| To My Children's Children's Children A collection of perspectives that outline the structure of my internal life which I wish to share, both in the interest of being better known, and of imparting useful information. A bunch of ideas constructed with the idea that they might be important and useful enought o pass on to my progeny. This is just the start of my though process, an exploration. I include it here merely for your amusement and not as the presentation of a finished, a comprehensive work. • We are already eternal, so get used to it. There’s no need to be concerned with saving your soul or anyone else’s. Your status as "saved" is a forgone conclusion, so stop being so dramatic and get on with the real business of existence. • The real business of existence is simple: to give and receive love. • Love is the literal "stuff" out of which all things are made. Really, there is nothing else. • We are spiritual beings having a physical experience, not the other way around. • It is partially true to describe our experience on this Earth as being in a great big schoolroom, and we have many lessons to learn. • It would seem that Nature always leads towards higher states, more comprehensive structures, and ever more variability. • This suggests that we are "going somewhere", or traveling along a progressive, developmental, sequential path of growth towards ever more sublime forms and expressions. • While this understanding holds true in a linear understanding of the world, a non-spacio-temporal perspective supports the idea of points on the continuum being present at the same moment, therefore, your eventuality as a highly realized being not only exists in the distant future, but in the eternal now. This sounds paradoxical, but it is functionally true. • Paradox is woven into the fabric of all existence, get used to it. • Presently, we live in a world of duality- right/wrong, yes/no, male/female, up/down, you get the picture. The operative dynamic that allows us to learn in this plane is a universal system of checks and balances called Karma. • Karma is like water. To the inexperienced, it is overwhelming. Their fear causes them to thrash around causing great waves, exhausting themselves and injuring others. The skillful know that it surrounds them on all sides, yet like good swimmers, they realize that it creates both resistance and propulsion. Their experience is one of movement and joyful play. To the masterful, the experience is of great depth, clarity and stillness, for like water, the more you try to grasp it, the more it slips through your fingers. • Karma is infinite, but its perpetuity is that of a loop. It’s like getting lost and discovering that you have been walking in circles in the forest. As soon as you awaken to your predicament, you change your course of action and get out of the loop. • Grace overrides Karma, always. • Grace is a pure Divine gift. It is simply not possible to achieve or earn it, however, you can ask that Grace be given with a sincere heart and it’s transmission will arrive instantly and without fail. • Learn to live a Grace-filled life. Activation is required, and you must choose to be an agent of this Law for it to enter into the sphere of your life or the lives of others. To do so is to embody the understanding that you have immediate access to Divine power. After all, isn’t it a good idea to avail yourself to a resource that is a million times smarter and a million times more powerful than you? It just makes sense. • Linus (from Charles Schulz’ Peanuts cartoon) was right. The Great Pumpkin only visits the most sincere pumpkin patch. Stated differently, Sincerity is important. From the higher realms we are utterly transparent. It is not even remotely possible to lie or cheat. • The experience of living with Karma is, "I learn through pain and struggle". The experience of living with Grace is, "I learn though joy and play". • Surrender is part of the equation. • Surrender is acting on the understanding that you and the Divine are one. You simply trust that the Divine is continually creating an optimal template for any situation and give up your desire to control events. • The Divine does not get caught up in our emotional dramas and troubles. From the perspective of the Divine, everything is always perfect, always changing, and beautifully magnificent without blemish of any kind. Everything is already more than OK, it’s we humans who have a difficult time understanding this. • Cessation of suffering, in and of itself, is not the goal of the Divine directive. Awakening is. The Divine is not interested in relieving the pain of your symptoms which might then allow you to slip back into the comfortable slumber of your disfunctions and addictions. All emotions, experiences, and expressions are tools for the conscious being acting in co-creation with Divine intelligence to become awake. • The development of will is another cornerstone of what we are essentially about. • Will is both "activation", "choice", and the clarified vision of one’s desire. The capacity to be "directive" in thought, deed, or essence is a primal power. • I will to will Thy Will. This is a very powerful statement. It means: I choose to activate the fullness of the Divine plan. It is the trusting surrender of the personal agenda for the unfoldment of the Larger Story. • Freewill is paramount to our full development from protoplasm to metadaelions, We are allowed and encouraged to make mistakes, even big ones! The history of the human species is about creating and recreating our selves and our world in beautiful, ridiculous, inventive, and foolish ways. We are playing in the sandcastles of illusions that we have all agreed to believe in. All of this is exactly what we should be up to, it is the operative dynamic of life on this plane. We are also encouraged, through the repercussions of our actions and creations, to learn through experience the actual nature of both ourselves and our creations. The Divine will never compromise a being’s freewill. To do so would be to compromise the potency and integrity of this process. • Divine guidance is also not achieved. It is allowed. Its is not given to some and not to others, it does not matter what state the person or soul is at to receive guidance or Grace. It is always given freely, and it is always exactly correct in it’s suitability, both to the human circumstance it is addressing and in accordance with Divine Law. It is never invasive, however, and can easily be overridden by our freewill which is often in service to the ego. • Evil, as we know it, exists only within the human sphere. Look out at nature and all the wide variety of other living things and ask "where is evil?" You will not find it because it doesn’t exist. It is a testament to the bloated self-importance of human beings that we would explode this notion to the point of imagining that it is cosmic in scale and that there is a war in Heaven. There is not. Furthermore there is no Heaven either. • Heaven is not a unified singularity. If we were to be ushered in to the "Heaven" of our religious imaginings, it would be less than 1% of the majesty and glory of that which the Divine is capable of. The long-hallowed version of Heaven propagated by the Paleo-Christians is a very static conception which forbids change, clearly a universal constant. • There is no "sin" either. Call it unskilled behavior if you like, but the only "judgment" of your "sin debt" you will ever receive is that which you levy upon yourself on an ongoing basis. The Divine pours out an unceasing abundance of unconditional love without regard for whether you are deserving or not. Even if you deem yourself unworthy, this love is constantly available to you. Sin is akin to shame, which is self generating, and an insidious misunderstanding of our basic nature. • Original sin in incorrect. Original Grace is the reality. • Regarding Heaven and Hell. This is a a dualistic, polarized, and naïve fabrication. If the world is reduced to black and white, all the many colors in between are lost. I, personally, have never met anyone deserving of either never-ending pain and torment or eternal membership to that pearly gated community where the streets are paved with gold. • Heaven is here. Hell is here. The universe is a very big place and there is room for every variety of experience. • It is as the Sufis say— "There are as many paths to the Divine as there are people to walk them." • The whole world, and the whole of life itself is a constant outpouring of the Divine, trying to give itself to you. In a billion ways, in each and every second, the Divine is showing you with a great outpouring of loving abundance. • Our task is to learn to receive this. It is a voluntary task. We can choose. • It is as the Sufis say— "There are as many paths to the Divine as there are people to walk them." • A mystic has his or her own revelations. Become a mystic. • A mystic understands that revelations given freely from the Divine enters through a billion different doorways. It is reductionistic to suggest that they will only enter through the doorway of the conscious mind. It is also a mistake to make the mind the judge and arbitrator of the value of your experience. A spectrum of experiences and ways to receive those experiences are available to you. • A mystery religion is one in which one entered into experience with the Divine with the attitude of receptive unknowing, and spent time in periods of deep reflection in order to allow for epiphanic insights to emerge from the totality of the experience. Meet the Divine with the spirit of the mystery religions. • Enlightenment is ordinary. As they say in Zen, "After enlightenment— the laundry." • The Devil is part of our disowned past. It is from a primitive image that we all carry within the depths of our memory as a people. Imagine a genetic memory of an ancient hunter, bathed in the red light of the campfire which flickers in the foreground. The skins tied around his waist make him appear to be part beast. He clutches a spear, leaping and dancing, as he retells the events of the bison hunt, wearing the horns upon his head to better dramatize his tale. Consider that this scene was played out every night for several hundred thousand years and the fact that it resides firmly at the root of your deep subconscious mind. There you have the later image of the Christian Devil. That hunter image is not only benign, but far more vital to our core nature than our recently acquired modernity. • Working deeply on yourself is a practical and effective means of changing the world. • Your personal history, and even the history of the world is not a static, immutable object. It is subjective, changeable, and biased. Choose another past or future if you like, you’ll notice that what appear to be solid events quickly transform in the light of a different perspective. It’s also possible to release yourself from the constraints of identifying yourself with your often rehearsed narrative. Let it go and be free, full of emptiness. • We are always engaged in the business of reinforcing self identity. We spend tons of energy involved in the existential pursuit of subconsciously asking one question, over and over, "who am I?" We answer this on a primal level by taking in the room, bodily sensations, spacial relationships, etc. We also practice our imagined self-concept mentally and emotionally over and over again. We seem to forget that this is not our essence self, but a cumulative and causal composite created in large part out of random factors and defined by reaction rather than authentic will. We can change all this. • Women and Men may be intrinsically different, but we have all incarnated any times as members of both the sexes, so our predicament begins and ends with ourselves. • The above is also true of racial, cultural, religious and other differences. • The yoga of relationship is as intensive and valid a way to awakening as any other. • Our language is severely limited in its ability to communicate spiritual truths and experiences. "Speaking the word that cannot be spoken" is a phrase that I use to describe the process that happens when insights seem to travel between the words during a conversation charged with a certain simpatico and intention to share ideas. written May 18, 2000 title: The Moody Blues, of course |