Where Is Our Connection to God?

 Origen, that great authority, suggests a parallel: that God’s Son, God’s image, is in the ground of the soul like a living spring. If earth is thrown on it, earthly desire that is, it smothers it, covers it over, and it vanishes from our ken. But in itself it remains alive, and on removing the soil that was thrown on from without, we see it again.                              --- Meister Eckhart

There is so much to consider here. First, I find it interesting that he is quoting Origen. He was the great thinker of early Christianity, 185-253 C.E. Later Origen was called a heretic for several odd reasons. Here is one of the greatest mystics quoting him 1260-1328 C.E.  So apparently, he saw genius in Origen, as have I.

Anyway, I appreciate the visual of a living God-spring bubbling inside of us in our souls. But then we throw dirt upon it and cover it up. It is unharmed, but we are cut off from It. We are walled off, helled off, from God.

As we remove our negativity, fears, anger, resentments, false ideas, etc, the dirt is removed. We put it there, we take it away.

As Meister Elkhart says later in the sermon:

When the artist makes a statue of wood or stone, he does not put the image in the wood; he chips away the wood which hides the form. He gives the wood nothing, he takes it away: carves it out where too thick, pares off overlay, and then there appears what was hidden.

We find God never left us, was always there, right where we left Him/Her, under our own pile of dirt, in the center of our soul. 

When Your Heart Drops

 There are moments in life when our hearts feel like they just drop. 

This week I had one of those moments.

My husband had a stroke on July 30. While in the hospital, he had a pain in his side, so they scanned it. They said he had appendix cancer, then they said peroteneum cancer. This week the surgeon put a camera in his abdomen, took biopsies, and put a chemo port in his shoulder. The surgeon said his abdomen is full of cancer, and it is likely that chemo could only give him a little more time. My heart dropped. My tears flowed. This Wednesday we go back and get the biopsy results and suggestions of what to do.

I know with surety that life continues beyond here. I know our bodies are sort of suits our souls wear so we can navigate earth and learn and get experience here. I know our bodies are made of earth and return to earth and our souls are divine and eternal. I know this not on second-hand information, but on my own personal life experience. So I am not afraid of the transition from life here to the next existence. 

And, because I love my husband and have been blessed to be married for 37+ years, I want him well and healthy and to stay here with me. My selfish self shouts out, NO God, heal him, let him stay with me. My spiritual self softly counsels me, ask for his highest good, not yours. Tears well up, and my heart drops again.

Of course God is in charge, not me. We should all be thankful about that. Imagine if we ruled with all of our conflicting wants and desires. Chaos!

We had been rolling along, hopeful we would finally get our assets restored very soon, making plans for foundations and lifting others, making plans for our future. And then the stroke and then the cancer. My heart drops just writing it.

So, God, I surrender. I ask You to Guide us. I ask You to bring forth the Highest Good for us, even if we don't understand, even if You don't want to explain. I let my fallen heart fall into Your care and keeping.So be it.

History Is Now

 I'm reading " The Jesus Wars," and remembering how the themes of history repeat themselves ad nauseum. Perhaps we fail to learn from those who were here before, or this planet has a set curriculum, a gauntlet we all must walk. We succeed or we fail. 

It is widely thought that those who fail have to try again as many times as needed, to at long last succeed. And some of those who succeed come back as teachers and some as Avatars.

What would succeeding look like, feel like?

There are huge hints from major and minor teachers, from scriptures and mystical writings from those who remember.

Some I've mentioned before: Unconditional Love, compassion, non- attachment, peace, kindness, generosity, devotion, Oneness with the Divine.

See for yourself. Read the writings of spiritual greats, such as the Commandments and Psalms and Proverbs, the Bhagavad Gita, Lao Tse, Buddha, Jesus, the great mystics such as Rumi, Hafiz, Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas a Kempis, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Teilhard de Chardin, Rufus Jones and countless others. You will see a thread of thinking connecting them.

You will feel a deep inner pull to the eternal truths, as if old friends you just remembered.

Compassion or Not?

What is compassion? Knowing we are not unique, that we are in this together, our joy and suffering shared.                       --- Matthew Fox

We share this planet and all that is here, from air and water to knowledge. We share the hopes and dreams of all humans- a good life for our families, a safe place to live, freedom, etc. If we ruin our planet home, it is ruined for us all. If we lie, viciously compete, cheat, create fear and hatred, we all suffer.

Psalm 85:10 says  Love (compassion) and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other.

The path of Love/Compassion is taught by all spiritual greats. We hear it from every corner, yet so few live it, and fewer still consistently live it.

I muse - how would it look? We would be interested in other people, their hopes and dreams, their ideas, how life looks through their eyes, accepting them with kindness. We would not insist everyone agree in every detail with us. We would be free of hostility towards ourselves and others. We would collectively find a way to deal with those who insisted on violence (any form, such as cheating, stealing, physical), endeavoring to help them heal their pain, so they could live free of inner torment that caused them to hurt others.

I know this is unlikely, but it is not impossible. Let us strive to begin a Love/Compassion revolution today by doing all we can to show up in our lives as walking talking Love/Compassion, as Kindness in action.  

Vision of Awakening

This morning I had a vision I need to share.

I saw earth in a dark gray cloud of hatred, anger, illusion, fear, false ideas. I saw a few sparkles of light of those of us trying to get people to wake up from the nightmares of all of this, to the mission for which we came to earth.

Tears ran down my face. How needless the pain and agony of living in this cloud. How far astray it leads people. How unlike it is meant to be. 

The great religions, the great avatars/prophets/visionaries have told us to love one another, respect one another, treat others as we want to be treated, attune to the Divine. They have told us there are answers. There is guidance available. There are spiritual principles to follow. Our lives have purpose. The seed of the Divine is in each of us. We are not our bodies, rather we inhabit our bodies with our souls so we can navigate earth.

We know these words. We say prayers. we pay lip service, but do the opposite.

How can we awaken?

We NEED to awaken NOW. Earth, humans, animals, plant life - we are vulnerable. Weapons of terrible power have been invented, and some crazily itch to use them. Artificial intelligence is poised to be way too powerful. Look what we with the potential of a conscience have done. Imagine what something with more intelligence, but with no conscience could do.

Listen to the call to awaken. Follow it. Become the Light you were meant to be.

The Past and Now, A Different Angle

 It has long been my understanding that we need to resolve our past issues so as to not drag them into our now and distort it. Yesterday I got a glimmer of a new idea, or a slightly different angle, along that line from a novel I started reading,"An Echo in Time."

Basically, the idea is that some of the patterns in our lives can be unresolved issues of our ancestors, recent or even centuries ago.

That struck a note of recognition. My mother's father put a bullet to his brain in front of my mother, when she was 7. I saw the direct influence that had on her and her sister, mother, aunt, and later to my dad, etc.

But then, yesterday I saw a direct line to me from my grandfather. When there were times in the past that I felt hopeless and thought of giving up, I thought of him and made a choice to not give in and so not carry his hopeless forward. He had just been ripped off by his business partner and lost his fortune; his wife was mentally ill; his son was dead. He apparently talked himself into deep hopelessness and gave his life to it.

In my children and in myself, I see resilience. We have walked some very deep valleys, and we kept on walking. Also, we have strong faith. I don't know about my grandfather's faith, but I assume, if he had some, it faltered.

I am going to consider some of the other, strange and seemingly out of left field, patterns in my life through this lens. Are there other family issues trying  to resolve themselves through me? 

Or is it just the human lessons we all came to earth to learn? Are our lives not so different? Is it just earth-school for all of us? Maybe it's not my family issues afterall.

Marguerite Porete

I have just discovered a mystic I was not aware of, or I simply forgot and just glossed over her name and life 😪,  Marguerite Porete. She wrote a little book, "The Mirror of Simple Sou!s" that was translated into four languages and widely distributed, especially among the Beguines. I just downloaded it myself yesterday. 

She was born in 1250 C.E and burned at the stake in 1310 C.E. Below is just one of the reasons the official church was opposed violently to her, as well as many parts of her writing and teaching, such as that you could find God everywhere. She had tapped into the deep mystical well that has fed the souls of so many. Also, she was a female and part of a religious group not approved of by the Roman church, the Beguines.

 In her book she distinguishes between what she calls “The Great Holy Church,” which is the Church of the Spirit, and “the Little Holy Church,” which she calls the “empirical and scholastic church whose uncomprehending queries are more often placed on the lips of reason than are made to testify to love or the soul . The former church preaches Love; the latter church preaches rules and law and order.          --- "Meister Eckhart - A Mystic Warrior for Our Time"

The church was/is not open to ideas that interfere with their dogma or their control. Yet, all through history there have been people who knew greater, deeper truths. I celebrate Marquette and am grateful for her witness to God's Truth, even unto death.