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Friday, March 31, 2023

The Work of This Life

 "The whole work of this life," he (Augustine) once said, "is to heal the eye of the heart by which we see God."

Such a profound and many layered statement.

Healing our eye, our inner eye/the eye of our hearts, removes distortions, frees us for depths and heights of our life in God, leads us to live the great spiritual truths that now well up from within, from the Kingdom of God within our very souls. Dogmas fall away. Superstition dissolves. We awaken to a new life.

Our healing requires our active participation. As you know, I heartily recommend daily meditation, contemplation, study and prayer. 

I also recommend that we become observers of ourselves in a calm manner, and to reverse any thought, word or deed immediately that is not of the highest, most kind and compassionate. Nip every negativity in the bud, and then reverse it at once. Do not let weeds grow in heart and mind.

Let us become masters of ourselves so that we can be lights unto this weary world.

May God bless you on this journey.🙏

Saturday, March 25, 2023

What About This Life?

It seems that people have been trying to figure out what their life is ultimately about since humans first came upon the scene. I sometimes think of Shakespeare's:

 All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances...

We have played many parts in this particular life story in which we are playing currently, or as some suspect are concurrently playing with other stories in other dimensions, or as still others suspect in this chapter of a long string of life stories across the ages - or just maybe all of the above. We cannot be certain, we can only look at mostly circumstantial evidence.

I have read Ian Stevenson's and others' works on reincarnation, and they are quite convincing. There are evidences of it here and there in various scriptures - such as when Jesus asked who do people say I am? (They replied, "Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets."Nevertheless, it is this life of which we are currently aware that is where we can grow, expand, learn, and do. It is this particular life where we can fulfill our assignment/s or not.

We can look for patterns to discern what our assignment/s are. I seem to have born with a dual sign on my back - kick me, rise to the top of whatever you get into. I seem to have had an unusual portion of evil villains, extremely mentally ill people, and people who ask me to lead whatever, and those who hold me up and encourage me. I seem to have been given a double or triple dose of spiritual seeking, intuition, creativity, and resilience.

Sometimes I joke - standing in line, getting ready to come here, I signed up for multiples of everything - heck, I want to get all the karma over with and not necessarily have to come back to this planet again, at least unless I volunteer for some strange reason. But then, there is the odd chance I did volunteer this time.

What do we do with the patterns we see in our lives? 

First of all, I think we have to take the "negative" teachers and do what Job did - keep the faith, stay with God, don't give up. With the "positive" teachers I think we have to do what Jesus did -  don't fall into hubris, stay humble, stay loving, deflect: It's not I, it is the Father within doing the work; your faith made you whole, in the modern vernacular, don't buy your own press.

What difference does it make? That's where a lot of "modern" people, and probably people across history, miss it all. We all leave this stage. We all are accountable for our performances. We all have to experience a life review. We came here to learn. Did we? We came to this particular planet in this particular dimension where the curriculum focuses on love. Did we learn to love, to Be loving, to express compassion and all things related to unconditional love?

If we cannot give a resounding "yes" to the questions that will be coming our way when we leave here, there is time to do some repair work. Honestly survey your life. Are there people who need to be forgiven? Are there some kind and loving things we can do? Where can we be more like a child of God in our words, actions and deeds? What needs to change? Then do it, do it all. Become the best version of yourself.

Monday, March 20, 2023

The Holy Spirit Came When?

This morning I'm reading Origen, known as the first genius of Christian theology (185-253 C.E). One of the things he proposed was that the Holy Spirit came only to rare individuals, such as the prophets, before Jesus' ascent. After the ascent, the Holy Spirit was available to at least all of the followers of Jesus.

While I like a great deal of what Origen said, I disagree with this idea.

First of all, I think it ludicrous to think God, and the voice of Wisdom and Guidance that we now call The Holy Spirit, only became interested in us humans after Jesus left the planet. That God didn't guide people from the very first, but only very much later, is hubris of the first order. Only to "my" group makes no sense.

I heard this week that it is estimated that 99% of all written material from antiquity is lost to us, at least at this point. Civilizations rose and fell. Libraries were burned. Victors wiped out the cultures of the vanquished. History marched on. Some things got incorporated into the culture of the victors, but who knows what and why and how. It melded together or was discarded.

Also, there were very very very few literate people at any given time until quite recently, historically speaking. In the Roman Empire, it is thought that less than 5% of the people were literate. In the Middle Ages literacy was below 20% and did not increase until the Enlightenment and industrialization. 

Even so, we have some examples strewn across history of inspired people other than the Hebrew prophets. There were the well-known, such as Buddha, Lao Tse, Confucious, Plato, Aristotle and others, before Jesus' ascension. We can imagine other people sitting around a campfire, speculating about the big things, such as the meaning of life. And sometimes one or more at each campfire across thousands and thousands of years and all across this planet, had an epiphany, an aha moment that hit them and led them to know more. They couldn't write it down, or even if they could, it disintegrated between then and now or is buried under layers and layers of civilizations built upon other civilizations.

Just in my life, in conversations, people speak of inspired events in their lives, of moments of spiritual understanding and insight. Very few write them down to share with others in the future centuries.

In many of the ancient writings that we do have, Wisdom is spoken of with reverence. It was thought to come to at least some from something More. The Holy Spirit is our Counselor, our Guide, Wisdom expanded beyond our finite understandings. And I fervently believe that It is and was available to all open and seeking souls. May we be so open.

Thursday, March 16, 2023

Restoration

Yesterday my only first cousin and I met and hugged and talked for the first time in decades. We had lost touch, and because of Ancestry, we found each other again. He was the closest thing I had to a brother growing up. He's the only person left from my early life. It was wonderful. We will stay in touch.

Now I hope and pray the rest of my life will be restored. I am hoping this was the beginning, and the rest of my family will be restored and my assets returned. Perhaps this was a turning point.

That leads me to more restoration thoughts. Can we restore the original and brilliant teaching of Jesus, stripping away the questionable theologies heaped upon him over the centuries?

Can we restore the dream of so many of us, likely the vast majority of us, for peace. Can the crazed dictators and warmongers be stopped? Can sanity, compassion, dignity, kindness, forgiveness and essential goodness take the lead?

Can we restore logic, science, actual free speech and common sense? Can we stop the Marxist attempt to stop and demean  religion, destroy our values, redefine words, rewrite history, mock biology, and take down all free nations?

I think almost all of us want this restoration. Will we allow the tiny majority to stop us? In a real sense, the future awaits us to decide what it will be.

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

A Window to More

This morning a thought came to me that I want to share with you.

Jesus, among other things, was a window through which we can see our potential once we align with the Divine. So many hints - Greater things than this shall you do. Let you light shine. Our Father... 

He modeled what a life is like that is devoted to the Divine by his words and his deeds. He called to us to follow him - not to worship him.

I have a little challenge -re-read the Gospels from the point of view that Jesus is asking you to do greater things, to let your light shine, to remember we have one and the same Father, our Father, to see through the window he opened for us.

As we look through the window of Jesus, what do you see? What calls you to be more? How can you be the person he is presenting as your possible you?

Thursday, March 2, 2023

What Is Your Species?

I came across a twofold thought from Rudolf Steiner this week that tweaked my mind. 

First of all, he said that all humankind is one species. I have long thought that. We have minor variations in size, color of skin and eyes, etc. - surface stuff. But we are all human, of the same species. Or, I might say all children of the Divine and therefore siblings.

It's the second part that gave me a new thought. He went on to say that each individual soul is a species unto itself. No two are alike. We each have a different bio. We each have different memories. We each have our own prism through which we view and evaluate life. We each have known different people. We each have traveled in different times and to different places. We may have lived other lives, none alike. Who we show up to be is a mixture of all of this. 

That makes a lot of sense to me. And yet, I have a caveat - It is amazing how different and yet the same we are. Across history, we see so much that is alike. Humans want to love and be loved. Humans form families and care for one another.  Humans struggle with issues such as greed, lust, fear, hope, generosity, etc. Wars are fought and people die, often for seemingly trivial issues that could be talked out and hugged out.

People have spiritual urges and deep questions. People go on voyages and adventures in search of something. People can be heroic or cowardly, open or closed-minded, faith-filled or fear-filled, and on and on.

And yet, we actually are one species, within which we have unique lives. Perhaps if we looked at one another with this understanding, we could be more charitable in our interactions. 

If we saw that each person is a work of great art, created by God with details sculpted by life, we could love and appreciate one another more.