Images of light and life

Christian mystics love metaphors, earthen symbols of a heavenly state. They are iconic images that point to something somewhere. Yet, if those symbols lose their meaning,  people will worship the symbols without a true conscious, spiritual understanding of what they meant in the first place.  This means, they have missed the boat to heaven and are worshiping the boat.  Navigating our little boats to heaven is like finding Avalon. It is not an easy passage.  It requires a practiced spirituality and a clear connection to the divine within oneself along with an understanding of where we're going.  Without a good teacher, we are doomed to range around this earth blind, dumb and dreading death because we think this is all there is.  The despair born out of such ignorance is what Jesus came to save us from.  

With the full tilt of religious fundamentalism, too many have slipped into idolatry due to a lack of understanding.  Sadly once that happens, some will hold on dearly to their metaphors, not even knowing they are metaphors in the first place while swearing by God they are the truth, when in their insistence they are even further from the truth.  They are insisting the boat is the destination. This is a perfect recipe for religious intolerance, hatred, me-ism, prejudice, racism and, obviously, arrogance.  Only the ego could thrive in such ignorance.

Everyone who's wielding swords at each other, each claiming they have it right, is wrong. Dead wrong.  If we had ever found the way into heaven we would be so filled with love, so enlightened with wisdom and full of so much compassion and kindness that we would barely want to walk on the grass out of respect for the life that's in it.  We would certainly not be rushing to the forefront to condemn anyone for any reason.  Heaven does not breed judgment, control or condemnation.  It is the place where life and love, and wisdom and that perfect light beyond the sun and moon resides.  It may be another dimension that you can access through deep meditation, but you can only enter that level of meditation after you've let go of your ego.  This may be why Jesus said only those who are like children can enter. 

"I tell you the truth, unless you change 

and become like little children, you will never 

enter the kingdom of heaven."  (Matt. 18:3)

If you had ever been there, there is only one reaction and that is JOY.  Love brings peace and peace brings joy and in that spirit life so big, so permeating that it soaks your soul so well that it will not, cannot, ever bid anything but love to anyone.  In that love is everything we ever wanted.  We wouldn't want anything material, nor prestige, honor, or success.  Maybe we would become like yogis and sit in deep silence, soaking up heaven all day every day and only emerge from that sacred state, only to love a brother or sister, feed the poor, love the unloved and then, when our spiritual batteries may dim, we return only to recharge on God and on heaven's banquet of love, light and life.  

In too many cases the common man is so immersed in the materialism of this age that the deeper truths of life have been eluded. 

Our real eternal spiritual lives are completely dependent on the "bread of heaven" which is the word of God, the spiritual food we receive when we commune with God in the great encounter through prayer and meditation. It is the spiritual substance, bread for the soul.

In Jesus' temptation in the desert, the devil attempted to lure Him away from his spiritual mission by interesting Him in the ways of the world, this 3-D  perishable material world, luring Him with promises of  material wealth, prestige, power, and even bread because he was hungry. Jesus firmly remains centered on the divine reality of who He is and where He is, and why He's here. He turns the devil down when he asserts, "man does not live on bread alone by by every word that comes from the mouth of God."  (Matt: 4:4) In those words and that action, He is defining the ultimate reality, which is to live in relationship with God. Nothing else will do.


Perhaps, modern man has finally realized that materialism just doesn't cut it and is beginning to understand that all the truth he ever needed is found in full immersion into God which was right there in front of him all along, hidden in plain sight.