Mar 09, 2014

God is Love, and They who abide in Love, abide in God, and God in Them.

That blissful moment of time with my Eternal Wisdom occurred 46 years ago. Since that time I have continued the process: that glimpse of the Eternal Moment has continued to grow in strength, not at the same peak, but greater depth, an awareness that the event we have called “Heaven” lies right there, not someplace “up there”, beckoning us at all times, ready to be grasped and lived at any moment we wish. As Jesus said, “The kingdom of Heaven lies within you.” What an enormous statement that is not grasped by most religions, as it should form the focus of religious teachings, not just an afterthought as I have found it stated, if even commented on at all.

Life Continues

I have lived life, filled with Love and Despair in the agony of my Shadow, which sometimes threatened to engulf me. I have lived life, filled with the joys of parenthood and a wife whose Love surpasses understanding. I have lived life, surrounded by a God that would not let go, would not abandon me, would not take “no” for an answer, no matter what I did.

I have seen so many grasp a slice of heaven, filled with joy, then as time goes by, a year, perhaps two years or even three, these moments become a memory, something they thank me for, or not, and then they wonder off filled with the everyday life of family, work, and just things. There is always a reason: the kids have to get ready for school every day, work to attend to, meals to cook, kids homework to be looked over, classes to attend, meetings and sporting events we must attend; life fills every moment of every day and there is no time left but to just collapse in front of the tv and veg out.

My life too was immediately filled with Life. Our fourth daughter was born 10 days after that event, December 13, 1967. Our oldest was five. My wife almost died in childbirth with the well known killer of new mothers, Puerperal fever, or childbed fever, but she survived that episode. We had three more children later, all boys, and that problem did not reappear. I had started a new business six months earlier, and we were very busy trying to survive and feed the family. (That business failed two years later, but that is another story.)

But somehow God kept poking at me. As promised, I began seeing how God's words and prodding were appearing in my life, and I became tuned to watching for them carefully. I met weekly with a group from the movement I had gone on retreat, and an older women joined our group. She walked with a limp, spoke with an accent, and I was not anxious to meet one-on-one with her, as was our process every week to meet with someone to share our week. A few weeks later I was with her, and had my eyes opened, as God had promised. Her name was Irmis Poppov, a teacher and student of the great mystic Gurdjieff and his student Ouspensky, the founders of The Fourth Way, as it is known. Irmis introduced me to the study of these mystics, which I have continued to this day, and I soon realized she was a mystic in her own right, talking and arguing with God, often loudly as she put it, as she saw fit. Irmis became my mentor, and guide, until I moved upstate in very early 1971. She was gifted with the Sight, urging me on, encouraging me to listen to the voice inside, always, and teaching me that God is there for the asking, just waiting for me to listen and look – inside , but often outside, too. One never knows where God will appear, as, after all, God is All in All, every Space that is, filing everything, and as I came to understand, is Everything, truly the All in All, the I Am, the Only Thing That Is.

Truly Jesus put it correctly when he said, “What you do to others you do to Me.” As Jesus said, we are all one. What we do to/for another we do for all, including that we do it to/for ourselves.

Keeping the Sense of God Alive

In order to keep God fresh in our minds, we have to keep God fresh in our mind. That is, every day, without fail, some type of prayer or placing oneself in the arms of God and sinking, if only for a few seconds, into that realm of Heaven that is always there,waiting for us. One of the best times is first thing in the morning, as one is waking and rising, to breath in and out a couple of times, deeply, and placing oneself in the breath of God, thanking God for another day.

Yes, our Shadow will always be there. But that Shadow is a necessary part of being human, held by all humans at all times. Our Dark Side is what makes us human, giving us compassion and forgiving others with their Dark Side, or Shadow, as we all seek to be the greatest version of the greatest vision of ourselves we ever had.

One of the features of the Shadow is that it is usually careful not to appear illogical. Our Shadow will tell us we do not have time for such selfish events as personal prayer, that that time should be filled with Important Things, such as the kids sporting events, homework, tv, folding the wash, more tv, etc. after all, we deserve some peace and quiet ourselves, sometime when we can just relax and be. Thus more tv. TV while folding the wash, tv while eating, tv while —– you name it, always something to keep your mind filled,with everything but God. How often I walk into a house to visit a friend, and the tv is on, just on, filling the space with noise and action, making it impossible to have a conversation with any meaning.

I will admit that I stopped watching almost all tv many years ago, as I found the visual action too much to avoid, and if it is on, I watch like a magnet. I found this annoying, and the only tv we have is in the family room in the basement, where I can go watch or not as I see fit. Most evenings when home I sit in the living room reading or writing. I watch no news willingly, as almost all news drives my depressive nature, and there is nothing I need to know that I can not gather in two minutes on CNN or a glimpse of the newspaper headlines. Rarely is there anything that requires deeper knowledge, as it is only information, little if anything we can do anything about.

<

p style=”text-align: center;”>Life continues, hopefully a little richer each day with a growing immersion with our Eternal Wisdom, our God.