Heaven overflows with love for YOU!

Heaven is always pouring its love toward us, flooding us with love, light, joy and power.  It's all around us and yet it seems sometimes we are too preoccupied to notice. I think if we knew this, really knew this, we would all turn around and run toward God with our hearts, minds and arms wide open. 


The divine draws from its own infinite source to create. Since it's clear that the divine doesn't draw its power from us, it flows toward us, offering itself to us, rather than away from us and taking from us. Heaven doesn't need anything from us.  It doesn't need a sacrifice, a slaughtered lamb or a long lingering fast or even alms and tithes.  


God's love really only wants to love and by receiving God's love, the flow is opened.  As part of creation, the divine flows toward us (as it does for all of creation) to evolve us, uplift, empower and continue its creation of us. 

Underlying some religions is the idea that we must serve God, that we must sacrifice to God. Tandem to that, is the idea that if we fail we will somehow be punished.  It seems to me that if that were true, the whole world would really be a horribly mean sham.  It seems incongruent with the God of creation.

I have come to realize that many of us have been duped for way too long.  We've been blindly believing the biggest fallacy out there which consequently has led many to dismiss the whole God subject.

God does not judge, nor condemn, nor criticize because love does not judge, nor condemn, rather it is allowing, accepting, believing, nurturing, building, healing. God loves with a power beyond our wildest imagination. Judgment, condemnation, criticism stunt creativity, stifle the flow from the heart by instilling fear. I think it may be challenging for us, who live in a world completely run on the idea of judgment and punishment, to shift away from that idea and accept that love is allowing rather than controlling. If we as a world can step away from the fear of God, and embrace love, I truly believe the world would cease its endless fear-based conflict in no time.


If we really knew that God only wants to give to us,  lovingly, tenderly, patiently completely without judgment, innocently, without guile, deceit and very much without an agenda, our lives and our world might be very different. I can't help wondering what that would look like.  


I think we have misunderstood what "giving up our lives" for God meant.  I am convinced that when Jesus told us that to receive life, we must give up our lives, he was talking about giving up the empty masks we wear, which we think are our lives and in which we are so heavily invested. He actually only asks us to give up our fears and dramas in exchange for real lives of freedom and love, given to us when we receive God's love.

Over  the ages, God sent messengers,  prophets, wise men and women to tell us that we are made in God's image, and God loves us and wants us to drink from his great stream of life the love, power, joy and creativity in order to grow up and fully realize our potential as God's children. 


I have come to realize that while God does not ask us for anything other than an open, receptive heart and mind, that is not a small thing either.  God's love is alive, catalyzing, enlivening, empowering and has a kind of life of its own.  It will change us.  It will cause us to enter an entirely new reality, a real life, a life of love focused on giving, rather than seeking for ourselves.  I think we would find that we would only want to give which may be why Jesus said it was more blessed to give than to receive.  


Love's essential nature is to give, to extend, to create, to increase and so by giving, it accomplishes its nature.  By accepting God's love, we are accepting life itself which takes us to a whole new and wonderful level and experience of being alive.

Slowing down time to change the future

What if we could slow down time, blow pedals off a flower and watch them gracefully float by or watch a hummingbird wing his gentle way to a flower pot, all in slow motion? What if in that moment in which we do slow down time, if we could even alter the path of things usually moving by so quickly that we are caught off guard - as in Superman stopping a bullet in mid-air?


I think it's a matter of perception and conscious awareness. If we don't know ( as in, forget our former preconceptions) that we can't, maybe we can.  I mean, for example, if we don't think that big bully is going to beat us up, then we might not react to him or act as if he's going to, possibly triggering his lower beating-you-up nature, and rather he simply walks past us, smiling.  I wonder if our perception or learned expectation of someone leads us to unknowingly act a certain way which actually triggers that person to behave as expected. I wonder, instead, if we expected something better, might we get something better?


In school, I remember my history teacher telling the class that we needed to learn history so we could have an overall understanding of the world today, since tomorrow's news is the continuum of yesterday's history. That seemed to make sense, then.


Today, it makes no sense to me whatsoever and, in fact, may just be why we are still engaged in wars and shootings and strutting around carrying guns in holsters because we all still think it's 1776 or the mid-1880s in the wild west. 


Why don't we junk the past. I mean, leave the history book on the shelf, and begin all over again, right now, in this very minute. Let's see if we can literally unhinge the future from the past and give it a fresh new chance by creating a kind of virtual time gap here in the present, which Eckhardt Tolle calls "The Now."


If we can mentally banish the past from our perspective and reaction process for the moment, and look on every single new event with brand new, innocent as a newborn baby's eyes, we may not be so quick to the draw or the battlefield.  We just may see things a whole lot differently, even more kindly, more lovingly, more creatively. 


Doesn't it seem like time stops when you're playing or creating something? Perhaps your consciousness has shifted into a stream of conscious creativity, surging up from the depths of your being. You have literally entered into a zone of timelessness.


I wonder if we could do it at will, whenever we wanted? What if we extended our consciousness of this present moment and took a deep breath and invited God into the moment and invited God to help us be wiser, more loving and help us make the best responses, so we could create a more beautiful future?  Does the past really have to define the future too?  

What if every moment was created this way, by slowing down our response to any and all situations and waiting and inviting God into that time gap? It seems kind of revolutionary, but what if this very moment, we stopped thinking about what's going to happen (as we expect it might) in the next moment, and realized that time could be stretched vertically rather than the usual time-line horizontal? I wonder if we could stretch this moment consciously into a kind of spiritual depth, all the way down into the fathomless depths of consciousness, to allow the power of divinity to surge up into our hearts and decision-making? What if we slowed down our minds and invited God's presence into our consciousness as we looked again at any given situation or encounter with fresh eyes, cleansed of our past conditioning?


A scene from Star Trek's "Insurrection" in which time is slowed down has always intrigued me. Captain Picard goes to the Ba'ku planet, where the Federation and their Son'a allies are conducting a cultural survey. The Ba'ku seem at first to be a simple race of only six hundred people, living in one village on their isolated world. But when Picard meets a Ba'ku woman, Anij, with whom he falls in love, he gradually learns that there is more to her people than meets the eye.


 She, like most of her fellow Ba'ku, is more than three hundred years old. In a scene in which Captain Picard and Anij are rescuing the children from Son'a invaders who want to take over the planet due to its metaphasic radiation that reverses aging, she gives him a slowing down time demonstration. She intrigues Picard by blowing pedals off a flower which float magically through the air in slow motion. She has learned, in fact her entire race has learned, how to enter into that eternal "Now" to access the creative and healing power of the divine, which isn't in the future, but rather is right here, right now, in the depth of this very moment. The Ba'ku have learned how to stay eternally present, which may also effect their perpetual youthfulness.


This may seem like graduate or doctoral level "mindfulness," and for now it may just be an idle idea. Or, perhaps, it could be an invitation to open our minds even wider to a possible way of thinking about life, a way that may lead us deeper into love with life, each other and even ourselves and thereby increase our own power to invent even better lives and an even better world.

You are the light of the world

Do you remember who you are?


Can you remember when you were a child and the world was a huge, wonderful and mysterious place for you to explore?  You loved to see pictures of animals and exotic foreign places around the world.  Remember? You probably didn't even care what the words were in your favorite story books, you would lean way around your mother or father to see the pictures.  It was all wonderful and all you wanted to do was get out there and see, smell, hear and feel everything around you.


So, what's happened?  Are you still that child, are you still a little explorer who has a thirst and curiosity for life?  Is your day still about finding a way to laugh and sing or run through the fields with your friends, or climb the neighbors fence just to feel the thrill of getting way up high, of swimming just to feel the water around you or riding a horse to feel his strong body beneath yours and see the world from up high?  Can you remember riding in a truck and barely being able to get your little legs up on the step to lift yourself up high in the vehicle?


Who were you, really, then?  Did you think you were someone other than that little mind inside your litltle body that just wanted to have fun?  No.  You did not.  You never ever gave it a single thought.  You just wanted to play and be happy and be with your friends and explore this beautiful world TOGETHER.


But, today, so many of us who were once little playful explorers, are tied down to depreciating house values, low level jobs, maybe full of the woes of other people's worries, too.  We forgot how to laugh, a long time ago.  We fell into the trap of thinking that we had to "find ourselves," as if we'd ever lost ourselves.  But, the sad truth is we had lost ourselves as we were taught to identify our talents and then put them to work in a field that suits us, and then before we knew it we went out there looking for a "suit" that fits us, an "out there" identity to replace that natural, free, joyful self with which we came into the world.


We forgot.  We all forgot and then we got lost in our forgetfulness.  The sad truth is our exterior identity is not us.  It is not real.  It is like putting on a mask and saying we are that mask.  The mask is not us.  We are that presence, that pure presence of radiant delight and curiosity and creativity and friendship, that is being covered up by the mask.


The Gospel says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall inherit the kingdom of God."  You might wonder why the poor in spirit would inherit a kingdom?  Simply, because they never found a mask that fitted and so remained there in the kingdom of Heaven, spiritually.  The Gospel says only those who are like children can enter the kingdom of God, probably because they never left it.  We come into the world as little angels, but we lose our beautiful bright angelic lights because the world tells us that we need to put on these masks and be successful, make a lot of money so we can have a lot of stuff, so we can show everyone around us that we're very good - very, very good and so deserving of praise, money and prestige, even status and power.  But, in the end, when the game is over and the mask rolls us, what is left?  Who is there?  Was it worth it?  You answer that.


If we were to return to that state of innocence in which we arrived here, and rather than put a mask on and work very hard to diminish the joy and light and free spontaneity children are minded not to be, if we were to turn back the clock a few decades, and start again, maybe we could or would embellish upon that light that flickered for a few years in the sunlight of our childhoods and allow it to grow, fan the embers of God's spirit within us, and allow it to grow and mature, and then who would we be?  Then, what kind of power might we have, what would we do with that power, with all that joy, with all that curiosity and friendship-building?  


I truly believe it is never too late - even if you are 100 years old - to take off the mask and plunge back into the radiante beings of light, of joy, of peace, of playful creativity, that we once were.  It's never too late to embrace the joyful natures we were born with and in that embrace, surrender all the worries and care of our lives to the great Source of all life, the One who created us and loves us and waits longingly for our return.  


We are, each and every one of us, the light of the world.  Together, we are an amazing blaze of glory that would be seen throughout the universe, if only we would each take off the mask, and let our individual lights shine.  Lately, I've noticed more and more people stepping into the gap in kindness, embracing "the child" whether it's a little nine-year-old girl who was shot in Tucson or a little six-year-old who, as she was singing the national anthem, lost power to her microphone and the entire stadium of fans, sang along with her.  


Maybe as we return to our own state of childhood, take off the mask, and put on the courage to be a child again, remember who we are, then our little lights would all begin to shine more brightly, a light that would shine as brightly as a star throughout the cosmos.  Just maybe.  I know for me, that is my goal and my hope for myself and all of us.

A distant star

A very distant star, many billions of miles and light years away, exploded recently. Hubble photos reveal a spectacular explosion bursting with color and light revealing a tremendously brilliant crystal center, startling in its diamond appearance. 

The brilliance, power, enormity and intensity is far beyond our understanding, but as I looked at the artist’s rendering of the distant star’s explosion, I thought it looked like a diamond – a huge universal diamond, a kind of universal heavenly symbol. Perhaps, like the Star of Bethlehem, this star, too, is a symbol of another return. 

The spirit whispered to me, calling me to look into the deeper meaning locked in this most marvelous event. What beautiful diamond lies at the core of everything? What marvelous power and light is inside even the most remote stars in our universe?

All of life is a sacrament, every material thing a reflection of the divine. Truth is buried within all earthen vessels and while we might say that on the surface these are just happenings with no particular meaning or essence, on the contrary, they are all outward manifestations reflecting an inner truth, a greater, more profound eternal essence. We are all particles of the divine. To find ourselves is to find God, distributed like dust across the face of the universe. In every microcosm, lies the entire cosmos.

Something of God’s essence is imprinted in the tiniest particle of light, each imperceptible glittering quanta, as much as in every exploding sun. Breathless, I knew that for an instant, I had glimpsed heaven and a truth so profound that its meaning almost escaped me. 

This new revelation seemed to contain an urgency. The sudden bursting forth delivered a perceptual impact. In short, a sense of urgency came with the experience of simply seeing this magnificent cosmic display. It was more than just fireworks. It held a message for me, perhaps for all of us that did not go unnoticed and unrealized. Inside all of life is God. Divinity lay at the most fundamental level of life, even seemingly unintelligible life such as this huge galactic rock, exploding across space and time. 

Simply, if divinity were inside a star, certainly it is inside human beings with fragile flesh and bone, weeping for a brief while on this earthen plane, looking out of ourselves into the blue abyss, wondering for eons what this is all about. Both the question and answer may be revealed inter-galactically. Who are we? What are we? And where do we come from? Philosophers, theologians and scientists have grappled with these questions forever. Perhaps the answer is simple. We are alive, teeming with life itself and in that life is God’s very selfhood, and our sense of purpose and meaning lies in that awareness. 


Buried within us is the light, the power and the dynamism of life itself. Nowhere else is closer to God than right here, within these fragile bodies of ours. As we peel away layers of time and teaching, we find that in our most simple nature, most humble origins, also lay our greatest treasure. We are material vessels for the divine. 

Ancient Gnostics and yogis said a beautiful spiritual diamond lay deep within our minds, beyond our overactive egos and worldly personalities.  They said its power and light was hidden by our lack of awareness and even lack of faith.  Yet, it is eternal and waits, patiently, deep within us where one day we will finally wake up to these universes of light, eternally unfolding from within our enlightened minds.


Everything in our lives leads us to this place of self discovery. We know it, individually and collectively. At long last, it seems our culture has hit critical mass on this subject and only now is ready for the revelation of the diamond within. It could be the end of an age or the dawning of new one. Behind every apocalypse lies a bright new renaissance. These tandem riders give birth to God’s self revelation on an enormous cosmic screen, set within the human heart. 

As we attempt to reach for this truth and its meaning for us, we are forced to look at life in all its practicality and messy detail. The beginning is within us, like the mustard seed, and begs for wisdom’s water to grow.

* Sirius

"I am with you always"

God told Moses, “I am that I am.” Jesus told the masses of weary, desperate, oppressed people who pressed upon him, tugging at him as a child tugs at his mother's apron strings for something to eat, "I am with you always, even until the end of time." 

While Christians, Jews and Muslims all share a common understanding of Who that Great I am is, He is here for all people, of all faiths and even is in all faiths. Perhaps He is like water. We all drink it, not just some people, but all people, and it flows everywhere on the planet. Christ teaches us how to enter into a deeper relationship with the Great I am. 

Since He is here for all of us, many spiritual people from various faith traditions and spiritual walks have accepted this awareness in a kind of non-religious, open-ended human anthropological consciousness. They have chipped away the church stuff, to reveal the spiritual truths which were once exclusive to Christianity, but today are non-liturgical, and are there for all of us.

That Great I am is in all of us and with all of us. It is part of Who We Are. He is in the air we breathe, and deep within our own inner brilliance and passion. God’s essence has always been there and always will be there. It is fully conscious and the ultimate fullness of beinghood. It is He Who Jesus met in the desert and on the dusty roads in Palestine. In His encounter with that Great I am, Jesus was changed, transformed and reborn into Christ. And, if he wasn’t already perfect, which most likely he was, he was made fully perfect by the encounter.

He was unique in the level, quality and perfection of His awareness of the power and eternality of that presence which is everywhere, Whom we have called God. In His awareness, Jesus found that He was not alone. There was a mysterious someone, something, presence with Him no matter where he went. If he went up into the mountains, that someone went with him. If he went into the storms at sea, that someone went with him. If he went into the presence of hostile adversaries, that someone went with him. If he went into a cruel, jacked up trial, that great loving Other went with him. If they put him to death on a cross, even there, that someone went with him.

The unique part of His story, which He said can be our story also, is that He knew that Great Other, that Someone. The more time He spent with that Someone, the more familiar He became. That may be one of the most beautiful gifts He left to us. He told us that we also could know that Great Other, that Great Lover of our souls, that awesome Creator. We could know Him. There are ways, he taught us, to get to know Him.. The first way, he seemed to say, was to drop all the baggage we haul around - that guilt and feelings of inadequacy - and then "seek" and we would surely find that He is always there.

There have been times when, out of desperation and anguish, I have prayed and asked the Great I am for help, for strength, for vision and wisdom to get through a challenging situation when I couldn't see through the fog, and He has never let me down. I simply turned my thoughts to asking Him to help. And, help was always there. Slowly I began to sense a presence beside me, a loving presence, a kind of soft warmth beside my cheek, a lift in my heart when I felt weary and heavy inside. He is there and always is there.

As I reflected on this, I imagined a flock of radiant angels gathering on a hillside. As my inner eye panned the scene, it seemed the hill was brilliant with their radiant white wings. From a distance, it almost seemed there was a great light there. Then, I zoomed in, came closer, looked more intensely, and there I saw amidst the great throng of light, a fleck - a little human fleck. I saw you, and me, and realized that while we cannot visually see Who accompanies us everywhere, that great presence is there with us all the time.

Because it is so loving, it will not interfere. It is so non-controlling that it won't so much as utter a breeze or lift a wing to affect any choices we make, unless we invite It to enter into a situation to help us. Sometimes I even think that we somehow find ourselves in difficult situations, so that we can call on It for help and then be helped and realize the great company that moves with us wherever we go. There's a saying from my daughter's Episcopal teen summer camp that claims, "10,000 angels go before you" wherever you go.

It takes a real stretch of your mind and may be a miracle in and of itself, to hold onto this thought. You are not alone. You never were and you never will be. You are part of something so much bigger than your little personhood. All you have to do is ask for help, ask for guidance, wisdom or love on any given occasion and wait - maybe for a second, maybe for a year - the length of time depends on your own willingness to believe - and He will never disappoint you. He is there in whatever form He chooses to be there for you. You are not alone. The Great I am is with you always.


Above image from www.awakening-healing.com

Singing in the rain

Starry Night, Arles by Vincent Van Gogh

Sing, laugh, dance a little jig down the hall to your office, talk to strangers, smile at that grouchy old man who grumbles, walking with his head down in the rain, never seeing the rainbows.


There is so much beauty right in front of us.  If only we could see beyond our worries and those cares that loom so big that we can't even see the rainbows.


I guess we could take back our power and stop and choose to see the beauty. When things aren't quite up to par, maybe we could stop for a moment and see if we could find another word for it. And, then, in that second, maybe we would change our whole day and even whole life.  I know things aren't always the way we'd like them. That's obviously because we're not in charge of the world.  But, the One who is, loves us all so much.  He never wanted us to be like this. He must think all our little worries are so silly in comparison to the gorgeous gift of life He's given us.


From the very beginning, over an incomprehensibly long time, He made us to be free, creative, powerful, and very much like Him.  We were free as the eagle and had intuitive, psychic (for lack of a better word) and mental powers that we have so long ago forgotten.


Insidiously, over these many long millennia, we slowly slipped into bondage due to a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that held us under the spell of whomever (or whatever) had the biggest weapon - whether it was the threat of losing your life if you failed to worship as one religion thought you should, or if you were born the wrong racial color, or the wrong sex, or just because you were a kind of soft, moody artist who just couldn't fit into this harsh linear world.


We became controlled by our fear, aroused by those who could (and usually did) kill us if we didn't do as they ordered and we carefully taught our children how to live so they too wouldn't be punished by that ancient foe.  We have long forgotten who set up this scenario, but we learned that we would be punished if we didn't comply and so we complied.  History is too bloody and too full of stories of the fate of those who didn't comply.


In fact, we all have cooperated in trying to out wit that ancient fear and in that effort became cowardly, powerless and fearful, slipping under the wheels of the conquer's chariot.  And, in that fear, we created systems and cultures, whole world institutions and a myriad of other structures that  promised to protect us, but as soon as they were powerful enough, they too enslaved our minds and our lives.  They allowed us to continue to live, but only in their playgrounds with the toys they provided according to the rules they made.


If we could see beyond the illusionary sandbox we all play in, or the large and small dramas we think are ruling our lives, if we could see there was something so much bigger, so much more beautiful, something so much more real, then we just might get up the courage to live according to our own hearts and finally be free. The puppet masters of the illusionary sandbox would chase us out of the playground, put us in a dungeon or on a burning stake or a cross or something that would teach anyone else not to challenge the way things are. Sure they would, but they can't put the whole world in prison, not if we all decided in our hearts to love and smile and be happy and free no matter what is going on around us or even to us.


A story from the Old Testament often tugs at my heart reminding me of this ancient call to remember who we are and of the innate power we have been given by our Creator.  The story of Daniel who chose to pray regardless of what the king's latest edict said.  And, yes, they tried to kill him, but even the lion, fiercest of all beasts, would not touch this man with so much courage, and faith, and most of all - power.  


Today, there are so many who take this big huge drama on Earth so very seriously.  In fact, they take it so seriously, I wonder if they ever smile, if they ever look up at heaven at night and see the stars sparking in the night sky and remember that those stars just might be God winking back at us, reminding us that joy is the gift He gives us and the measure of our acceptance of this beautiful gift of life He has given us.


I don't know why we're here in this life, on this planet at this time.  I don't play theologian any more.  But, I do know that since God loves us so much and only asks that we free ourselves from whatever oppresses our free spirits, our joyful selves from the misery and heaviness so many wear on their faces, that we must be here to learn how to love and help free each other from the bondage of our blind complacency and apathy.


I just know that we're here to taste the wine of being alive and in that wine, lose our false sobriety to the sheer bliss of unreasonable joy.  


So, my dear ones, just don't take it all so seriously.  Yes, feed the poor, help the elderly, but remember to love yourself at least as much, and try to remember who you really are, you beautiful bright radiant children of God.  We are all together on this beautiful earth and all we really have to do today is to smile and love each other.  All else is just not all that important.