, live It, Know It. The original name for following Jesus was "The Way." Let us return to the beginning and step into The Way.




Saturday, October 22, 2016

Another Thought On Valleys

As I awoke this morning, thoughts whirled in my mind. I saw how at my birth, I still knew who I was and where I came from. I saw a toddler still in tune. Then I saw a deluge of abuse. I saw the hiding blanket of shyness. I saw the valleys I walked. I saw my relative clarity in my "golden years."

A flash through my mind brought a new idea. The valleys were a kind of electric shock to wake me up, bring me to myself as well as burn off ego. They were the Zen Master shouting "WAKE UP!" They were actions to move me on through and out of the valleys and take with me the teachings they engendered.

It is urgently calling -- we need awakened beings on this planet NOW.

Open my eyes, Lord, to know You fully and lay down all the dross that has barnacled itself to me. My Soul rejoices in You.

Monday, October 17, 2016

Disturbing

The situation in our country is disturbing to so many of us. I look with dismay and barely recognise the land of my youth, the land of my ancestors. Sure, some things have moved into positive directions, especially during my lifetime. But right now even those moves seem to be falling apart. For many of us, it is scary. It's a sort of Halloween kind of feeling, real maybe, just scary maybe.

Our people have, for the most part, historically, been generous, caring, spiritual, hopeful people. I have to believe beneath the turbulent mess going on now, if you scratch the surface, you will find the very same spirit that led us to do great things, often self-sacrificing things. People of great courage have risen up and moved us through horrible times, think Civil War or the World Wars. We stopped evils such as fascism with loss of loved ones and with huge financial costs. We did what had to be done.

So, today we need that spirit to rise up again. With so many disintegrating places on earth, with the ugliest presidential campaign in our history, with racial tensions growing, poverty worse, etc. we really must pull ourselves up and do the right and spiritual things that will reestablish balance and goodness.

Let us pray and act from a deep commitment to all things spiritual. Let us remember that each and every one of us is a Divine Creation, carrying the breath, the seed of God within --- every single one of us, and that makes us family.

Love, caring, goodness, compassion, wisdom - they are inside of us. Let them out. Let's turn our world around by being the children of the Most High in every word and deed.

Lord of all, speak in our hearts, speak deeply in all the people of earth. Help us remember who we are and what it is that You want of us. Lead us to be all we can be. Lead us to be an instrument of Your Peace, Your Love, Your Light, Your Wisdom. Set free in us, unleash in us, a flow of Light such as has not been seen for a very long time. Let there be goodness on earth, and let it begin with us.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Challenge

I just read in "Christ & Empire, From Paul to Post colonial Times":
Is the ultimate challenge of the way of Christ not that Christ is human like us, but that we are human like him? 
That seems to me to be a statement worth contemplation. It has mind stretching possibilities.

As someone who is human like him, I also then have a Divine pedigree.  I too am not only God's own, but am part of, connected to the Christ and all humans. This is a Oneness position, the point of view of mystics in all ages. And it is what I know to be so.

Lord, I open my heart and soul to receive these words and let them grow into full bloom so that I completely realize who I am in Truth, in Your Eyes.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Preparing for sermon, I found this version of 23rd Psalm.

Our Nature/s

A new thought for me revolves around a well-known fact - when the gases hydrogen and oxygen come together, they form H2O, water which is entirely different than gases, a new thing. 

Well, that's not the new thought, as you have guessed. The new thought is  - what happens to the original 2 gases, do they still exist or have they become a new thing and no longer are also their old thing?

Then my mind moved to spiritual awakening. This person called "Marlene" who has been walking an inordinate number of valleys and having the ego burned off in the process, walks to Oneness. So this me made new, is now something else than before the experience of Oneness. Who I once was has transformed into the current me who knows that God and I are One. Is the previous me still there too?

The reborn idea seems to me to be part of this. I once was this, but now I've awakened to other, in a sense reborn as something that I've not been before. So, I become as a little child as the new me, and grow and embody, and then is there another such event down the path? Is this spiralling path and pattern of becoming new an eternal adventure? On and on I journey to Oneness, yet never quite able to get there, for that would imply I could become God. The best I know of is to have the Cosmic Christ, the Seed of God, Wisdom - alert and active in me, to be a place where Light shines.

Am I the eternal caterpillar becoming a butterfly? Where is the caterpillar after the butterfly emerges? The original caterpillar dissolved into liquid before reforming into the butterfly. Is something in me dissolving so that the newness can be set free? Is it the ego that dissolves? 

I need to think on these things. Please join me.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Another Huxley Thought String

In "Perennial Philosophy," Huxley wrote:
Contemplation is that condition of alert passivity in which the soul lays itself open to the Divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.
In the silence, so much has come to me. In what he calls "alert passivity" it becomes possible to hear the wee small voice, or sometimes the booming voice. Contemplation and meditation are like soul conditioners that make the ground of my being able to receive the Divine Ground.

So many in "modern" times seem to be in a hurry to rush to the next great thing, whatever that might be in the moment - more of something whether it be more of a physical thing, emotional thing, experience, for sure something ever more stimulating,

At the same time, I observe a soul hunger that can never be satisfied with the neon lights of consumerism. More, more, more is not what satisfies the hunger, the yearning. the call from the depths to something else.

I am certain that if we all took time each day to spend moments in contemplation and meditation, we would discover another layer of self and life and the journey on earth. A half an hour a day dedicated to this would change individual worlds and the greater world also.

Personally, I like to begin the day with a cup of tea and some inspired writing, selecting a thought from it to roll around in my mind, that is contemplate. Then silence, just being present. Then a bit of writing whatever comes to mind. And at various points along this way, prayer. My entire being is then "conditioned" so that I can walk into the frenzy yet not be part of it, for I know who I am and at least some of my purpose for being here.

Dear world, try this for some weeks and let yourself be amazed.