Feb 24, 2016

Prayer of St. Francis (30)

It is in dying to self that we are born
To eternal life. (2)

“We are one, after all, you and I,
Together we suffer, together exist,
And forever will recreate each other.”
                                         Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Born Again

When we say in the prayer “born to eternal life”, this refers to discovering that “Kingdom of God that lies within”, or heaven on earth. Yes, the purpose of life is to discover paradise on earth, that gift of heaven that is always waiting for us, right now, in this very moment. The joy of heaven is ours anytime we let ourselves enter the Kingdom that is always, always, within us, waiting for us, for as Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is within each of us. True Joy and Happiness occurs within, not from any external action. Even death as expressed by the release of our physical form is not a required part of our entering into the joys of eternal life. It is here, now, right at your fingertips.
We are eternal life! We will never die! We must understand that there is no “after life”, there is only Life Eternal. Our problem is that our ego has risen in strength to the point that we can no longer feel that we are part of eternity. By following the Prayer of St. Francis we unveil the path of discovery by reducing the effect of the ego so that the Kingdom of God shines forth in us and the veil has been removed, and we see we are in a world where God and I and you are One, walking in paradise each day, where the release of our physical body is nothing more than a shift in the Joy of God.
Thus we come to the end of these series on meditations on the Prayer of St. Francis, called by Alcoholics Anonymous the Prayer of Serenity. We have journeyed by this insightful prayer along a path into eternity. What do we Choose?

God is in No-Time

One of the most difficult concepts to understand is that God exists outside and inside our universe, in the space of ‘no-time’. That is, the concept of ‘time’ is a concept made up by humanity to express our intersection of our life with the eternal existence. Quantum physics and Einsteinium physics is clear on this: all we see is an illusion, as we are limited by our physical being to only see and feel a tiny part of the picture. God did not create us ‘then’, that is, at the moment of conception so that we can live ‘now’; no God created us in the Now, for all time is only Now in the time of the infinite, or no-time. As we were created ‘Now’, we were created in All of Time, just appearing in this ‘time’, but existing for all ‘time’ or all no-time, that is we have been around for eternity.
That would require a book to discuss, so maybe someday I will discuss that in much more detail.
Next I will start a long series on “Love’, using the letter to the Corinthians as a starting point that describes the characteristics of Love, but combined with the information from the letter of St. John that God is Love; and compare our beliefs about God to the definition of what and what is not love.

“And when he was demanded
by the Pharisees, when the Kingdom
of God should come, he answered them
and said, ‘The Kingdom of God comes not with
observation; Neither shall they say,
Lo here, or Lo there! For behold,
The Kingdom of God is within you.’ ”
                                   Luke 17:20-21

Questions to Ponder

Have you thought about your life, and how it compares with the utterances in the Prayer of St. Francis? Where could improvements lie?
Does the thought of being able to enter into that “Kingdom of God that lies within” bring any energy into the thought of changing something to bring you closer to that reality?

Meditation

Oh God, my Reality in truth, enable me to open my eyes to your paradise that is just out of sight, so that I may see Your Joy in eternity. For that reason I say:

“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”
If this meditation post has been helpful, I would appreciate it if you would pass it on or share it.