A Garden for Lovers

Earth, our beautiful garden home, was always intended as a place for lovers to live in and create their dreams. At creation, Earth came with all the ingredients for a perfect home for us to live in as powerful, creative, poetic lovers. 

A full moon whispers softly to our heart's free abandon every month. Warm, radiant sunshine dances on the surface of the water, beaming and smiling its effervescent joy and presence of love everywhere. 

The warm sand beneath our bare feet softly invites us to stroll peacefully along the tranquil shore. Strong snow-capped mountains protect the more delicate life in the valleys. Moist green forests provide shelter for the animals. Fruit trees, nuts, berries and plants offer food for our lives. In this beautiful place, you can dream your life into being, think it, wish it, and it could be.  

Ah, if we only really knew this, really believed this magical mystery, everything would be so different. There would be no more struggle, no war, no conflict, no scrambling for our share of life - large and small - from an individual person to a nation. Everything we ever dreamed of for our lives, every fruit of life we ever wanted to taste, is in this lovely garden of life.

So why do so many of us experience rotten fruit and get what we don't want? While it is true we attract what we want, it seems many of us are operating from a corrupted subconscious that is also attracting what it believes we deserve based on erroneous early-life brainwashing. This behind-the-scenes program, buried in our forgotten memory, is yet very operable. It is that system that is doing the choosing or refusing for us. It was locked and loaded long before we had any conscious choice of will, usually before the age of 5.

We may know that we want our plans to work out. We may reach for our goals and dreams, but, on a deeper level that older program,instilled in us from childhood,has full control. It is like an inner software that runs on a limiting belief which sabotages our dreams. It is that internalized inner belief that is blocking our success.  Among many of its beliefs is that we're unworthy and so we should not have what we want. At some early stage in our primary years, an adult made us feel this way. Since we were unable to discern and reject that belief, we believed it.  

Essentially, we are in conflict with ourselves.  On a conscious level, we reach for a dream,but on a subconscious level, that dream is denied or remains out of reach. It's our job to discover why. Why do we believe we don't deserve or can't obtain it?  There may be a buried belief that we need to discover, forgive, and release it, thereby freeing us to receive our dream. 

I also believe our creator, who made this beautiful garden for us, is urging us to release that buried belief that we are unworthy of our dreams immediately before we destroy our home.
 
That early-life learned program operates as a mean (or abusive, or addicted) parent who withholds love as a means of control. It is sometimes called the "inner critic."  It insidiously believes we are undeserving or unworthy of success, love, acceptance or receiving what we want. It's active in our fundamental operating system for so many of us, if not all of us. We associate this mean, controlling, unloving, judgmental parent as the archetype of authority, which we project onto God. We learn to live in fear and we subconsciously believe that God (and all of heaven) judges us. We have been taught that we are "sinners," and therefore unworthy of just about any good thing.

Since that is our oldest belief. That wish is what comes true, over and over again. If you were taught from your childhood that you are a "sinner" and unworthy of God's love, it is bonded deep inside your psyche. We need to undo that belief.

To do that, we have to go to the source of our being and relearn the most fundamental lesson of life which is we are worthy and we are loved, absolutely unconditionally. When we can learn that, accept that, and firmly believe it, we can retrain our mind. A lot of spiritual material is out there now, saying this, but I don't think we can say it enough.  How many times do we have to hear something before we learn and believe it?  A lot of times.

It is imperative that we take back our innate power, immediately. It is urgent. We have to regain our own power, autonomy, freedom, creativity and awareness of our own innate divinity. Then, our dreams can bloom.

The very first thing we need to relearn is that we are loved and lovable and that God wants us to love ourselves, first, and each other as a consequence of loving ourselves. Loving others flows from and extends from our own self-love. We love ourselves by honoring our right to use our own creative power through self acceptance and belief in ourselves, in our right to our dreams, and the destiny to which they bring us. We have to tap into love that is sleeping within us.  It's right behind the door, closed and locked by judgment and condemnation.

Love is the highest power. It is sheer creative power. Its source is from the creator of the universe, our Divine Parent.  We will only receive it through our belief system and that belief system is built on the foundation of our self-worthiness. 

To receive God's love, we need to feel we're worthy of it. And, that's the problem with most religions.They teach us that we're not worthy and thereby keep us locked in chains in the dark dungeon of unconsciousness, by withholding the knowledge that God loves us. It was this very idea the church imposed on its followers for centuries. It suggested that God was a judge, rather than the beloved who wants to nurture us into enlightened beings.

By keeping people away from God's love, through judgment and conditional acceptable, the church kept us poor, hungry, unloved and powerless, groveling, rather than stepping up and into the power and light of our birthright as the divine children of the Divine creator of all of life. The church (as most other religions) had us eating out of its hand. We did what all disempowered people do, we gave it what it wanted so it would give us what we needed. We gave it our allegiance, our power, our money, our firstborn, our worship, our hearts, and minds. We became beggars when all along God wanted was for us to be His co-creative soul mates. The Church abused the western world for almost 2,000 years, in the name of the One who came to teach us the exact opposite.

Religion promised us access to God, to whom it claimed it had exclusive rights. But, it didn't really give us access to God. It didn't know the code and didn't hold the keys.  All it did was keep us away from its dirty little secret. By the time we were completely enslaved to the larger system, our souls had been sucked out of us. 

Somehow, by some awesome miracle, we are waking up to  this now. We've heard so much from the Spirit on an inner-knowing, gnostic, interior level that is counseling and leading us to the truth. Now, we want to wake up everyone and tell them that God loves them no matter what.  And, the journey of life begins when we realize how loved we are and accept God's love, as one would accept the love of the beloved.  

There is nothing blocking you from God's love except a deep-seated thought that you are unlovable and unworthy. And, that is a lie. You are worthy and loved. Hold that thought for as long as you can, as often as you can, and soon your life will radiate a brilliant luminescence that makes our troubled world a little bit brighter.

You are all beautiful, brilliant, loving and very loved children of God, worthy of everything you can dream of creating.  There is nothing you can do to change that FACT. As a child of God you deserve everything you can dream up and you are able to have everything you want.

Since love is the most powerful energy, with the highest and most magnetic vibrational intensity of anything in the universe, with that love in you, you can attract into your life anything - absolutely anything. The key is believing this, accepting it, and then allowing it to catalyze your dreams.

Jesus taught us to receive God's love, we start by accepting the knowledge that we are loved and worthy regardless of anything we've ever done before. God's love is absolutely unconditional. It is we who keep it from ourselves and each other through unforgiveness, not the other way around.

So, to undo the old, buried, subconscious programming, remind yourself that God's love is the very substance of life itself, and the power to create your perfect life is in the magnetic energy of God's love. 

It materialized all of creation, and it is there and God wants you to receive it. I believe Jesus died in an effort tell us this. He came to stop the spiritual controllers of his time(Pharisees and Sadducees) who were exploitive, manipulative, and deceptive. They were those who neither entered the kingdom of heaven themselves nor allowed others to enter, either. 

It is urgent that we all realize we are loved and lovable and potentially as powerful as any child of God. You are here to experience and express God's love and light into the world. First you have to receive it through acceptance and then live it out loud.

Put all else aside for now and think exclusively on this: 

You are loved absolutely unconditionally, and because you are a child of God, as we all are, you are worthy of God's love. And, because you are a child of God, as we all are, you deserve to exercise your power to create the life of your own imagining and dreaming, the life of your own heart, the life that is brimming over with joy, love, promise, hope and beauty, a life of perfection - however you define it. 

You are a powerful child of God.  Remember this.  And, remember that everyone else is too.  We are all alike in this.  

Love yourself and show to the world how much you love yourself by how you love others. Allow your inner power to flare up like a great presence within you.  If you are cruel to someone else, you are showing the world that you are cruel to yourself.  If you cheat others, you are showing us that you cheat yourself, that you don't know who you are and you don't feel worthy of God's love.  Only love can change your life.  When you feel love, you exude it.  The light of love within you, through your acceptance, can radiate into all your relationships and extend well beyond your control into life itself.

We can change our future by changing our present.  
You are worthy and you are loved. Live like you know it until you have changed your inner programming.  

The world is waiting for all of us to stand up tall as the powerful children of God, filled and imbued with his power and his love to stop the madness and recreate the world as it was always originally meant to be - a garden ...... a beautiful, vibrant, radiant garden of love - for lovers and all others in which we communed with God in the Spirit of love, ecstatically and in bliss. It was meant to be a paradise on Earth.  

Awaken: Be wise as serpents, gentle as doves, Part 1

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: 

be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."  

Matthew 10:16 

The new age, being born out of the ashes of the old dying before us today, is one of real power, which is spiritual power.  It is the power of creation, of new life born out of love which is the highest potential of humankind and is the ultimate spiritual power. It is the power of the dove.

Real power is gentle, humble, loving, open and allowing.  Real power does not have to assert its will against another.  It doesn't  need to persuade or prove its point, coerce another to do anything, be anything other than who or what it is. Real power, as real love, celebrates the other for who or what it is, whether or not it is alike or different.  

A cat doesn't try to make a dog a cat.  It purrs alongside the dog admiring its fine coat.  But, why do people attempt to make other people be like them, different than who they already are?  Why are huge ugly egos out there attempting to make people believe as those egos believe?  Our beauty as a world, as a human being, is in our diversity.  

Wise people, those empowered and loving ones who can only look at history's bloody tragic past with tears in their eyes and sorrow in their hearts for what has been, have learned this hard lesson.  We are all different, yet all the same as children of the One God, and we are a people wearing a multi-colored coat, made for us by our beloved creator.

As we awaken to what is really happening out there on Earth today, we would be blind fools to not see that things are out of control and clearly not as our benevolent, life-giving creator intended.  It makes no sense and sensibility is one of the gifts given to us at our creation.  We were born with an innate sense of order and creativity.  We know instinctively to listen to our hearts, to do and be what is loving, kind, giving and creative.  Evidence of this is in all the world's cultures, mores, taboos and social decorum. 

As the crisis of world domination spirals insanely closer to self-destruction, where is our hope?  Where is the solution, the antidote to this hatred and insanity?  Throughout centuries, nations have clashed against each other, asserting the right-ness of each one's position, each claiming to be on God's right side. And, so we've come to today - the world's future hangs on the cliff as we continue to make these same claims.  Each religion thinks it's right, yet in its assertion that it is "the one true faith" and we all know they all claim that, we are showing our falseness, our blindness to what is really real.

I've said previously that the Q'uran doesn't need defending, nor does the Gospel or any other revealed religion.  What our sacred scriptures ask of us is to listen to what God is saying to us in them. God is gathering us together - as a hen would gather her chicks - as a mother cat would gather her kittens.  God is showing us where our real power lies.  

A Muslim and a Christian could agree on this, as could a Hindi and a Buddhist, or a Hopi and a Catholic.  Nature, which is the  environment in which we were born, is also a reflection of God's nature.  We are united, connected, to God and to each other by our shared nature.  Earthly power has been a lower vibrational means of leveraging survival.  As a kind of power over, material evolution reflects a Darwinian means of survival of the fittest, and as that idea is true on a material level of nature, it is also true on a spiritual level, the highest vibrational level of life, albeit unseen for us in three-dimension, yet real nonetheless. Those who are the most detached from ego, materiality, selfishness and greed, are the most fit spiritually and therefore will survive the shifting ages.  Those who are most surrendered to God, the most filled with God's love, humility, honesty, gentleness, and intentional love, are the most fit spiritually and will inherit the kingdom of God, on Earth. 

A few weeks ago, I was joking with a friend about the possibility that the solar flares would knock out the power on the west coast.  My friend joked back, "I don't have anything to worry about.  I have an underground bunker and a year's worth of water and food supplies."  

I laughed, knowing that my friend didn't, nor did I.  It was in that moment that I knew that if anything catastrophic ever happened, I was completely unprepared to protect the children, cats, myself and everyone else.  Yet, I also knew that with God's presence in my life, and the love of God that I have shared with everyone, we might make it.  I don't know how we would make it, but it wouldn't be because of an underground bunker.  It would be because God's love is more powerful than anything that could happen to us. 

The promised new age, the one that will emerge after this dark age has descended out of existence, when the lower powers of control and manipulation have wiped itself out, all that will survive will be the strongest ones spiritually, those made powerful by love.  The courage of those strongest ones, the highest, most powerful skill sets of those wiser, higher vibrational ones is their only hope. The greatest power is the power of love, but it is a love too few humans really embrace and live by.  It is a strong, confident, creative spiritual power.  It is the power to "move mountains" with a single thought.  It is the power to love an enemy, to kiss a leper, to walk on water, to resurrect the dead, to relinquish our will on any given situation and open the door for the Spirit or wisdom of God  to enter any situation and effect the healing, the help, the hope, the breath of life so long awaited. 

True power is the power of the dove. It is the power of God alive and active in an open-hearted, God-surrendered human being. Images of the pure-hearted-spirited dove are woven into our ancient memory.  When Noah opened the ark after the flood to check the safety of the newly washed world, he sent out a dove. The spirit of God descended onto Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan as a dove. This idea is central to all the world's religions, those uninfected by the anti-christ's fear and debasing soul-sabotage.

The  new age will be an elevated period of human experience on the earth in which we live love, create with that very substance of God's divine power, and surrender our fears, our ego-based manipulative effort to control through force and fear, threats of death and poverty and lack, when our only arsenal is wisdom and love, received from God through our honest surrender spiritually, whole-heartedly to God's own love for us.  

I can imagine such a new world.  I can see us loving each other, cooperatively birthing a greater freedom of soul, midwifing together this new world.  I long for it,  I live for it, and wait patiently for us to wake up to it, now, right now, today as we let go of the hold the anti-christ has on the world.  

In this very moment, we can wake up.  In the blink of an eye, we can surrender our fear, our guilt, our addictions and loosen the grip the anti-christ has on us, individually and collectively.  

Each one of us must seek our own salvation and that salvation is found in our choice to be free and followers of our own hearts where God is heard and experienced.  It is in love that we are found and it is in love that we find God.  That love is our power and that love is anything but controlling.  It is allowing, freeing and hopeful that we will chose that road less traveled, that path out of the dark into the beauty of real life and real power.  

Remember nothing is what it seems.  Don't be deceived by an attractive package.  Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. We must be wise to the dark manipulations of those would-be godly, holy ones who seek to usurp the power of the dove for the heavy powers of the beast. Be wise and then be gentle.  Your gentleness will be the clue that you are being wise.  Only the wise are courageous and gentle.  The fool is cruel and cold, ruthless, cowardly and fearful.

As you enter into this new age, born today in your mind and imagination, you will receive the sword of love - of gentleness and warmth and compassion and creative hope - and you will become a most precious soldier for peace, for love and for the birthing of the new age.  Then, your reward will be life.  

When this old age has dimmed, you will live.  You will live in love and by love.  Once you learn the language of love, you will live in this new age.  If you don't or can't learn the language of love because the beast has hold of your soul through its cunning control, you won't see or live in the new age.  It is a spiritual age and you can make that choice.  Choose God, choose love, choose oneness and acceptance and allowing of others to be who they are.  I love you.  Choose the higher path.  It is the path to life.  The other is the path to destruction and death.

Next:  Awaken:  Beware wolves in sheep's clothing, Part 2, March 25, 2012

Awaken: Beware wolves in sheep's clothing, Part 2

                                  "For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden 

                                   causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make 

                                   righteousness and praise spring up before all nations."

                                                                                 Isaiah 61:11 NIV

As you awaken, be aware that all is not what it seems. Open your precious hearts and souls to the true lover of your soul, the One who has created you out of love, designed to freely find your own soul's path and live in love and peace. Our creator only asks for your love and for you to share his love with each other. In his presence, you will feel loved, joyful and immersed in a deep sense of peace.

On the other hand, beware the powers of control that would seduce you away from your own self-determination, and lure you further away from your own heart's desire, your own mind, and make you a slave. That is among the tools in the crafty wolf's cache. You will feel anxious, unsure of yourself, afraid, inadequate in its cold, critical, judgmental presence.

Today, the times are ripe with fears of the apocalypse, of end times. Today sagacious warriors of light warn us knowingly in Earth's dark night often alluding to the Mayan Calendar or Hopi prophecies or Egyptian writings that were left specifically for these very times, all abounding in profound warnings and messages from a former golden age. These messages, etched in ancient writings, on walls, temples, and pyramids, warn us about a possible end age that is being suggested could be imminent. It seems to me that we might be in the midst of that age but also on the cusp of a beautiful, radiant new age that will rise out of the ashes of this time.

These ancient messages, though sobering and fearful, are shrouded in mystery yet also hold a glimmer with hope and another promise. Wiser folk than myself have translated these messages from the ancient symbols and writings and are sure that we are entering an "end age." And yet, what is threatening our very survival is not quite as much a mystery as we may think. Ancient Judeo-Christian scriptures mention another wolf who stalks us as its prey, an "antichrist" who is defined as the very definition of evil incarnate.  Some may liken this being to a sinister satanic being, a Devil. That idea, which seems to be the prevailing idea, is actually part of the antichrist's trick. It would send us searching for something that is hiding in plain sight.

Laughing in its dark, bone-covered, crypt, the evil one smirks, cackling at its greatest deception against the sons of men. The antichrist is not so much a singular individual - that would be too easy - as it is a force, an empty nothing, that in its vacuous soul has only the power we unwittingly give it. In its skills set is its ability to suck your soul and power away from you by tricking you into giving it to it.  

It uses the language of religions and customs as its authority to take away your freedom and force your obedience to laws that further weaken your freedom and choice, eventually confusing you and robbing your of your creative, joyful, free energy and self-love. It is the ultimate user and abuser, only you don't know it because you think you're doing the right thing by obeying it.

Rather than dive into a theological comparison of duality, which is what I don't want to do here, I will simply say that the anti-christ is a force that blows across the Earth. It is on the media, in the news, in the market place and the schools. It has become so common that we can't recognize it anymore. It has become a standard of acceptable behavior and decorum that we have become so accustomed to its seduction we don't even recognize it as such anymore.

By slowly raising the temperature of our common life, we are slowly being boiled alive spiritually - metaphorically. We don't know it though. While we search the world over for the anti-christ, as we once sought an elusive terrorist, we miss the forest for the trees. It isn't one person, one nation, one religion - although it has a strong presence in most - it is a force.

As I look around our world at the unbelievable amount of deception, greed, selfishness, ego-based cruelty inflicted on others, it seems clear that control and manipulation are at the roots of most relationships.Too often relationships that one would think are based in love, are rather immersed in ego-driven power struggles. When the love is gone, assuming it was ever there, all that's left for the couple are power games. That idea seems to have penetrated all relationships - personal, professional, political, corporate from marriages to communities, nations, and the entire world.

I cannot listen to the news out of the Middle East anymore. I cannot hear about another innocent woman or child being killed or tortured by an oppressive, tyrannical dictator. There is no question in my mind that we must be close to the end of an age.

If this dark age, run and energized by the dark forces of a fundamentalist religion, which has reduced people to the status of puppets, awaiting the battle cry of yet another dictator, one who may look like a leader, spouting religious language, while building his hate platform against other nations and people who are different, then the end is imminent.

The souls of those who have been sucked in by the controlling manipulations of those who themselves are enslaved to a religion or a nationality or any kind of tribe that sets itself against others who are different, pivots on a seat of hate, violence, fear and cowardice.

As I write this today, my heart is weary from the lies and deception of those who dare to offer the world a face of innocence, honesty, noble intentional living, when they are rather ignorant, selfish, ego-based antichrists who prey on the innocent.

In their "us against them" arrogance, their false sense of superiority supports the ancient viper's mad plan for humanity's ultimate demise. Beware of them and beware of your own complicity, your own vain needs that look the other way as they trick, deceive and dupe others. The sons of God will be taken down, one at a time, due to our own weakness and sleepy soul state if we are not awake and aware.

Next:  Awaken:  Ancient deceiver lurks among us Part 3.

Awaken: Ancient deceiver lurks among us, Part 3

                                          "For what shall it profit a man if he shall 

                                           gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" 

                                                                                Mark 8:36 KJV

Awaken, all you beloved, radiant warriors of light. You, who are driven to serve the light, and seek greater wisdom, are needed so much more than you realize. You are also being targeted but may not know it. You may also wonder how are you to do what you feel in your heart you must do.  

First, you need to gather your weapons. We are at war with an invisible force. Like a windstorm, its presence is only visible in the devastation left in its aftermath. Your primary weapon is simply consciousness and tuning the harp of your heart and emotions.  Vigilance over your mind begins when you awaken. And, the war is won through non-resistance.

We all need to wake up to this terrible truth.  We are being skillfully deceived by the oldest and best trickster in the book. We all are.

If it isn't actually terrorizing and imprisoning us, it is tricking us to give away our money, our affections, our heart, our time, and ultimately our soul.  We even do it willingly. That's how deep the deception runs.  

News flash: the antichrist is here among us, as it always has been, but, perhaps, more so lately. It is a charming, even charismatic, psychopathic, lying, deceiver. Its biggest trick is that it is so nice, so friendly, so seemingly good, even seductively physically attractive, and yet it will steal your soul if you're sleeping at the helm of your life.

While it sounds like I'm talking about an individual, I am not.  It is a collective mindset, a kind of epidemic of evil that has poisoned the world well. Individuals may have these qualities and so might entire nations or political machines or corporations - all of which exploit and prey on the weak and unaware.  That's where you come in.  You are so vital, so important, to the planet's wellness and the emerging Golden Age. You are a warrior of light and your weapon is consciousness.  Conscious awareness is more powerful than many realize.

As you wake up to this, become aware of it, and not fight against it, but simply wake up, you defuse its power.  It's as if you stop one evil warrior by just being aware, nothing more.  Seeing it for what it is often is the first step.

But, the good news is - and there is good news - the vast, comprehensive, all-pervading presence of deception and evil in the world, today, is a clear indication that its demise is imminent. The point is, whenever anything is threatened it strikes out viciously. Apparently, the evil force must feel threatened. It has pulled out all the stops and is emptying its arsenal on all of us - worldwide.

Immediately, all people of the Earth must awaken to its slippery style. The weak among us will be its prey. We may be small and delicate physically, yet strong and wise spiritually. 

Its modus operandi is it tricks us into giving away our power. It assumes an authoritative position and whittles away our sense of value until we are (feel) weak and trapped. By this point, it has us eating out of its hand, completely dependent even if we are fully aware of our status. Then, the real work of dissolving our soul begins. Thereby it sucks the life out of the human being. 

It drains our freedom, our natural power and autonomy, and replaces it with a spirit of fear, of cowardice, of unimaginative living, of cold, apathetic hate and depression, literally stripping us of our creative freedom and divine destiny-making.  

It robs the soul by instilling it with fear. The obvious indication of its presence in your life is the degree to which you feel hopeless and depressed. The rising statistics of suicide in the world are evidence of its high casualty rates.

The Christ, the eternal, creative, all-loving child of God, is also a Spirit, a spirit of love, of unconditional acceptance, of patient allowing, humility, imbued with pure honesty, truth-telling, kindness, gentleness, all wrapped in a robe of non-judgment, and absolutely unconditional LOVE. It's absolute power and is our champion. Its power is the ultimate strength, but as gentle as a feather or a wing on a butterfly. And, God's gentle spirit of grace is always available to us.

Where the Christ spirit is, there is creation, there is patience, peace, love, joy, laughter, creativity, hope, and a gentle breeze of presence that fills the soul with light and LIFE. It is life-giving and life-sustaining. It is healing and it is always looking on the bright side of any challenging situation. It hopes all things, believes all things and waits patiently for our evolution, for that day when we open the door to our own hearts and allow the love of God into our hearts and lives. You will know it by its peace and gentleness, kindness, and honesty. Often it is simple, non-threatening and non-dramatic. You will feel alive, inspired and loved in its presence.  

The Christ undoes the antichrist with a simple sentiment of forgiveness. One who can forgive is free of the control of the antichrist. Since the antichrist operates on a platform of judgment and condemnation, demanding an eye for an eye, seated on the pretense of justice, forgiveness is an anathema to its operation. The antichrist dissolves in the face of forgiveness, which is love in action. 

When Christ spoke from the Cross, his last words were "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." His final breath undid the antichrist and taught us the perfect mantra to remain free.

Just to refresh our understanding so we will recognize it when it comes knocking, which it will: 

The antichrist spirit is anti-life, cold, terribly serious, corporate structured, power-hungry, prestige-conscious, ego-centric and money-motivated because it does not love. It cannot love another because it cares only for itself. It seeks to fill its coffers at another's expense. It steals by lying, deceiving through its callous, manipulative and controlling antics, usually whipping others with hate-filled threats, criticisms, condemnations. It is entirely focused on hijacking another of their power deceptively, in a kind of guerilla spiritual warfare. 

As a poisonous snake first bites to paralyze its prey, this antichrist will seduce its prey with flattery, praise, false promises. An example is in the sweet talking false promises corporate leaders assure people in a third world village. They offer convincing arguments that their plan, which will pay people a fair wage to produce products which will be sold in first world nations, will enrich their economy. 

Then, all the ills of a decaying society set in, and a once idyllic, pastoral community is a drug state - for starters. Somewhere along the line, people have slowly substituted their principles, cultural identities, colorful creative societies, for money.  They have sold out and don't realize it until their once fertile rainforest is a stump of rotting, arid land.

In other areas, unwittingly people are stripped of their self-esteem, autonomy, creative license, freedom, joy. They are seduced by its falsity. The antichrist force is a soulless, spiritual vampire that leaves us all zombies.  

Beware. While this stinking spirit is loose on the earth, it stalks all that is free, lovely and life-giving because it is they who have the power it does not have and wants. Its vacuous soul has cut itself off from the true source of life, our eternally loving and creative Creator. Consequently, it operates behind a mask of fear and power. 

It may rear its ugliest head in those who think they are godly and holy.  It even thinks it's holy because that's part of its game, its pseudo-divinity, and it wants you to think it is the voice of God so it would convince you to give it your soul. It is a slippery trickster that can't be pinpointed or caught.  We need to be watchful and aware, guarding our souls by staying tuned into our deep, most intuitive, knowing. 

Beware of those who claim they are super religious because they may be the most infected. Pray for them. Love them into wellness, but not at the expense of your own soul.  Be wise, dear ones, be wise. Fill your own heart with the love that is the very fragrance of God's presence, God's own Christ among us, and then you will be able to smell the difference between the false ones and the true ones. 

Listen with your inner soul light, your own inner sense, and you will be able to see who is true and who is not. Sometimes it is very hard to tell, but we must all look beneath the surface and know who we are dealing with. 

On the other hand, many of our religious leaders, priests, and ministers are authentically faithful, weathered at profoundly "fighting the good fight," and are familiar with this spiritual warfare. It is the ultimate battle. You will know who they are and turn to them. They are there for you.

The real Christ will give you an extra sense to tell - to recognize the mark on the soul of those who have been spiritually poisoned and are themselves now deceptive.  

But, love them, anyway.  Love them, pray for them, imagine the love of God filling the dark caverns of their souls and let your own love, your own patient mercy, melt away their cold-heartedness and be a light for them, a mirror of the divine. Then hopefully they will meet the Christ Spirit who is in you and come out of the spiritual prison in which they've been languishing and realize they have been used, robbed, deceived and defiled by the great seducer. Then, they will find their hearts again and love again and come back to life, again.

It's important to remember that as you love them, love yourself. And, always, be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.  

(Aware, part 1 and part 2 are on March 25, and 26, 2012)

Out of the shadows

You precious angels of light, you who thought you were only mortal, long imprisoned in the shadows of this dark prison, see beyond the darkness around you.  Look up, look around, and you will see, even if only fleetingly, that these walls are not real, mere illusions of other's fears, even fears born of the challenge your own freedom offers them.


As a shadow chases ahead of a child running on the beach, so the dark forces of this world blind us to our destiny, block our awareness of where we are going, thwarting our path even threatening our souls, tugging at all our personal lifelines to our transitory lives.  Each step we make in the right direction feels blocked, darkened, by something, someone - a force - a lie - a decption - a trick and we are swept away into another world, darker, yet filled with the illusion of truth.  Something within you is always there, always leaning in to hear more closely, understand more clearly, seeking and finally, finding, the truth.  


Sometimes I think that the harder the situation is, the more piercingly painful, the more it threatens your very life and sanity, the closer you are to finding the way out of the inner prison, that virtual hell that haunts the soul.  The haunting, the pain, the sorrow, is the symptom of the shadow's presence and yet it is also a symptom that you are very much on the right track, on the path to light, truth and peace. 


There is a kind of gravitational momentum on the Earth today.  It is in full steam ahead, attempting to block we soldiers of light, we disciples of the Christ, who search for God under every rock and in every dark place.  The path of Christ is not a Sunday stroll through a rose garden.  It is a hard hike through dark woods and treacherous mountain ravines.  And, you cannot know ahead, why or what for you are being led by the Divine through whatever travails on your path.  But, you must, as Jesus languished in the desert for a painfully long time, thirsty, hungry, tired and terribly tempted to give up, to give in, even to the point not realizing who he would be, persevere.


The shadow may block the light, but it cannot extinguish it.  There is a way out. The challenge is to find it. We have to learn how to see in the dark. We have to learn, accept, that if we are being chased by the shadow of death, that we are indeed being chased for a very good reason:  We are a threat to the dark forces.  We just may find the light and the manipulations and lies, the deceptive effort to extract our beautiful power, to trick it out of us, to exhaust us, to lure us to give up the good fight, would be revealed and thwarted.  Perhaps, in some strange way, it's the ancient foe we are dueling with.  In all its insanity, it stalks us, it lies to us, and in our innocence we once believed it, when we see what it always was, we continue on the way, the way of Christ, the way of light, the way of the cross, still free, still alive, still full of light and still innocent.  


The darkness cannot overcome the light.  It still shines in the darkness, but do not be fooled.  It is there.  It is a real oppressor and controller.  If there is anything you can do when you are under spiritual warfare, it is to look through the shadow it casts and you will make out the path through it.  It is only a cloud that dissipates when the sun comes out.


That, my dear ones, is what Lent is.  We are on the way, we are walking the path of light higher and higher as we ascend out of these dark times.  No one ever said it would be easy, but it is the only way out of this hell. 

Outrageous acts call for courageous reaction

Love may be the highest level a human being can reach, whereas hatred is the lowest. Love is also the most powerful state a person can achieve, even if it appears weak because of its non-reactionary, calm, gentle, wise, loving ways.  Hatred, which is the least powerful, seems strong because of the fierceness of its angst, storming outwardly from a lack of control, and lack of faith in its own worth and strong center. 


Since so much of our world is on a wild roller coaster ride,  outwardly reacting, only superficially aware of the deeper issues within the soul of a people, a collective tribe whose religion is iconic of their collective identity, we tend to see things differently.  We tend to react angrily to someone's powerlessness because we think they are more powerful and thus we feel threatened, but we are only reacting to someone's projected illusion of powerlessness.  We are jousting at windmills.  We are all very sadly, tragically, confused and lunging at our brothers and sisters in our collective madness.


While love is creative and life-giving, evil is a thief and a liar, always with an agenda of anti-life, anti-creation, anti-God, anti-Christ, anti-beauty and anti-love.  Recently when a handful of American servicemen in Afghanistan burned Qurans and other religious items, an even more incendiary reaction was ignited.  The wick, already well oiled by decades of unrest, of long terribly debilitating wars that have devastated Arab/Muslim cultures which were already painfully reactionary, was primed and explosive when the holy books were set on fire. Some have said the burning was an accident rather than an intentional act.  If that's the case, and I don't know if it is, then any reaction to that mistake needs to be carefully thought out and measured. 


Can anyone make any sense out of this insanity?  Can anyone ever comprehend the insidiousness of evil to worm a foothold among hurting, broken people?  


An intentional and determined strength of character to choose not to be reduced by the heinous things that happen to and around us, is the higher state that all the world's holy books teach their followers as a means to defeat evil.  An angry reaction only feeds it more, not less. 


When a young, terribly impoverished, feeling unloved, powerless young man in an inner city pulls out a weapon and shoots and kills another person, perhaps for drugs, or money or blood revenge, or any other reason, evil has won.  If the (in)justice system sentences that young man to death, the entire community has been reduced by that decision.  We are lessened by the doubled loss of life, not made more, not enriched, and evil has won another victory.


Those languishing powerlessly by the consequences of war, poverty, prejudice and injustice, are like that oiled wick.  All it takes is a single match to start a wave of world-wide mob reaction to an ignorant, foolish, and cruel religious infraction such as the Quran burning in Afghanistan.


Recently I was talking to a Muslim friend who expressed outrage at the Quran burning.  Certainly there are no words of comfort I could offer him except to assure him that he has every right to feel badly, to feel terribly outraged.  But, maybe there is another reaction my Muslim friend could choose.  I said to him, is not the Quran written in your heart?  Is it not a part of your days and nights, your thoughts, your entire world view?  Is it really possible that anyone can burn that out of you?  He hesitated, waiting to hear where I was going with this.


"Are you not so much more than this external self-definition as a Muslim or an Arab?" I said. He listened.  


"Because you follow the teachings of the Quran, can that really separate you from the rest of the human race? Can it?  Or, does the Quran help you live a more noble life, a more godly life, one of greater integrity and hope and spiritual sophistication, a life far above the monstrous acts that defame the book that defines and gives you life?  


"Does the Quran really need defending?  If someone burns the Quran is that really an insult against the Quran, or is it an insult by that ignorant person against his own self, an indication of his own loveless, dark interiority?"


Justice would argue that my friend has the right to be outraged.  But, he also has the opportunity to rise above the situation and choose a different reaction.  He has the opportunity to not be reduced by anything that happens to him outside himself.  He is not defined by anyone or anything outside himself.  He is his own person, beautifully made into a loving and peaceful person by the very book that he feels he needs to defend.


If he or anyone chooses to let this evil act reduce him to a level of anger and revenge-seeking, as it has for many Muslims around the world, then evil has won.  It will have managed to bring down a whole race of religious people, hurt them even more, stripped away what little power they still had in their reaction. Evil, the anti-life puppetmaster, knew just the strings to pull to enrage them into a global combustion.  If they do react that way, as evil would want them, as evil expected, then evil has won.  Tragically, they reacted with anger, outrage with a blood thirsty sense of indignation which entitles them to react in a spirit of an eye-for-an-eye.  Evil won, but maybe, hopefully, only for a day.  You can almost see the devil laughing behind the scenes.  They reacted just as he wanted and expected them too.


My friend said to me, "What if that were the Gospel?  What if someone burned the Gospel in your face?  What would you do?  Wouldn't you be outraged?"  I had already wondered what I would do if that had happened.  


"I would probably cry,"  I said as I was already crying over his pain and my fear for the entire world as things are worsening more and more every hour.


I know that no one can burn the gospel out of my heart.  It is centered in my very being.  It is my most sacred Book, but if someone did something like that, it would show me how tragically lost that person was, and that would make me so sad that I would cry.  


The situation is challenging all of us to be more than the evil puppet master anticipates.  We can trump evil by rising above it and not be reduced by insulting acts such as the recent burning of the Quran.


We are engaged in a war for our entire world these days.It doesn't take a genius to see how incendiary the entire situation is between Syria, Israel and Iran.  It's all a bomb ticking. These are the times that need us to grow up, stand up and be the human beings our religious books teach us to be.  Those holy books do not need defending.  They will be around long after we're all gone.  It is our souls that need defending and if we allow anything or anyone to cause us to react and be reduced to someone other than who we want to be, then we have given our power, our spirit, our souls to the evil forces that are ravaging the earth everywhere and in every way today.


This isn't going to be easy for any of us these days.  The wars that rage out there are not between Christians, Muslims and Jews.  The wars that rage are between those who don't know God's love and those who don't know how else to respond to the pernicious evil that seems to be threatening us all from every direction.  


These days require us all to stand strong with as much courage and personal integrity as we can to become the magnificent, brave and powerful human beings all our religions teach us to be.  We can choose not to react to any insult. We can choose not to be carved down, body and soul, into monstrous creatures by those who are themselves monstrous creatures seeking to dissolve our souls by attacking our sacred books and religious artifacts.  


We must all stand strong and have the courage to NOT react, to not allow our wicks be lit by those evil forces that seek to destroy us.  We need to even do more than stand strong.  We need to love and love with as much as we can, despite the dark forces' desire to make us angry and unloving.  We can choose not to be made unloving, reactionary people.  Rather, we can choose to be beautiful people of light who will stay bright and whole and godly despite all the dark forces that storm tempestously around us.