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That In Which We Live, Move, and Have Our Being

Category: Transformation

We Are Too Often Blind; You Must Unlearn All That You Have Learned

May 21, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Too often we are ill equipped to embark on a spiritual life. Even if we have been raised in the Church in Europe or America we are overly rationalistic and materialistic. Somehow we decided, largely due to the dominant fiction of Scientism – the cultic belief that science can explain everything of value in the world – that despite the fact that every human society and culture that has existed or does exist acknowledges (or at least explores,) the existence of a spiritual reality of some kind. Even in America we have begun to understand that sometimes health conditions are caused by mental and spiritual conditions. We are, as I have always preached, not physical creatures with a body, a mind, and a soul. Instead the truth is we are body/mind/soul creatures and everything is harmoniously interconnected. At least it is supposed to be harmoniously integrated and interconnected.

Welcome to the Nature’s God Blog for 20240519 Grace and Peace to you.

There is something very, very real about a war between good and evil. If you have been told there is no evil then please stay with me. I was raised with the idea of Spiritual Warfare, angels, demons, and many misconceptions that come with that – one of which you can read about if you read about the exorcism I conducted of a church – an exorcism that I thought was going to be a simple cleansing of residual negative feelings but found…suddenly…that I was facing an actual entity; an evil entity that according to all that I had read and be taught should not have even been able to enter church grounds let alone come to dominate them. I also knew that I was not alone that a Divine power was assisting me and communicating with me throughout the ordeal. The fight was by no means as certain or direct as you would see on TV or sometimes hear from a pulpit. As is so often true in life even if the end is certain because God is With You – that does not mean the resolution is going to be an easy matter or that you don’t have to work for it.

These entities I describe as evil. There is a deep hunger that can never be satisfied. It is a hunger for life that feeds on pain, fear, and suffering. In my mind the best way to describe such an overwheening desire and hunger for suffering and pain is evil. To me, living for the suffering of others or living in a way that causes the suffering of others is evil – or at the very least demonically insensitive.

One thing I have often mentioned is that most of the references to Satan in the English Old Testament are not a capital “S” Satan but a lower “s” satan. Satan means “enemy, adversary, prosecutor, etc.” There IS a big “S” Satan but most of the references to Satan that you read in the Old Testament are “enemies” of life and the Divine and not “The Devil” but devils, efreets, and other creatures just as most “angels” are a variety of creatures and not only the human shaped winged creatures we have been taught to imagine.

So, if you have trouble with “evil” maybe it is due to the over-used and sometimes comical simplicity of how good and evil are portrayed. I want to ensure that you understand my paradigm and definition.

Know that there is a Source of Life that I call God/the Divine/Source of Life/The Ground of All Being/etc. As I have said before I could care less what name you choose to give it if you are speaking of the Entity or Force that strengthens life, maintains or instigated the laws of physics and nature, and whose creative force initiated the Big Bang – quite possibly from the power of the Word. Then we are speaking of the same thing. I would include the Tao although those who follow Tao would say it has no intelligence, I have learned a lot about the Holy Spirit by studying understandings of the Tao. I suggest that perhaps Tao has an intelligence that you simply don’t recognize because it is not human.

The creatures that are evil have cut themselves off from this Source and therefore they are always “hungry” for survival. Since they have cut themselves off from the Source of life. But just as we need to convert food to energy to live they need energy to maintain their spiritual existence. They therefore have a parasitic existence by feeding off of (not the Source itself but by sucking the “life” out of,) the Source’s creatures that are still connected to the Divine Source – even if it is only residually so. They feed by creating “anti-life/anti-existence.” If truly living is having an abundant life they suck the energy of that life away by causing, fear, pain, suffering, and hatred. They do this not only just to survive but because of their jealousy and hatred of all things still connected to and created by the Source. They seem to feel they are exacting a kind of vengeance by twisting, warping, scarring, and destroying life and its quality.

We are born with our connection to the Divine but every decision we make that is “not God” [see also The Vital Truth of Life – ofNaturesGod.com ] moves us farther from the Source and closer to oblivion because we are not strong enough spiritual creatures to even survive in the “outer darkness” where the “evil” creatures were banished after they rebelled against the Divine.

So, that was all for anyone who have not been with us long enough to have “context.”

The battle between good and evil won a great victory for “evil” when the Western World became skewed and convinced in Scientism and the break between the spiritual and physical worlds as if they were different or even worse that there is NOTHING but the physical world. A lie that most of us have, at some level, been taught in America and Europe if we were born after 1900. It is a dead end that we are coming to that the Western World started down just over a hundred years ago. It is not the Western World it is a mutation of the Western World.

We are not physical beings but body/mind/soul creatures that are an organic/spiritual whole. The physical and spiritual are one but we have been raised in a world that directly cuts us off from the spiritual. We were conditioned by an infant “science” that could only focus on the physical and spread the belief of “radical materialism” that there IS no spiritual. This is really a fascinating development when testimony from every human society in every time and age has affirmed that there IS a spiritual world. Now medical science has come to realize that just as 50% of all cures with medicine are actually a “placebo” affect where the person heals themselves because they “believe” that they took a cure. So, they are beginning to understand that perhaps 50% or more of disease (read this as dis – ease) is actually caused by a dis-ease in the mental or spiritual whelm. Life is not physical or spiritual it is like science has discovered with the particle and wave physics (look it up with the particle/wave observer effect). They are both depending upon the observer but the physical reality is that existence is both.

Reality is a physical and spiritual reality that are not separate but a kind of unified field and we are not whole creatures unless we can perceive it as such. Because we have been formed in a world that told us all this is “just your imagination” or “that was a dream.” Then most of us have to do a great deal of work in order to learn to “see” because being raised in “radical materialism” we have to work at something that, when we are born, comes naturally to all of us.

I remember when my son first told me of “an invisible friend.” He was at an age where he could explain it and we could talk about it (about six or so.) I asked, “What did she look like?” He described a girl in a white shift that went down to her ankles. She had black hair beneath her shoulders and dark eyes.” I nodded an asked, “Did you feel scared or did she try to hurt you in any way.” “No she just surprised me and knocked me over. Actually, I don’t know if she knocked me over or if I fell backwards to keep from running into her.” I nodded again. “Yes, I have seen her too. I don’t believe that she means any harm she has just come to us because we are able to see her and most people have convinced themselves that what they are seeing isn’t real. So you need to be careful who you talk to about this because most people, even your mother’s family, are scared of this stuff and will insist it is your imagination because they don’t want to deal with it.”

I tried to raise all of my sons like that, however, my two oldest sons were the product of a marriage that was not a good match and my ex-wife worked very very hard at making sure they understood what she believed was “real” and what wasn’t. My sister maintained regular contact with her and by the time she was older I think she came around but she had rejected much of what we had encountered when married and convinced herself that it never happened. Likewise, when we ran out of gas on a Sunday and all of the gas stations were closed (yes it was a while ago and we were not near an interstate.) We prayed and drove an additional half hour on an empty tank. I suggest you not “test” that because “tests” where we don’t fully believe don’t do well. Somehow, my oldest son, convinced himself that we “had made that all up” for some reason. I asked him why we would lie to him like that? And he gave some vague answer that revealed he simply did not want to believe because belief held other ramifications for him he was not ready to deal with.

Be aware, don’t force this on people. Some cannot deal with it.

I had five parishioners/farmers standing around trying to get my tiller to work to get my garden ready. They all looked at it. We even took it apart. It seemed to be getting air, spark, and fuel so there was no reason why the simple engine didn’t work. But we had all tried it. One by one, farmers drove by and saw the pastor and others standing around the tiller and stopped to help. But none of us could get it to run. They all had to look for themselves and ensure that it had all three elements and that none of us could figure out why it wasn’t working. “Well,” I said. “We haven’t prayed over it and I’m the pastor so lets try that.” We joined hands and I prayed, “Lord, we have all tried to get this machine work and we cannot do it. We don’t see anything wrong with it but there is work to be done. Grant us your blessing and bring this machine to life so that I can get my garden ready for planting. In Christ’s name we pray.” We then tried the cord again and it started on the first pull. Eyebrows went up. There had been some chuckling when I suggested praying but, after all, I was the pastor so they did it. “Hmm” and “I’ll be damned, sorry pastor.” were the only comments I got, and then everyone left.

The physical and spiritual world are not separate. All are one. There is not a “spiritual reality” and a “physical reality” there is simply reality and the radical materialism found and propounded by modern scientism (the belief that science can find and define anything “real,”), and the emphasis on capitalistic consumerism, and communism which are all radical materialistic ways of understanding. Even our religions separate the material and spiritual as if “spiritual” is what you do at church and then you “put it away” to get on with life the other six days of the week. One advantage Catholicism can have is the availability of mass every day of the week in most places.

All of this is in the Bible because a unity and reality and omnipresence of the spiritual was assumed by everyone who wrote the Bible. As Jesus would say, “Let those who have eyes to see, let them see.” or “Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Yet most of us have been taught to not see, and to not hear. We must unlearn, all that we have learned.

If this is very foreign to you you might try reading the Rhineland mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, the Gospel of John, Theresa of Avila, or any of the multitude of Christian mystics. There are other mystical traditions but the Western mind is not conditioned for Eastern thinking and most I have encountered who try make mistakes because they are looking at them through Western Eyes. They don’t have the “full moon sight” as discussed by good Shotokan Karate instructors and other marital arts ways.* Irish and Celtic traditions are closer but many who claim to follow them do not fully attain a Celtic way of thinking. The best introduction in my view is looking at Celtic Christian mystics because they are speaking from a Western way of thinking with a Celtic mindset – only without the blocks of “modern” Westernism. There is no way for us to fully recover ancient Celtic or Nordic thought because it died out due to lack of written record. We may approach it but it will always be colored by the radically materialistic world that we were raised in. Please note, as you will if you begin reading the Rhineland and Spanish mystics of the Middle Ages (although some translations work hard at translating these ideas into a radical materialistic paradigm and are not very useful. English, unfortunately, is an extremely materialistic language and not very good at spiritual matters. If you can fully learn German it will help open your mind – especially when you start reading German philosophy where the physical and spiritual are much more “real” and enterwined. Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft are a basic concept and we only really have half of it in English/American Western Culture. Again, our Western Culture is not real, it has been warped by radical Materialism but it is through Western Mysticism that we can most quickly and easily move back into the spiritual realm.

Christian mystics, Rosicrusians, can sometimes help depending on the prejudices of those you encounter. I am told the books The Burning Bush; Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and the Holy Scriptures: Terms and Phrases by Edward Reaugh Smith can help those well steeped in Christian background find the truths that they can glean from scripture. While Rudof Steiner’s book can. also be good books for beginners. The great morass of spiritual and mystical writing which you can find in an occult bookstore is a good way to spin your wheels and get nowhere for most modern books are written by dabblers who don’t really seem to understand what they are talking about and you will get lost in a surface study and never find your way out of the wading pool of knowledge they place you in.

You are a child of God and God’s Spirit was implanted in you at Birth (or conception,) and if you need help all you have to do is sincerely ask and then pay attention! The answer may not always come in the form you are expecting.

More advanced readers can find practices in Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Jospeh J. Weed. I caution you though there are not a lot of advanced readers because, in the words of Yoda (and nearly every other mystic master you may encounter,) you must first “unlearn all that you have learned.”

The illusion of multiplicity that the Unity is sometimes presented as and the illusion of Unity of this Multiplicity is another “wave/particle” dichotomy you must come to understand.

The impatience of our society has caused too many students I have spoken with try to rush on to studies they are not ready for and sometimes disaster and destruction in their life has resulted and ultimately they turn away or lose themselves in the oblivion of drink as they are unable to reconcile their worlds, and return (with a vengeance,) to the world and paradigm of radical materialism. They, in the language of Star Wars, were tempted by the Dark Side and, because they were not yet ready for the challenge, they failed.

Somewhere, somehow, you must begin to unlearn your “radical materialist” beliefs to remove the blinders you were almost certainly raised with. People who are born with a deep understanding of this unity of physical and spiritual (in our society,) usually are drugged so heavily to make them “normal” that their “spiritual sight” is completely blinded. I was fortunate in that I had the parents that I had and a sister who was more than a decade older and had “the sight,” as did my brothers but one lost himself in alcohol and another simply seems to have ignored it. Even so, it was not an effortless journey for me and others seem to have a much harder time. I have come to realize that my upbringing and the writings I was exposed to were unique, then again, progressing to reading the Lord of the Rings in Second Grade probably gave me a head start as well as wondering through the dusty books of the stacks at the university among books that had not been checked out in over 70 years that probably helped as well.

There is no physical world and a spiritual world. There is a physical/spiritual world that is all around us. There is no “supernatural” all is natural and part of the Design, it is supranatural to our understanding.

So, I wish you good growth as you unlearn all that you have learned. Grace and Peace to you.

Above I made a comment of martial arts and full moon sight. Here is a more detailed explanation to introduce the idea to you:

*The full moon sight is an example of ideas of East and West and the depth of ideas. Like the existence of cherry blossoms as a sign of the brief and fleeting beauty of life and the immanence of death, in Japanese stories one need only show or mention a cherry blossom and all of those ideas and understanding are brought to the fore but for the Western it is just a flower. The Full moon sight is a simple phrase that Westerners may have to spend months or even years studying to fully understand. he concept of the moon hold significance in various martial arts philosophies (so martial artists may have some concept of this, that was where I first learned of it in Shotokan Karate by Sensei Schmidt and his classes on Martial Arts and Martial Culture through the classes, and practices. Martial Arts that does not try to teach the philosophy is like a child building blocks but never learning engineering.

For instance, in Karate, there’s a stance called Hangetsu-dachi or Half-moon stance1. This stance is part of the Hangetsu Kata, which emphasizes breathing, focus, and the flow of movements that are both circular and powerful, much like the phases of the moon.

Moreover, martial arts philosophies, such as those expressed by Bruce Lee, often draw parallels between the adaptability and formlessness of water and the moon’s influence on i2. Bruce Lee’s famous quote, “Be like water,” reflects the idea of being adaptable and resilient, qualities that are also enhanced by the calm and reflective nature of a full moon night.

The full moon can also symbolize the peak of one’s martial arts journey, where the practitioner has gathered knowledge and is now reflecting upon it, much like the moon reflects the sun’s light. It’s a time for introspection and understanding the depth of one’s skills and philosophy.

In traditional Chinese philosophy, which influences many martial arts, the moon’s phases are linked to the Yin and Yang, representing balance and harmony, essential principles in martial arts training and executio3.

Overall, the full moon can be seen as a metaphor for the martial artist’s pursuit of balance, clarity, and the peak of their personal development. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, I recommend reading about the philosophies of martial arts masters and how natural elements are incorporated into their teachings. All of this, and more, are encompassed in the phrase “full moon sight” but if you weren’t raised in the background of it then you have to relearn all of it before it can make complete sense to you. This is just a fragment of one example for you to consider.

The Vital Truth of Life

March 3, 2024 / / 1 Comment

Today’s Society and Life is a lie. You can tell it is a lie and that nearly everything is in service to The Lie because it makes you feel empty or anxious inside. It doesn’t call to you. Real life stirs something in your soul and makes you feel alive.

Thousands of years ago Herodotus wrote: “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.”

About a thousand years later Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.” Same sentiment.

You see the Truth does not change over time. Humanity is basically the same as he was thousands of years ago and we react and live responding or not responding to life activating or not activating the emotions, passions, and acts that we are called to do. Our best chance at real living comes when Our Truth most closely aligns with The Truth. The idea that there is no truth is part of The Lie.

The lies they feed you change constantly.

A Marxist radical from the SDS once wrote: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” This statement highlights the idea that the apparent cause of a political action—whether it’s civil rights, women’s rights, transgender, or any other issue—is not the true focus. This is what people don’t get as good honest people fight one lie after another and wonder where they all come from. They come from the BIG LIE.

The Big Lie has two radically materialist ways of thinking – both take you farther from the Creator. One Lie is that of Neo-Marxism while the other is Robber Baron Radical Materialist Capitalism that devours everything it touches and crushes the free market under its totalitarian control of the market, crushing all seeds of opposition and competition as its poisons our lives and our environment and defies any hope of Free Enterprise. But, while we are distracted from the Truth by these Lies we see that both lies solely serve the diabolical path of the accumulation of power and resources into the hands of radical materialists underscoring the Machiavellian approach of prioritizing of the means over the end. Flexibility and opportunism is the key to revolutionary agendas and the Lie is that we must choose between the totalitarian Neo-Marxist’s Lies or the totalitarian world-eating consumerism forced on us by Robber Barons and Finance Capitalists.

From one we have a history of over 100 million lives snuffed out in the 20th century on the altar of Marxism and on the other we are handed a marketing triumph by people who are happy to see millions die of complications to a “perfectly safe” vaccine that causes greater instances of myocarditis and blood clots than the disease it was created for had of instances of death. Apparently, all is fine as long as it gives good returns on the balance sheets. And if it kills millions of youth between 18 and 52 – (an age group that was not even at high risk for Covid), apparently that is an idea that the caretakers of Societies Lies don’t feel they need to look into.

I suppose a third lie is the lie of Scientism where Dr. Fauci claimed that even if millions were to die because of a compromise of the security of a lab doing gain of function research the price would be worth it. Well, it did happen, millions did die, and it wasn’t worth it.

The Lie brings Death. God and the true path brings life and vitality.

Neither of these lies are Truth. They are not our only choices. I would call the Truth to be a Vitalist Truth. What I call Vitalism is that very essence which gives society, politics, family, and life itself meaning. The Vital Essence of Life is action and passion; it is fully participating in the life you have been given. Christ did not come and lock himself away in a monastery (although some may be legitimately called to do that, a monastic life if NOT a life of doing nothing but of actively engaging in prayer and the life of the monastery Ora Et Labora – as Saint Benedict would say,) Christ came and lived vitally and fully, The prophets came to call the World back to life; to bring it into accordance with the Vital Essence of Life Itself. As Herodotus said:

Truth does not change with the needs of the Revolution. Truth is Eternal.

There is a Divine Truth embedded in the Creation and science was originally envisioned as a way of learning about the Creator through the study of the Creation. It is only with the assumption that the world makes sense, that it was created with Intelligent Design that the pursuit of Science makes any sense at all. If the creation is random and without purpose then there would be no way to study it and no underlying order to discover. But there is.

By studying the very essence of Creation as a way of getting into the mind of the Creator – just as you can get to the mind of an artist by studying their creations. Now Science has delved deep enough it is leading us back to the Creator as it repeatedly points to an Intelligent Design and the God Hypothesis as the most logical answer to the questions that the cutting-edge scientists are now asking. Of course, that is only the Scientists who are dedicated to finding the underlying truth of the facts and data wherever their science takes them rather than modern science which is enslaved to the monetary donor of the research dollar or simply to the lie of Scientism.

The idea that Science has all the answers is a non-theist religion called Scientism and it is as empty as the Materialistic society that it has co-opted and poisoned against the vital message of Life and the Creator.

America was originally called to be a shining city on the hill, ONE NATION, UNDER GOD! But the lies in our society have warped it away from the vital essence of Life itself. An essence the founders believed in when they said “We hold these things to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Herodotus said it first, but Jefferson and Adams could have just as readily have said: “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.” Jefferson, Paul Revere, John Adams, Sam Adams, and Ben Franklin and Washington were all vitally engaged in the actions and passions of their time and as such they are an example to all who have silent in the silent majority.

Do you feel passion in your life? For your life? Do you wake up with a joy to face the sunrise of another day with your children, your dog, and your cats (both of whom are already waiting at the food dish for you!)

Do you feel the joy your dog does at the simple reality of another meal?

Herodotus said all life is action and passion, Jesus said, I come that you might have life and have it abundantly. He wasn’t talking about things that leave you empty inside and fill your house choking your joy of life with clutter or things that keep you too to busy to actually live. He was talking about being filled with the experience of Living! Do you feel it? That is the Vitalist Essence of the message and meaning of life is.

The secret meaning of Life is that you are supposed to LIVE IT;

Tony Campolo said that many of us say the prayer “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my Soul to take.” But, he says, what we should be praying “Is if I wake before I die,” because most of us go through life as if we are half dead already.

Experience it and let it fill you with wonder at the bloom, the wind in the trees, or the toddler taking his or her first step. Interestingly enough Hebrew mystics taught that the orgasm was the moment when we most closely felt the joy that God felt in the moment of Creation the Bible says that the Spirit of Wisdom danced for joy with the Creator at the Creation. Our moment of Creation is a sign of The Creation. Only God didn’t abort it, even in the time of Noah he preserved the seed of new life.

Jesus called us to abundant living. Living each moment to the full! That is so different from the empty and angry existence Radical Materialists like the Capitalist Robber Barons and Neo-Marxist demonstrators that see us only as consumers and the Godless Marxists who see us as tools to bring about the Revolution, and angrily shout down reason and thought.

In Ecclesiastes 9:7-10a we find one of my favorite passages to preach on and which I have never heard anyone else preach on (the lectionary misses it by one verse) – probably because they have a translation that views Ecclesisastes as totally cynical instead of reading it with acceptance for the world God has made.

Now I am not Catholic, but the New Catholic Bible gets the essence of this passage right:

 7 Go forth, then. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God long ago approved what you do. 8 At all times dress in white garments and always anoint your head with oil.

9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love throughout all the days of your allotted span of life that have been given to you under the sun, because that is your lot while you live and labor here under the sun. 10a Whatever task your hand finds to do, expend all your efforts on it,

Here is just one example of the lies our society shoves into our lives. Such examples can be repeated by you many times over, pick a search engine. (I won’t say which I used but it is common for both Google, Bing, and some others that the big names have bought up and mutated to serve their anti-life, consumerist, radical materialistic agenda, ignoring what you really want to sell you a cheap substitute even as it offers a materialistic and cheap substitute for life itself. I typed in the search engine “Canva.com official website” (yeah, I should have just used the icon I had saved but I come from a time when Search Engines actually tried to find what you were looking for instead of feeding you more of The Lie. My search came back, and the first page didn’t even have canva as a choice! And, excuse me but I think that “Canva.com official website” is specific enough so that if the search engine actually wanted to serve it could do so.

But, like everything else in this sick society of lies it takes you on it’s own twisting algorithm away from the real life that God is calling you to and into an empty substitute. I got Vistaprint, Ninja Transfers, Lulu.com, RocketLawyer? and Paperculture, but NO CANVA.COM. Apparently, Canva didn’t bribe them sufficiently to be on the first page. NO CANVA.COM when I very clearly asked for it. If you are still using Bing, Google, Yahoo, or any of the conglomerate owned algorithm driven monstrosities you are just asking to be lied to and manipulated. I don’t know. Some people may feel more comfortable in the anti-life because then they never need to address the emptiness that is in them that way they can just stay busy doing nothing all day and not thinking or living. Our society that has been warped and wrenched from the natural world is an aberration and parody of life. It is so antithetical to the one we were created to live in that we don’t even notice there is anything wrong, the lie is too big, repeated too often, and yelled at us daily that we cannot hear the truth.

And too often our churches are empty echo chambers of an empty society that don’t stimulate us to life either. Jesus didn’t come to uphold the institutions and to be an opiate of the masses. He came to call us back to life!

We just lumber on like mindless zombies in a Romero Zombie Movie blindly shuffling back and forth to work or to the mall but understanding no more of what we do in the heartless and mindless shuffle that we never realize that whether we are a zombie or “living” we are existing in an evil construction of the Enemy. We live in An Anti-Life Parody of the true LIFE that God calls us too.

“I come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

That is what the noise of society is trying to distract you from. Are you living abundantly? Is your life full? Are you living with the wife that you love and among the children of your youth, or old and among your children’s children? Does your job leave you fulfilled and full of life? Do your thoughts? Are your musings something God would welcome?

I had a seminary instructor who said that he liked to call John the Baptist John Hinge because it was like God swung open a door and changed everything with the New Testament. The Old is a God of Judgment and the New a God of Mercy and Grace. BULLSHIT! (He and I didn’t get along very well.) I say the New Testament is the Old Testament for Dummies. It doesn’t change the message it distills it down to the core so everyone who missed it in the original can get it. The Pharisees certainly missed it and, apparently, so have most Christian pastors, since they didn’t notice the continuity between the Old and New. But that’s OK most pastors have never read the Bible all the way through anyway. And if they did they read it with a closed mind thinking they all ready new what was in it rather than in an open mind and spirit guided by the DIVINE.

Have you read about the God who led his people out of Egypt. Before Moses had even received the Ten Commandments and after they had seen the plagues upon Egypt, the Red Sea part for them to cross and swallow up the army that was after them. (They have actually found Egyptian chariots on the bottom of the Red Sea by the way – I don’t think Pharoah put them there just to lend weight to some “Jewish Myth.” Like most things people say they don’t believe in they have never looked at the actual word or evidence themselves.)

They had been led by a Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. THESE people, who had actually SEEN THE PROOF of a GOD who interacts with us. They turned away and built a golden calf and started partying and debauching themselves with one another (no love just sex – like modern society advocates in feminism – “men are horrible creatures who have sex just to satisfy lust” so Feminisms answer to that is to make women equally as contemptable? ) THAT is the way this society of Anti-LIFE works on every level. It is all a lie and calls you to live that lie just as it called the people of Israel to worship a calf of Gold instead of the God of LIFE.

Which will you give your life to? The gold or Life Itself?.

So, THESE people having seen all the proof that you might have asked for in your life, SAW it and STILL turned away. God was pissed. God continued to get pissed at this complaining, whining group, over and over again through the Old Testament. What did he do? He forgave them over and over again, personally I would have lost my temper, crushed them, and started over. So it is good we are not God.

You know a pastor doesn’t understand the Bible if he says that the God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow is different in the Old Testament and the New. It’s the same message and the same God it is only a superficial reading that makes it seem different. Both the New Wine and the Old are good. Don’t feel bad if you missed it. Jesus came because nearly everyone missed it.

The Shema, “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord Your God is One.”

Nearly everything that Jesus is quoted as saying is a quote from Old Testament Scriptures. I think that the idea that the New and Old Testaments are different is just one more lie that society feeds us and it is just one of many lies that the modern church has swallowed, (along with social justice, and DEI).

Any JUSTICE that has anything else attached to it is a lie. Social Justice is a Lie the American “Justice” system is not only a lie but has been proven in the past few years to be a complete travesty of Justice as people named Clinton can compromise national secrets, and normal people are jailed for taking a tour of the Congressional Building with the guards. Biden can be a senile agent of the CCP bought and paid for and Trump is fined 354 million for non-crime with no victims by a lying New York Court. I am not saying Trump is a Saint by any means but our court system and government has shown its true colors as a totalitarian system leaning toward the Woke Neo-Marxist Agenda repeatedly against Trump because he dares to challenge the BIG LIE that has trapped us all in modern society.

God called us to Be fruitful and multiply, to live life abundantly, to live our lives with joy and enjoy our family and put our whole might into the life that we have while we have it. But our society would rather trap us in a lie as cogs of either a consumer materialistic capitalist wheel or the soul-crushing, life-destroying cog of a lifeless Communist radical materialistic wheel that destroys everything, criticizes everything because EVERYTHING in Marxism exists to serve the REVOLUTION. The current thing is never the thing, it is the revolution.

Feminism is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for the Revolution, Prayer in schools is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for Revolution, Transgenderism is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for Revolution. Trump is not the issue it is the revolution. Justice and bail reform is not the issue it is toppling society to make way for the revolution, queer theory is not the issue it is the revolution, Ukraine is not the issue it is revolution, inflation is not the issue it is revolution, corruption is not the issue it is destroying faith in our institutions to make way for the revolution. As the Marxist said “The thing is never the thing, it is always the revolution.”

So Neo-Marxists are busy destroying our society as well-meaning people try honestly exhaust themselves dealing with the endless issues they raise. Until honest men and women are too exhausted to prevent the revolution from occurring. They don’t realize that none of these issues truly matter to the Marxists they are simply tearing apart our society of the LIE to replace it with the NEW LIE .

Actually, they are the father of the lies in both societies since Neo-Marxists twisted the current society with their agitation since the 1950s. They have been twisting and warping American society for almost 80 years if not more moving it away from God. (Remember Marx was writing before and during the American War Between the States)…of course everything we see feels like a lie. The Lie has corrupted it all. But then Jefferson and our founders foresaw that:

The Constitution is not unable to deal with modern society, that is just another lie. The over-riding and watering down of the safeguards of the constitution and Bill of Rights that we have done over the last 200 years is what has brought us to this point. It is our changing and opposing the Spirit of the Constitution which, in my opinion, was divinely inspired.

Then they raise the LIE again. “You who want to return to the Constitution and want to put blacks back in chains?” The Constitution didn’t make anyone a slave, it just acknowledged the aberration of slavery as a fact marring the free society that was envisioned today there are no legal slaves, and the Constitution doesn’t and didn’t make slaves. That is why Jefferson originally wrote in his draft of the Constitution:

But they didn’t tell you that, did they?

That is because, like everything else they don’t tell you it doesn’t serve the lie.

We live in a hard time. But those who say we shouldn’t bring kids into this world have swallowed another of the Lies and are living according to it. God proclaimed the World to Be GOOD and it is only where we have deviated from the DIVNE PATH that we have sullied it and made it empty of the passion and vital essence of life.

Is this time harder than World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, or when the Mongols swept out of Mongolia to cover a third of the globe, hurling thousands of heads of their slain over the walls of cities to get them to surrender? Is today really harder than that? Every generation has faced the LIE and the ENEMY of their time, but we need to bring forth the vital truth of life with passion and action of our own to live life abundantly and truly; to suppress the Lies with Truth.

To quote a line from G. Michael Hopf’s post-apocalypic novel “Those Who Remain”:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

To this Herodotus answers –

“Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.” and “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.

CHRIST CAME THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE LIFE AND LIVE IT PASSIONATELY AND VITALLY. and not to simply exist.

Who Are the Children of God?

January 31, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Epictetus and the Bible both had the same answer. The first century Roman Philosopher writes: “If a man could only take heart to this judgement, as he ought, that we are all, before anything else, children of God and that God is the Father of gods and men, I think that he will never harbor a mean or ignoble thought about himself… We ought to be proud, but we are not; as there are these two elements mingled in our birth, the body which we share with the animals, and the reason and mind which we share with the gods, men in general decline upon that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts, and but few claim that which is divine and blessed.” -Epictetus, Philosopher of Rome 1st Century AD

This passage comes from page seventeen Chapter III of the book The Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion which is available through Royal Classics; the 2020 Edition.

Today we will look at the wisdom of Epictetus and how it dovetails closely with the teachings of Saint Paul in the Christian Bible. Epictetus was not a Christian but, as I have said repeatedly Wisdom Literature appears to be remarkably the same from culture to culture. This is not too surprising because, for the most part, humans are genetically the same from continent to continent and people to people. Wisdom, offered by sage observers of human nature provided teachings on how to live successfully in a challenging and troublesome world based upon their observations of the world and their observations of people and their actions and reactions.

One of the philosophies of human nature and how to act that developed in the ancient world was Stoicism. While some stoics completely rejected emotions, and I do believe that is unhealthy, I do agree with the stoics that if we let our feelings and emotions dominate our life and our decisions then we are embracing an animal nature and denying our ability to reason and rise above the animals. This reliance on human reason and logic is a hallmark of the Western World that we rarely teach in schools or universities today. It is an ability that, ultimately, has created Western Civilization through logic, mathematics, and scientific inquiry. This is a civilization and society which is the most advanced and richest society the Earth has ever seen (at least that we can verify within our historical record.)

Stoicism is a philosophy that centered around self-control, self-knowledge, and maintaining a positive mental attitude as well as knowing your place in the Created Universe. Which, as Epictetus said included the knowledge that we are all children of God. Many of the philosophers referred to this as ZEUS or IUPITER as they were familiar to all. But most of the philosophers actually spoke of a God of Nature behind both Nature and the popular concept of gods.

Christianity told people the same, that we were children of the Living God and that our body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul said in one of his letters “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” The indwelling of an immanent God was indwelling in the entire Divine Creation (an idea called Panentheism – See Below,) but in a unique and special way in humans. In the Bible God speaks to the others and says, “Let us make man in our own image.”

This recognition that we had a divine nature eschewed complaining and whining about bad luck and stoics would have scoffed at today’s epidemic of professional victims and constant whining on social media about how tough life is or how you have been wronged. Many stoics became powerful men who had command of themselves and could therefore command others. One of the most famous and admired emperors of ancient Rome was the stoic Marcus Aurelius and he wrote a book of meditations that we can study and read today. I am actually much more familiar with the stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (which is why I bought this book on Epictetus – to fill in gaps in my knowledge, I hate not knowing things. No matter how much I learn in this life it will just be a drop in an ocean of knowledge, but I believe that you must embrace your own drop of life to be part an active part of that ocean.)

Epictetus was a Roman and a Stoic who lived in the first Century AD. He was born a Caucasian slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (now called Pamukkale, Turkey,) and spent his youth as a slave in Rome, owned by Epaphroditos, a wealthy freedman and secretary to the Emperor Nero. Epictetus was intelligent and had an interest in philosophy so his owner let him study Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus. As was the way in Rome the more educated the slave became the more status he had and the more valuable he was to his master. There is some confusion as to how Epictetus became crippled. Simplicius states that he had been lame since childhood while Origen stated that he had been deliberately crippled by his master when angry. We will probably never know.

Epictetus was freed sometime after the death of Emperor Nero in 68 AD when the youth was in his teens but we don’t know the year. We do know that Emperor Domitian around 93 AD banished all philosophers from the city of Rome and Epictetus went to Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece where he founded a philosophical school centered around stoicism.

I mentioned that his words were similar to several of the teachings of Saint Paul and this is not too surprising. In fact, I think it would be surprising if some Stoicism had not crept into Paul’s “gospel” because he grew up as a Jew but also as a citizen of Rome in the city of Tarsus. This was a city that held one of the three great centers of the Stoa (A College of Stoic Philosophy,) in the ancient world.

“If a man could only take heart to this judgement, as he ought, that we are all, before anything else, children of God and that God is the Father of gods and men, I think that he will never harbor a mean or ignoble thought about himself…We ought to be proud, but we are not; as there are these two elements mingled in our birth, the body which we share with the animals, and the reason and mind which we share with the gods, men in general decline upon that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts, and but few claim that which is divine and blessed.”Epictetus, Chapter III, p.17, The Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion by Epictetus

So, in brief, Epictetus says everyone has two natures. An animal nature which is tied to the biology of our physical body and a Divine nature as children of the Father of gods and men through our higher brain functions. He encourages us to live up to our Divine heritage and not lower ourselves to acting on our baser impulses like animals.

I find it interesting that modern feminism has encouraged women to act out and sate their baser passions (like animals in heat,) rather than aspire to a higher idea or goal. In a sense they somehow believe it is liberating (?) to imitate the basest and most visceral failings of men and animals. I have noticed in my dogs that they really don’t have much ability to resist a bitch in heat. I have known one or two men with the same lack of self-control.

I will never understand how lowering yourself and giving full play to your animal nature somehow will make you a better person worthy of emulation and pride in self. I have watched numerous videos of women insisting that their body count doesn’t matter only to refuse to say what theirs is. This must be because down in their heart they realize that it very much does matter. At least a gentleman doesn’t tell or brag about it. But Gentleman, like Ladies, both seem to be a dying breed among the youth of today.

Still, everyone is entitled to ruin their own life in their own way. I cannot be terribly sympathetic when there are thousands of years of anecdotes, testimony, and tales that let us know that such behavior generally leads to ruin. My father always pressed the Biblical Proverbs on me telling me that I can either learn from the mistakes of others or learn by “the school of hard knocks” by getting knocked on my a** by life again and again. He told me that its much easier on you and your friends and family to learn from others. But, as I said, we are all welcome to fall on our faces and refuse to learn any other way, in fact many do so.

I cannot say that I always listened to my father. No, I first had to fall on my face several times until I recalled, “Oh, my Dad said something about this from the Proverbs in the Bible.” Eventually, I chose the easier path of going back to read philosophies and proverbs of the past. They have stood the test of time for literally thousands of years. Why? Because human nature evolves very slowly. This is why philosophies, such as communism, which rely on “creating a new man” are all dead-end philosophies because we evolve extremely slowly. Therefore, every generation needs to be retaught what previous generations have learned. Otherwise, you are forcing yourself to start over from scratch when the knowledge may well already be out there.

I remember complaining to my youngest son that it seems that all the movies of the last ten years are crap. He didn’t know what I meant until we sat and watched some old movies from the 70s and 80s that are classics. “You’re right he said. They are much better stories and have deeper characters.” I think the problem has to do with something the YouTuber Call Me Chato once said: “I have never seen a generation of directors, scriptwriters, camera men, and others who were LESS interested in learning the art of film making. They just throw something together and expect it to be good without considering the decades of trial and error that went into developing the movie industry.” That seems to be a problem that exists in other fields besides movies. Talk about doing everything the hard way.

Contemporary generations, more than any previous to them, seem to be unaware of the continuity of human knowledge. Every thing they know, every device they use, and every technology they covet has been built upon a long history of scientific discoveries preceding it and preparing the way for it. Knowledge is like people in a way. If you do not know where you have come from, and do not know where you are in relation to everything else, you have little to no chance of finding your way to where you want to be.

The worst work I have EVER seen is the Rings of Power by Amazon (well, except perhaps The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Banana Monster). I could go on for hours (and I have,) about all the problems there are with the elves and story in this Amazonian monstrosity… and I was really looking forward to it. But I never even got through the third episode before I gave up on it. But I have watched several excellent movies since 2020 – none of them were made in Hollywood though.

OK, that was a tangent, but it is an example of not listening to the wisdom of people who have gone before. I talk about that a lot. One of the things that is ancient knowledge is this idea that we have, in us, a spark of the Divine and we can either feed it so it grows or embrace our animal nature.

This brings me back to Epictetus. To realize we were created by the Living God, the Father of gods, is to know that we have a place in the universe and are not here by accident or chance (as radical materialism tries to ram down our throats…a theory that is no longer even sound scientifically although that is where it supposedly came from.) I believe that for fulfillment we need to have the higher mind engaged in what we do. While we should not indulge the animal self exclusively, I would point out to Epictetus that we are, in fact, also animals and we should not ignore our nature either. I believe in finding a harmony between the two.

Now, let us go no farther without addressing the warped character of American religious communities. Thanks to the Neo-Platonists and Manicheans (like St. Augustine,) who have had such a lasting effect on Christianity we view ANYTHING material or “of our animal side” as (almost) evil or at least dirty. This is not what I am saying. As the rabbi said, “God’s first commandment to humanity was to be fruitful and multiply.” Further, the ancient Hebrew mystics taught that it was in the moment of orgasm that we got a glimpse of the joy that would be ours in the world to come. A glimpse of the feeling of being one with God in the mutual climax of sex as two people come together and become one (even if only for a moment). You have to do some serious thinking of why did God put that there? It certainly wasn’t because he hated our bodies and our natural desires. God created those as well. Scientists today, although many don’t want to use the word God, they say there must be an intelligence behind everything because it all fits together with a mathematical precision.

Please note, I am not a Platonist or Manichean or Puritan who believes all nature is bad and spirit is good. We aren’t creatures with a body, a mind, and a spirit. Instead we are body/mind/spirit creatures. They are intertwined.

It was God who created the world and called it good. What we need is a full realization of that fact to find a balance, living in accordance with the world God gave us and feeding our spirit and our body, our reason and our heart. This is what is needed to make us “real” and not artificial. To give us life and that abundantly (as Christ promised.) Much of Christianity in America seems to hate sex – I think it goes back to our puritan roots. They say they don’t but then they act like they do. So, I am definitely not talking about rejecting our animal nature entirely.

But to focus on “that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts” as Epictetus says, while it may bring brief moments of pleasure that pleasure will be paid for by hours, or perhaps even years, of strife and sadness. It is the lingering regret that pays for the fleeting moments of joy and feeling, but regret is a feeling too and it is a poor exchange. Further, whichever side we feed…whether it is our kinship with the Creator or whether it is the beast within us that will be the side that grows in us and will eventually obtain dominance.

In the words of another Roman proverb we have discussed “Do what you are doing.” Be wholly present in everything you do bringing together the body, mind, and soul as one united effort that is wholly present in every aspect of your life.

This is something the younger generations desperately need to learn. Their life is empty and lonely, I believe, because they are not even living it. Friends can be sitting together at a table and absolutely none of them are even there. They are all electronically off doing something else on their phones and completely missing the visceral interaction with other human beings that produces the oxytocin and other chemicals that keep us happy and ward off depression.

Virtually no one is actually “doing what they are doing” and wholly present in the moment with their body/mind/soul fully engaged. They are too busy doing something else, checking their cyber world and getting cheap hits of artificial “likes” or “comments” and missing the real thing which is at the table with friends. In trying to keep track of everything and not be “left out” they are being left out of their own experience of living.

As they walk from point A to point B they are not experiencing the world. They are missing the singing of birds, the smell of flowers and trees in spring, the fresh smells of grass or cleanliness of a summer rain, they miss the rustle of leaves in the fall and the crisp cold air of winter and the crunch of snow under their feet. The are slaves to the notification chime and each time it rings, like Pavlov’s dogs (look it up on your phone,) they respond to the chime. They are not lords or their own life, neither is God, rather the media companies are.

I speak from experience about not living your own life. When I was a counterintelligence agent my mind was always on a case or the “fate of the free world” that hung in the balance. I went for years when I would be getting in my government car and I would look around and say, “Wow, the trees are full of leaves…I think I missed Spring.” Then suddenly the leaves were all about my feet and it was starting to sleet. After that, I turned back to heed what my Father had taught me long ago but I had set aside as “old fashioned” or as “wisdom for a happier day” which was to “listen to the trees – their talking to you if you listen. Cottonwoods talk to us more than any other tree. You can hear them in the rustling of the leaves in a breeze.” I finally, after missing years of my life, realized that it was as relevant for me today as it was for him decades ago…just as it was relevant for St Paul and Epictetus in the first years of the Roman Empire and as it was for every other human who has ever lived.

In the Proverbs it says that the female personification of Wisdom (the Holy Spirit) danced with God for joy at the moment of creation for God and with God. It is this sense of the Divine that takes joy in the act of living life and doesn’t let life fall by the wayside as we look dreamily toward heaven, the next life, or tweeking our profile picture. We all need to find our joy in the here and now and we need to dance a little ourselves with our friends.

As one theologian said, every moment we are either choosing “God” or “not God” and moving closer to our Divine nature or farther from it. I urge you to heed Epictetus and feed the Divine nature within you and remind yourself of that nature when you need to strengthen your confidence and resolve. I used to preach, and I often said to my congregation, “Children of God, remember who you are!”

So, while I agree with Epictetus, we all need to realize that we are the children of the Living God and start acting like it. Choose to live out of our higher nature and remember that we were made “stewards” of this world which we are a part of. A steward protected and cared for the estates of his Lord while the lord was doing other things. Somehow, our English Bibles have translated this idea of “stewards of Creation” as us having “dominion.” A steward does have such authority, but a steward is subject to answering to his or her Lord and will not be absolved for responsibility for his or her Lord’s creation. We need to accept our identity as children of the Living God, children of the Emperor of the Universe, that is truly something. But also we must accept our roles as caretakers of all that is natural and that we are a part of this world and that when it was created, with all its sex, emotion, desires, and reason God said that it was “good.” That too, is truly something.

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the holy spirit and that God’s spirit dwells in you?” – Saint Paul.

Realize that you are a child of the living God while simultaneously you are part of Creation created to be stewards of that creation, linking the Divine and the material in the dance that we call life. You are supposed to live it and be wholly present in your life, and (as God said,) be fruitful and multiply. Live your life to the full, find someone to love and share your lives with each other, marry, raise the next generation and delight in watching your children grow, and learn to be wholly present for them as well. Then, eventually let yourself slow down as they replace you and get their own chance to lay on the grass and look up at the clouds, or to ride their bike as fast as they can, or to walk hand in hand with their mom and dad, and later with their lover and have a chance to live THEIR life and overcome THEIR challenges and make a mark on their world.

“I came that you might have life, and that abundantly.” That was Jesus mission but it seems many of us have missed that.

That is the meaning of life. It was right before us all the time. The meaning of life is to simply live it. Remember that you are a child of the Living God, created as one with nature, and you are to live life to the full.

That is the secret of life…to live it and remember that you are somebody. A child of the Creator and we are all family. Called to live our life as those who went before us. Live and grow, find a mate, have and raise your children and let your grandchildren be your joy in your declining years as you watch the next generation live and grow.

Saint Paul calls for us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds as we learn new ways to live and think of God, the world, and each other.

NOTE: Pantheism and Panentheism

Pantheism can speak of many gods or it can include an idea that everything has a divine spirit or is a god it its own right. Panentheism, in contrast, does not mean that everyone is God, but that God is immanent in everyone and everything. Immanent simply means that God is permanently pervading and sustaining the universe by Its presence through the Holy Spirit, or the Shekinah in Hebrew. It is similar to the idea of the Force in Star Wars which Obi-Wan Kenobi explained surrounds us, penetrates us, and guides us. Many churches today emphasize the transcendence of God while neglecting His presence and day to day interaction with His creation. Ancient Hebrew mystics taught that all of the universe existed in the mind of God and if God would ever stop thinking of us we would blink out of existence. I find the similarity between this ancient belief that we exist in the mind of God and the modern idea that we live in the “mind” of a computer matrix to be uncannily similar.

Panentheism was embraced in the concept of the Force in Star Wars and was developed by George Lucas in talks long into the night with his friend Joseph Campbell, a philosopher and expert in religions and cultures of the Earth.

Original version was posted on SabersEdge.Online with some differences.

Tested and Proven in Struggle As Children of the Living God

April 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

It is common verbiage of Christians to ask if someone is “saved” and it was an important question in a society founded on predominately Christian culture and values. But it doesn’t make sense to most people today. It is confusing language. Saved from what and for what? Here, in Romans 5:1-11, Paul refers to us being “reconciled by the blood of Christ” but he goes on to use stronger language and says that we are no longer “enemies of God.”

Romans 5:1-11 – Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

This idea that we might be enemies of God will be surprising to some. “Surely,” they may say, “I am not an enemy of God. I’m basically a good person.” But it’s not so much a matter of good or bad but whose side are you on? Are you building a better world according to God’s plan or are you working against it?

To bring this into focus let me tell you a story.

Our society spreads the lie that we and the environment are like machines and so with certain actions, we can predict definite reactions. This is a lie. Neither we nor the environment is machines rather, we are organic and organisms have complex interactions that are hard to predict while machines are…well…mechanistic and much easier to predict.

As for the environment, we know that is not easy to predict because in the early 1970s, we were all taught in school that we were in an ice age and that pollution was going to cause an accelerated cooling that would destroy the world by the 1990s and cover all of North America and Europe in glaciers forcing the entire population of the US to move to Mexico and Europe to move to North Africa. Unless we acted immediately to do what society told us needed to be done – which was to stop killing trees. We needed to switch to plastic bags and cups instead of paper – thus giving our money to the petroleum industry so they could make us plastics. By the 1990s It was clear that no ice age was coming so they changed the emergency. About that time Al Gore began spreading the lie that global warming was going to destroy the world in about 20 years – that was over 30 years ago, but who is counting? We were told that an increase of a few degrees would melt the polar ice caps and flood all the coastal cities of the earth. We have already passed their initial period and the hypersensitive panicky people never bothered to notice that the temperature increase would put us back to the ambient temperature that existed in the year 1000 A.D. A time when humanity flourished and was not dying en masse. No the environment is not a machine nor is it easily predictable. Anyone who watches weather reports should know that. Predicting a week of weather can be hard enough without thinking about years from now. The world is an ecosystem made up of living organisms that must be treated with respect; a respect that the elite of our society does not have. They want us to trust them to fix the problems that they created. This is not only in the environment but in nearly every aspect of society and wholeness yet the experts have presided over the steady dissolution of a healthy environment. Now the plastic they encouraged us to use to “save the trees” (and make them richer) is polluting our oceans. Even those meaning to do well can be enemies of God and creation because they don’t know better and are not led by the Spirit of the Living God. They are strangers to the Divine Plan. And if you don’t know the plan how can you work with it?

In the same way that the world is organic and not a machine so are we. If we were machines we could replace our parts and continue functioning without a problem. But we are not and we cannot. For years I weighed over 350 pounds and had a 54-inch waist. I was too heavy and my back, my knees, and my feet always hurt. I never actually felt good during that time. My body was not made to carry that much weight and even stairs were difficult for me. I lost over a hundred pounds and now weigh closer to 220, but I was overweight for long enough that I gained a fatty liver as my body tried to purge my great mass of toxins by filtering them out. Eventually, when I caught Covid it seemed to attack my already weakened liver and my liver started to fail. If I was a machine we could replace it with another liver and I would be fine. However, I was told that even if my liver was functioning at only ten percent efficiency it would still work better than any transplant I might get. The liver I was born with was created for me and grew with me and would always work better than anyone that was added from another source – as long as it worked that is. Unfortunately, my fatty liver, abused by years of being overweight and eating over-processed foods, did not survive the assault of Covid on my body. It spiraled into oblivion and I was hospitalized more than 27 times in 2020 for my liver. In January 2021 it failed and I was rushed to the hospital from Lincoln to Kansas City in an ambulance.

Now, because I am not a machine but a complex organism, I have to take medicine every day so that my body doesn’t decide that my new liver is a foreign body that it must destroy. In other words, my body, trying to protect me from a foreign body would actually be killing me by attacking the liver that I need to live.

My own body can kill me by trying to save me. It would be my own worst enemy and it would just be doing what it thought was best for me. In the same way, we, a part of this world, can be enemies of God and attack the creation, harmony, and interaction of the Divine Order.

The cells of my body don’t know that if it attacks the liver it will die. My own body can become my enemy – although it doesn’t mean to be. It doesn’t know any better. In the same way, someone who is not “reconciled to God” can be an enemy of God without meaning to be. They can go about what they think is a good or even a compassionate act, and be working against the will of God. Perhaps this is what the Bible means when it says “There is a way that seems right to man, but it is a way that leads to death.” We don’t mean to be an enemies of God (unless we are a psychopath or a narcissistic sociopaths,) we just don’t know any better. Like my antibodies, we don’t know the plan and are acting against it to our own detriment.

As it happens, through meditation, my body has healed more than twice as fast as the doctors said I would need to recover. I believe this is because I can, in some rudimentary way, communicate with my body through meditation and prayer. Something has made a difference that the doctors weren’t expecting and I think that is what it is. In the same way, we need to be open to communication from our Creator, the Living Force if you will, and what it intends for us so that we can learn our natural place in the natural order of life.

The Greek word used by Paul here (that is translated as “reconciliation” is the same word that is used by Xenophon in the work Cryopaedia to signify “being brought into the royal court and introduced to the king.” This is the concept that Paul is using to communicate what happens when we are reconciled to the Living God through the cosmic sacrifice of Christ. Paul goes on to describe that this is necessary for us to live a life of “peace” with God. But not just peace, Paul who was a Jew, understood “peace” to be “shalom.”

This is another place where our language has a poor substitute for the original concept. Shalom is not just peace. Like so many words I have noticed translating from Hebrew, Greek, or even German into English the English language is a poor language for discussing the concepts of philosophy or theology. Ideas that other languages can encompass in one word we need a full paragraph or more to communicate the same idea in English. Our words are just too vague. Shalom, we translate as “peace” but Shalom is not just peace. It is a state of the mutual state of interdependence and universal flourishing in a universe in the truest meaning of the word. By that a mean a universe that is a “one-ness” of interconnected relationships where everything affects everything else in a ripple effect that ties us all together. Shalom describes a ripple effect that is mutually uplifting and enlightening throughout the Creation.

What Paul calls “reconciled to Christ” and what common vernacular just calls “saved” is a rich concept where we are introduced to the Living God (Divine Monarch of all existence,) so that It knows us and we know the Divine not as a stranger or as a slave but as a friend and ally. But more than that. We are taken into the family of the Living God and welcomed as children and heirs of the Divine promise and Realm. This is so complete that we are transformed from being an enemy of the “king” to being an ally and heir as a child of the Living God and by entering into the “kingdom of God” or Divine reality we enter into a state of mind where we can be led by the Divine Spirit and understand the mutual interdependence and flourishing and our place in it. A healthy relationship with, not only the Living God but with all of Creation.

This is a relationship with our environment that secular environmentalists can only dream of.

Through this reconciliation and we are brought into the “Divine Relationship” and a unity with the Living Force that created the Universe; we are united with the Creator of the universe and brought back into harmony with creation (or at least we have the door opened so that we can reach that point – if we so desire.) But, like everything else in life, it takes practice to live in harmony with the Divine and the Creation. We have become alienated from the natural order and, as Yoda says in the epic Star Wars, “You must unlearn what you have learned;” or as Paul says in his letters “you must be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Unfortunately, as Rev. John Wesley once said, most Christians sit on the threshold of the Kingdom of God and never fully enter into it (by which he meant they were reconciled but never fully entered into interaction with the Living God and Creation as we were designed to live). This is where so many Christian churches fail in my opinion. They act as if once you are saved it is all over. Instead, it is only the beginning of a new life in the presence of the Living God. You still need to learn to live in harmony with the Living Force. Only through being reconciled with the Living God can we ever truly reach our full potential in life and live in harmony with the rest of God’s creation. It’s like swimming against the current. Most people in life are swimming against the current but when you learn to walk in the Presence of the Spirit of God it’s like swimming with the natural currents of life instead of against it. Only then is the door open to us to truly be all that we can be.

This passage does not stop with being “saved” (the reconciliation that Paul speaks of.) No, this passage starts there. Reconciliation with the Creative Force that created the Universe and whose Will maintains the natural order is where we begin living the life we were intended to live. But we live in a world of challenges and trials because things are not what they were meant to be. Christianity describes this as a “fallen” world in which so many have turned away from the Divine Plan that the creation itself is “groaning” awaiting the “revelation of the children of the Living God” This passage goes on to describe that as well. But, it says, our challenges and trials (once we are reconciled to the Living God,) help us to become the people we were meant to be.

To use our bodies again for an analogy we are born with bodies that will become able to walk and even run. But we have to learn how. Our muscles must be strengthened and we must learn to coordinate our movements and learn to balance on our feet. If we never faced the trial of falling down and being unsteady, if we avoided this basic challenge and struggle of life that God intended, we would spend the rest of our life crawling (but even to crawl that was something we had to learn.) In the struggles we face in life, we learn how to do more. When we watch our children pull themselves up on furniture and move along it they use the furniture to aid their balance. We know, as parents, that if we don’t let them try and even fall sometimes, they will never learn to walk. Eventually, they try to take a few steps to move from the couch to the table. They always fall. They fall repeatedly and if we didn’t let them try and fall as parents we know that we would condemn them to crawl the rest of their life. In the same way we must learn to walk in life we also must learn to walk in the Holy Spirit. And that starts with reconciliation and living in the Spiritual Disciplines to improve and strengthen our relationship with the Living God.

The word Paul uses for the trials we face in life is thlipsis, a Greek word meaning ‘suffering, trials, affliction, hardships, trouble.’ We all face these things in life, and some people – those not strengthened by the Holy Spirit, may be broken. Once we are reconciled to the God of Nature/the Creator of Nature itself we are not broken by our trials but strengthened by the Spirit of the Living God through those very trials as part of the spiritual body of believers. Through this, Paul says, we have hope and our hope does not disappoint us.

These sufferings, trials, and afflictions that we face in life teach us how to maintain our equilibrium (or balance,) as we walk through life and adversity. Paul says these struggles build our endurance and help us to more clearly see God’s plan for our life and creation more. This endurance leads us to the character we need to become the people that God created us to be and to reach our full potential in life. This character, Paul says, then brings us back to the hope we had when we were brought into the royal court and introduced to the Divine Monarch of the Universe.

Here Paul uses another word, dokimus, it is a word that means that we are now “proven” and “tested.” Here Paul says that through our struggles we have “stood the test” and proven to be trustworthy, or of “sterling worth.” The words he uses indicate the process by which valuable metals are heated and their impurities are burned away to stand pure and of increased value. This is the process of making fine silver, gold, and even iron or steel. In each case, metallurgists test the metals for their impurities that degrade the metal. The heat of the fire burns those impurities away making a finer product. More beautiful gold or silver or weapons and armor that are stronger and more durable. Paul uses this word on purpose because he knows that the trials and struggles we face in life purify us just as the heat of fire purifies the metals. In so doing we become stronger. The impurities and distractions of life burn away and we see more clearly what is important. Only in this way can we be “proven” or “tested” for the life that is to come. This is how we become the person we were intended to be when the Living God formed us in our mother’s womb (as it says in the book of Isaiah.)

With greater endurance and character we become the tools for creating a better future in which we can boldly go where no civilization has gone before. Let’s look at that passage again:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace [shalom/harmony/universal flourishing] with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand [a cosmic sacrifice that wipes clean any wrongdoing or failure in our life and gives us a fresh start, if we but claim it we are “saved”]; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God [as Children of the Living God and Creator of the Universe]. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings [thlipsis, the Greek word meaning ‘suffering, trials, affliction, hardships, trouble.’], knowing that suffering [suffering, trials, affliction, hardship and troubles] produces endurance [testing, purification, and strength], and endurance produces character [we are now proven and purified by the fires of our struggle strengthening our character], and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit [our guide and spiritual source of renewal and strength] that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners [enemies of God working against the Divine Plan,] Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood [reconciled by being introduced and adopted in the Divine Court], will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life [through the death of Christ we were reunited with the Divine and now, finally, can truly start living]. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Romans 5:1-11 [Annotated with comment]

We become the tools for the Tikkun Olam. This is the Hebrew phrase that means the repair of the world. Reconciled, proven, and tested, where we now work side by side with the Creator to repair and heal not only the Creation but also our fellow Saints in the spiritual body of believers. In other words, we are no longer “enemies” of God as we go through this life but co-creators with the Living God working together to create a better future and bring things more into alignment with how God intended things to be. Every day we choose to be faithful, or not, to the Divine Plan. In every act, we choose to work with the Divine or against it. We must be faithful to the same Living Force that gave us life and created the very universe itself, no longer as enemies, but as companions and Children of the Living God, heirs to the Divine Realm fulfilling our potential and becoming all that we were created to be until the universe is restored to a state of Shalom and universal flourishing.

An Amazing Story

October 16, 2022 / / 4 Comments

Amazing Grace is more than a much-loved song it also has a moving story behind it. This song is one of the two most commonly used songs at funerals and is often used in movies when a “religious” song is needed, it is one of the ten top hymns cited by pastors as significant in their “call to ministry.” In fact, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott plays “Amazing Grace” to honor his fallen comrade Spock at that officer’s funeral. The song grew in fame and use through the American Civil War and during the Viet Nam war as well. But the story behind it is as fascinating as the song is moving.

Once you know the story it gives new depth to the all the words but especially the beginning:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Amazing grace by john newton, 1772

This song, beloved in the African American, and virtually all Christian communities, was one of over 200 hymns written by John Newton. Newton, ironically, was a slave trader and the son of a slave trader. Born to a Puritan mother who died just shy of his 17th birthday, he first went to sea with his father at the age of 11 on his father’s slave ship. He became a careless libertine and drank heavily. As happened to many careless, raucous, licentious libertines in a seaport he was impressed into the British Navy, which heavily “recruited” drunk young men. He attempted to desert from the Royal Navy and received 8 bloody lashes across his back with a whip while tied to the mast for his escape attempt. Flogging was a common punishment back then and continued even into the 19th Century where it persisted in the naval and military communities long after it stopped being used for civilian punishment.

Later, he followed his father’s path and became a slaver who hauled cargoes of African slaves to the New World for the Plantations in North and South America and the Caribbean. While serving on the ship the Pegasus Newton had some disagreements with the crew and they sold him into slavery to an African king and princess and marooned him in Africa. John Newton’s father engaged another ship captain to find and rescue him and, once rescued, he was sailing back to England when the ship became embroiled in a horrible storm. The ship’s side ruptured and took on water, and John Newton prayed for deliverance. Whereupon the cargo shifted in the storm in such a way that it closed off the hole and the ship was saved. John viewed this as an answer to his prayer and from that point on became a Christian. Although not a very good one, at first.

What so many fail to understand is that Christians are not paragons of virtue. As the saying goes churches are a hospital for sinners and not a museum for saints. Every cross should be read as an “under construction” sign perhaps along with “please excuse our mess.”

So, John determined to become a follower of Christ. What did that mean? Perhaps he had seen something about what that meant through his mother in his youth, and he now sought to learn what it meant to be a Christian and he started by regularly reading his Bible. But, in his own words he said:

“I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterward,” – John Newton

While he wasn’t sure what it meant to be a follower of Christ he knew that compassion and the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” had something to do with it. He therefore determined to become the fairest, most compassionate slave trader the world had yet seen. He made three more voyages as the ship captain of slave ships the Duke of Argyle and the Arfrican. In 1754 he suffered a stroke and retired and in 1772 he became an Anglican Priest and finally came to the conclusion that being a slave trader was incompatible with being a Christian. Henceforth, he was an ardent abolitionist.

In 1772 he wrote Amazing Grace, and in 1788 he published a pamphlet that graphically described the horrors of the slave trade. The pamphlet was widely read and the description galvanized the opposition to slavery in the English world John Newton campaigned hard for its abolition. He lived to see the international slave trade abolished for both England and the newly minted United States (where the law banning the slave trade was signed into law by Thomas Jefferson who almost three decades earlier had written “all men are created equal” and so eloquently abjured the crown for trading in human beings – although his draft condemnation was not accepted as part of the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. Both the US and England stopped the international slave trade to their shores at the beginning of 1807 and John Newton died in December of that year, having seen this great work implemented in his lifetime.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
and mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.
–John Newton, 1725-1807

AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart

October 2, 2022 / / 1 Comment

The core of spirituality lies in listening. Saint Benedict said that we need to learn to “Listen with the ears of our heart.” In other words, we need to listen to that inner voice of intuition through which the Divine Presence speaks to all of us. If we will but listen. Perhaps this is why the first word in the Rule of Saint Benedict is Auscula, listen.

The example of Jesus is that he frequently retired from the crowds and withdrew into the wilds to pray. And we know how Jesus prayed because he told his disciples not to pray with a multitude of words. So, for Jesus, as for so many great spiritual teachers, communication with God had more to do with listening than with talking. Yet for so many of us, our own spiritual life is very different.

Too often our prayers are not about listening, learning, and then acting upon what God has told us, rather they look more like a want list. This stripped down to its starkest terms can be viewed as similar to saying, “O.K. Lord, this is what I want you to do. This is your assignment list for the next month. Your “Honey-Do List” from me. I would like you to…” once we have run down our list of what we want God to do we say “Amen.” Then we get up and go on with our life. Rarely, if ever, do we continue to sit in an attitude of prayer and allow the Divine Presence to tell us, “O.K. I understand what you want from me. Now let me tell you what I would like you to change in your life. Also, have you noticed that your neighbor lost their spouse? Have you said anything to them or spent time with them? They are very lonely you know. And, I would like you to reconsider the way you treated that phone solicitor the other day – that is a very hard job you know and they are just trying to survive. And you were a bit short with the grocery checker at the supermarket. You do know that was her first day, right?”

John Wesley had several “methods” for helping him in his spiritual life. One of them was his review of his day in prayer at each day’s end. Before retiring this Anglican priest would ask that the Living God show him where he did well and what opportunities he had to minister to others and represent the Divine Creative Force of the Universe to people that he encountered throughout the day. He encouraged all those who followed him “the Methodists” to do the same. In this way, he would learn from God in his prayer time as to how he could improve in his own life.

Meditation is another way to listen, depending on how you practice it meditation may facilitate listening a great deal or at least a little. Lectio Divina is yet another. I have already talked a little about meditation in my blog and my videos and soon I will talk about Lectio Divina.

But another way I want to discuss listening is to be aware as we go through our life that the Divine Presence is always with us. We don’t have to be in “prayer time” to hear God speaking to us. If you look at the accounts of the prophets in the Bible, and often of prophets in other faiths, they could hear God speaking through what was happening in their life. This is not easy. It takes a great deal of practice and openness to the Divine Presence – an openness that becomes a habit and not just something that we do sometimes.

I placed a Holy Water font at the front and rear exit to the house so that when I leave I can use it, make the sign of the cross, and say a quick prayer asking the Divine to show me, as I am out in the world, show me what I can do for you to make the world and the lives of those around me better. It only takes a couple of seconds. But it reminds me to be aware of the Presence of the Divine and what it might be saying to me.

In the Old Testament, the prophets would say things like, God took me down to the Potter’s wheel and I watched and he told me that God was forming us like this pot. And the pot developed a blemish that started small and became larger until it was deformed and the potter broke down the pot and reformed it. So God can renew us. Or that the potter took the unformed clay from the mud of the earth and turned it into a beautiful finished product. The prophets sometimes had dramatic visions in their meditations and during prayer and other times they simply knew that God was delivering the message through what was happening around them.

I remember a woman whose husband had died. Her family was close to her and helped her through the immediate time of the funeral but when she was left alone she was faced with the dramatic silence of being alone. She went to sit at her husband’s grave side and when she left she was starting to drive out of the cemetery and had to pull over because she could not see through her tears. She cried out to God and said “I cannot do this alone!”

Her deepest desire was to get help and reassurance from God. She looked through the windshield and realized that a beautiful butterfly had come and landed upon the glass. It sat there with her for a while and then flew off. She understood the symbols of Christianity and knew that the butterfly (which had fought its way out of the chrysalis to leave behind its worm-ness and become a beautiful butterfly,) was a symbol of rebirth and the presence of the Holy Spirit. She told me that at that moment she realized God was saying to her that this was a new phase in her life but that God was with her and she didn’t have to do it alone.

Similarly, my mother, after my father died found herself sitting on my Dad’s side of the bed in a similar state of despair. She didn’t know how she could go on. She heard what she described as an audible voice that was so clear that she looked around the room and then perceived it was the voice of God. It said, “Do not be afraid. I am with you.”

My father would walk with me and would often see something that prompted him to quote proverbs. He would show me how squirrels were busy in the summer gathering food so that they could live through the winter months. He would often say, “Listen to the trees, Daniel. Cottonwoods will talk to your more than any other of God’s trees. Hear the wind rustling the leaves? God can speak to us through that if we learn to listen.” I asked him once, as he sat on the bank of the lake with his fishing pole if he was catching any fish. “No,” he answered. “Sometimes, I just put the pole in the water because people leave you alone if they think you’re fishing. There’s no bait on the hook. It gives me time to think and talk to God. Come sit with me awhile and watch the way the light sparkles upon the water.”

If we truly wish to grow as faithful, spiritual beings we must learn to take action and live out our faith truly. To live out our faith we must be formed and study what it means to walk the spiritual path. I feel that the best means of study is Wisdom which has been proven by longevity and some of the oldest spiritual writings that have prevailed in the formation of human beings are the easiest to obtain. For over three thousand years portions of the Bible have guided people in their spiritual life and they are easy to find to guide us.

Faith is nothing if it does not include action in every aspect of our lives. If our faith is not revealed in virtually everything that we do and all of our interactions then it is not real. Instead of being an integral part of us, it is just a jacket that we wear when we desire to be seen as “spiritual.” This is a superficial trap. To truly be spiritual we must, as Saint Benedict said, listen with the ears of our hearts and the more we listen the more we will hear.

Action without meditation and divine guidance, as we are told in the Bible, makes us like a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. We will always lose our way on our own if we don’t listen to that inner voice. If we don’t spend a substantial amount of our spiritual life reading, listening, and being aware of all that is around us then we will not realize what God is trying to say to us and we will truly be alone. The Divine Presence is always with us. We just need to learn to listen. The beginning of Psalm 19 tells us:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19: 1-4

This holds true as much with our relationship with the Divine as it does with our relationships with people. My Dad used to say, “God gave you two eyes, two ears, but only one mouth. There is a message in that. You should watch and listen four times as much as you talk.”

A Place For Prayer and Meditation

August 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

We are creatures who evolved and grew in dangerous circumstances. Our very instinct is to be on alert when we are not in a safe place. It is then not surprising that where we choose to pray or meditate should affect our success and ability to concentrate. The more comfortable we are the better it will work.

Being in Nature activates the same parts of our brain that are activated when we meditate.

Last time we discussed a time for prayer and how having a regular prayer time is significant and can aid us in our Spiritual Growth. Today we will look at how our place of prayer and meditation is equally significant. Nothing here should ever keep you from praying or meditating because you are not in the “proper” place or at the proper time. The proper time and place are when and where you are moved to do so. However, if you have trouble in prayer or what to expand your prayer life and experience in meditating then read on.

First, I would like to discuss a scientific discovery that has been known for many years but still seems new to a lot of people.

When we are in the woods walking, siting, or simply being it activates the same parts of our brain that are activated when we meditate. Therefore the same benefits of resetting our bio-rhythms, the deep relaxation, the rest, and the blood cleansing and health benefits that are obtained in regular meditation can be obtained by being in nature. One doctor even mused that meditation was developed as a life hack to reconnect us with the Source of All Life after we had severed our link to the natural rhythms of the world by living in cities.

There Are 74 Forests in Japan Medically Certified As Having Health Benefits

In Japan, they have medially certified, through studies, that just walking in these forests has health benefits. I don’t think it is only forests in Japan. I think that Ayurvedic beliefs are true we need to reconnect with the natural world. And being in nature is one of those ways.

I can attest to the benefits myself. I have always loved being in the woods and felt the stress and strain of life drain away when I was there. When meditating at Pioneer Park in NE, I would enter the Nature Center area, walk into the forested area, and walk about ten meters off the path to sit on a bank overlooking a brook. I always had the best results meditating there and it was very renewing. At the time I was going through a difficult divorce (as if there is an easy one,) and trying to reconcile myself to my two dreams of an army career and a wife and family was all crashing down around me due to the divorce and a back injury. But there, in the woods, my soul and mind quieted enough that I could actually meditate. So I went there every day to do so.

One day when I was sitting cross-legged and meditating I opened my eyes and there, about ten inches or so from my right knee was a snake. It was not coiled but stretched out about two and a half feet at an angle to my right. It was raised, not to strike but at what looked to me like curiosity. I know that snakes don’t see like we do so I have always wondered what it saw, and how long it had watched me. To add to the oddity there was a bird about the same distance from my left knee that had also been looking at me. Both the bird and the snake, sitting together looking at me meditate when they are mortal enemies of each other. It was astounding. I opened my eyes and watched them and suddenly they both left in haste.

Meditation Changes Our Energy Field and Can Reset Our Natural Rhythms Disturbed By Stress

I had read that meditation changes the energy field that surrounds us and the Ayurvedic teachings about meditation had preceded the scientific discovery by thousands of years through the teaching of Chakras and meditation. Could they sense the differing energy fields? Could they see them? Or was it something else that attracted them? But I never would have had such an experience without finding a spot in nature to regularly meditate.

The substantial health benefits of prayer and meditation have been proven in multiple double-blind studies but they are only verifying Life-Truths that have been known for thousands of years. Science didn’t make it beneficial. Science only now finally verified things that spiritual leaders and people have known for over 50 centuries. It is nice that it has finally caught up.

But if meditation is truly a hack for those who can’t get into nature. Like those who live in large cities. Then we need to discuss options. To this, I would like to add that I had trouble meditating in my tank. I don’t know if it was the electronics and steel that surrounded me but if that was the case then modern cities would also pose a bit of a difficulty. But it’s not impossible.

Say A Prayer Of Blessing Of Your Sacred Space

One of the things you can do is bless the area before you begin. Pray a prayer to cleanse and purify your area as light a candle, ring a bell, smudge sage, light incense, or burn holy water. The other thing you can do is have a set area in which you meditate. Then when you get to that place your body will begin to open up to the Divine. Getting into your place of prayer and meditation will alert your body and subconscious of your intention.

My wife made a “prayer closet” under the stairs. She had a small table she could kneel at and had her candles, incense, and prayer book there in that room where she could meditate and pray. No one else entered that room. Most of us cannot spare a room for each person but in a previous house we had a small bedroom that we used as a prayer room for all of us. In this house we are preparing the attic as our spiritual library and temple as we have stairs that lead up to it and it is floored as a room.

Preparing A Place To Pray Has the Same Benefit As A Regular Time of Prayer

Preparing a place to pray, study, and meditate has the same advantages as having a set prayer time. The atmosphere of the place begins to change and it just “feels” holy. You can place whatever reminds you of your spiritual life and your connection to the Divine, the Source of All Life, the Ground of Being.

If you cannot set aside something for only prayer-time place by your chair or common seat, kitchen table, or wherever, a cross or other symbol, a candle holder, an incense burner, and/or a bell, or any other symbol that reminds you of your spiritual life. You can also set them on a tray or in a box and pull them out at prayer time, especially if you use a kitchen table you may not want them out all the time. When you sit in your seat of prayer then take a deep breath,say a prayer of blessing and presence, light your candle, burn your incense, ring your bell, or whatever you need to do to signal to yourself and your subconscious that we are entering a sacred place and a sacred time that is outside of and protected from the myriad cares of the world. No longer is it your TV chair or the kitchen table but your own sacred space and table.

The story I told in the YouTube Video A Time Of Prayer that was interrupted by a knock on the door was in my chair in the living room, where I had a cross on my end table, lit a scented candle in front of me on the coffee table, and began to pray. It was the same chair in my living room that I sat in to watch TV, play games with friends, or just visit with family and company. But, when I lit the candle it became my place of prayer. In the next blog, we will discuss centering and grounding.

One last thing. I have found that any part of my body completely surrounded by metal reduces effectiveness. I hold chains that I wear with my medal of St. Joan of Arc and my wedding ring in the palm of my hand when I meditate. Any necklace on a string or leather doesn’t seem to affect it. It makes sense to avoid conductive metal if you are dealing with energy fields but do what seems right to you. Nothing is effective if it makes you very uncomfortable to do it.

Do what seems right to you but be open to growing and trying new things. – Namaste

Without A Vision The People Perish

August 5, 2022 / / 1 Comment

I think that an ancient proverb from the Middle East recorded in Proverbs 29:18a is a proverb for our time. Everywhere we look there appears to be chaos and we have been cut off from our roots. Without knowledge of where we came from, we have trouble telling where we are and thence don’t know where we are going. In other words without a Vision the people perish.

It is probable that this means without knowledge of the Divine Will and communication with the Ground of All Being we become cut off from who we are and who we were created to be. We flail about unable to find a course to our life, a purpose in this chaos, or meaning in … well, anything.

Religion has a bad rap these days but I find it interesting that “Religio” (the root from which the word has grown) means “to bind us back.” To bind us back to our roots. This is essential because without its roots a tree doesn’t grow. Similarly if we are unaware of our own roots and foundational beliefs we become lost and confused. Religion, properly conceived should bind us back to the Source of All Life/The Ground of Being/Das Ding An Sich – or The Thing in Itself or as the book says: I am that I am. We humans become too hung up on names and outer trappings like ritual, names of the Divine, and even each others skin color and tend to overlook deeper connection and meaning. The very connection and meaning that religion is intended to help us create with the Creator (or Creatrix if you prefer).

I have a theory about religions and you will find it on the Page: Religions. but I think at their source there is a reality that each religion stumbles toward and that is the Ground of Being. Our language is inadequate to describe it, as anyone who has had a “religious experience” and had contact with the Divine Presence knows very well. The Bible and other sacred works are our groping efforts to describe the indescribable. But it is exactly this experience of the Divine and our listening to its promptings (which the Bible says is partially reflected in our conscience,) that we find purpose and meaning. I will post guidance on centering and listening to this guidance in the days to come but I firmly believe that we are cut off from who we are and who we were meant to be.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. – Jeremiah 1:5

By forgetting who we are and losing contact with the one who knit us together from the very first we are unable to find our path. Everywhere today we see the consequences of people, society, and religious institutions who have been cut off from their roots. They have lost their vision. We have lost the knowledge of who we are and are disconnected from the Source of Being. It is not surprising that so many don’t know who they are or why they are here. And then, depression sets in.

In my sermons I often said, “Children of the Living God remember who you are and who your father is! And then act like you remember.”

It is by remembering who we are we are guided back into a relationship with our Source and Ground of Being. It is where we find the purpose and vision to weather the trials of life and adversity and make a difference.

As I have said before, spiritual reality is a matter of poetry and song. It is emotion and feeling and not simply a mind thing but a heart thing. Here is what I was trying to say as this song sings praise to “the God of his heart.” I believe we will all find the Divine in the core of our hearts, if we center and look for it. (This one’s for you Chuck):

In thi,s the author praises the “God of His Heart” that Being which he hadthe deep and abidingexperiencef. Listen to what the author was trying to communicate of his experience that was too deep for explanation and could only be expressed in song. I know some have had troubles with people who are in churches and some doctrines. If you are one I ask you to set that aside and listen with the ears of your heart to what is being said.

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