No Room in the Inn

She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, 

because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:7

The great divide - between the brain and heart, between those who have fully surrendered to the spiritual life, spiralling closer in toward God, and those who remain locked and loaded in the daily grind, between all the various polarities existent in our world - seems only to be expanding.

As economic times worsen, as poverty engulfs a greater number of people and nations, as even whole nations are swallowed up by the quicksand of our declining age, an atmosphere of fear spreads like a plaque across our globe. That fear is a pernicious virus that undermines the very confidence of those who have taken a firm stand for the spiritual life over the material, for those who have chosen God over money.

As in ancient Christian times and in even more ancient Hebrew experience and more recent Muslim, those who choose their faith in God over the power paradigms of whatever oppressive government or culture in which they find themselves, are all now in that predicament. Yet, what appears as religion is not what it seems. Today religious fundamentalism is less a spiritual journey than it is a fear-based corporate soul swamp.

Not long ago, our American culture superficially claimed congruence with the Christian faith - that is - Protestant Christianity. Today, even that has been boiled away resulting in the madness that has stolen our sanity, allowing another polarity parking space in its once dignified place. Fear - rather than faith - is now religion's toughest plow employed to break the rocky soil of the hungry human heart.

People, you are afraid of God, afraid of the changes that are undercurrent today, afraid of the very news you read about or hear about, afraid of tomorrow, afraid of losing control over your own plans for your life, afraid of economic disaster, afraid of poverty, afraid of illness, afraid of every kind of possible lack you can think of and of whatever the media spins over your heads to keep you steeped in fear and therefore malleable by the powers that plot for your souls. Do you know that in your fear you actually feed and fuel that which you are most afraid of?

The global thermostat on fear is rising perilously close to a boiling point. As fear rises, so does fundamentalist, legalistic religion and all other corporate strongholds that thwart those authentically guided by the presence of God, to safely continue on their way away from the world's hold on the masses. 

Symbolically, the spiritual journey may be likened to stepping into the quiet sanctuary of an old church on Main street (or a mosque or a temple) at noon when the city streets are flooded with people hustling about on an ordinary day. The contrast between the rich quiet inside the dimly lit church and the virulent madness outside is a good example of the contrast between the spiritual life, full immersion in God consciousness and manipulative, money-making that stalks even the best of us, even the most gracious and civilized of us.

The spiritual journey, which ultimately leads to the birth of our true, eternal selves, our authentic God-consciousness, often ends in a manger when we discover there is simply no room for us in the world's Inn.

For anyone who has sincerely sought God, sought the kingdom of God within and in that seeking, found, and in that finding realized a sincere desire to honor each and every one in truth and kindness, nurturing the other as they nurture their own souls, they may find a lackluster round of applause from the world around them. When times are tough, as they are today, and jobs are in short supply, the chase is on. The hounds of hell pursue the angels of light at top speed using their weapons of fear, intimidation, manipulation and finally, lastly, abandonment to chase the angels out of town, away from the center of real life activity, into the country, into the hills, into and among the poorest of the poor and into a cow-dung stinking manger. 

The spiritual journey is best illustrated in the archetypal journey to Bethlehem. A young, fragile girl heavy in the last days of her pregnancy, rides into the bustling town center hoping to find a gentle restful place to give birth. With tax collectors poised at every corner, masses of people loudly lunging in greed for the best room, the best food, the most food, the most of everything, and most likely Roman legions stationed everywhere to maintain some order, a room at the town's inn is sought for the young woman. How much can they pay? How long will they stay? You can almost see it. Bristled away, they look elsewhere as the labor has already begun.

As entering that old city cathedral at noon on an ordinary work day, they slip away from the noise, confusion, fear and angst-ridden town clamoring for room in the Inn, and enter into the pastoral region outside, populated by a scattered few shepherds - the poorest of the poor, the outcast, those who already aren't being counted in the census - those already off the grid. While the accomodations are dirty, stinky and severely less than what one would want to give birth to a child in, it is peaceful, unthreatening. After a radiant sunset, casting gorgeous light shows across the mountainous region, in the quiet, alone in the presence of peace and God and their own witness to a miracle, a child is born.

There never was room for the birth of the Christ in the center of town, of any town, in any time, ever. There never has been room for God in our world, a world steeped in pride and fear, limitation and loathing. There never was and today it seems more evident than ever.

And yet, as the thermostat rises on our fear-based global spiritual paralysis, we all must choose to either fight for a room in the inn or to slip into the quiet of the countryside where we - each and every one of us - can bring forth the birth of the Christ within us. We each carry within us that seed of magnificent light and love, of power and joy, of Christ. And, we each, like young Mary, have traveled, or will travel, a distance through many rocky ravines on our own spiritual journey. It is a spiritual pregnancy, a liberation of that deeply oppressed, even buried, pearl of great price, which, in Jungian terms, is that sacred self. We cannot reach heaven until that inner self, that Christ-self, is born within us. 

Alone in this spiritual desert, rejected and betrayed, we are each selected, chosen, to go the distance, the rest of the way to that proverbial Bethlehem, or Calgary, or whatever religious metaphor you might want to use to typify the universal human spiritual journey. St. John of the Cross rejoices when he has found the way out of his prison. In the light outside, he meets and finds God and a love unlike anything this world could offer. Rather than an Inn, a luxurious hotel complete with spa and other worldly luxuries, the birthplace for his Christ-self was a prison, a dungeon really deep underground - dark, cold, and most likely rat infested. For the great Christ, it was a stinky place in which the farm animals were kept. The images of rejection, of meeting God on the parameters of ordinary life, outside of it, is a sign posting the way to God.

If you find yourself outside the Inn, in a dark, cold, abandoned place because you have sought the spiritual life, rather than the technological, fiscally responsible, worldliness of ordinary life, then be grateful. Get on your knees and praise God with all your heart because the kingdom is fast approaching and you will soon be embraced by that which is eternal. You will be entering the true temple and you will know it by its peace, quiet and radiant love.


Photo: Celestial Spotlight by Trevor Anderson
See more of his photos on his photostream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevoranderson/with/5016443590/

Breaking the Illusion of Limitation

The wound is the place 

where the Light enters you.

 

― Rumi

The Essential Rumi, Coleman Banks (Harper One, 2004)

A New Earth

What if you could see, really see with your very real seeing eyes, that you were standing in a pool of light, ordinarily invisible to your natural eyes, and that pool was as powerful as the substance of the most powerful battery in the universe?  What if you knew that you had the power in the stroke of a single thought to end all the heavy darkness now pervading your precious life and if we all concentrated together we could dispel the fear, pain, suffering all around the world?


If you knew that, because you could see and understand that the power was in that light you saw right there in front of you, then you would be very careful what thoughts you entertained.  The whole point is in what you believe. Because you don't believe, because you don't see, you are careless with your thoughts.  The whole world is. But, since we are only human beings with only a three dimensional sensory system, although a multi-dimensional sensory system remains latent within you, we doubt this and without faith, it remains out of reach.  


Maybe the spiritual life is like a marathon.  The more you work those muscles the more likely you are to win the race, or at least enter it and place in it.  If we step out in faith, believing - and teaching ourselves through repeated affirmations and hanging around with others who are also training for this heightened life experience, we are training our spiritual eyes to see and our inner authentic belief system to believe.  With the vision and the faith, I believe we can become more than we ever knew or dreamt.


Begin by dispelling all the negativity around you and buried yet in your belief system about yourself and everyone else.  Lose the prejudice, the fear, the doom and gloom.  Remember who you are. You are a wonderful human being, all of you are, we all are.  We all have to embrace that awareness and knowledge right now.  If anyone or anything, any government or religion, tells you otherwise, forgive them and embrace this new knowledge.  They are propagating the false teaching of false teachers. Although they are well meaning, they have not understood completely.


After a long and comprehensive study of the ancient, original, teaching of Christ and those of the Vedas and Yogis, this is the real truth.  We are immeasurably powerful but sadly we are unaware of our power. We must know that every thought we think has the power, even more power if we think of obtaining more power from the source of our power. 


Our great Creator has given us this power because our Creator has made us like him.  

Now, here's another thought that goes hand in hand with this.  Positively charged thoughts are more powerful than negatively (reductionist) thoughts. Positive thoughts expand while negative thoughts compress. Thoughts of love are expanding, allowing and creative.  Thoughts of selfish control are fearbased and are restrictive. If you watch the terribly sad news, and become sad yourself, your power diminishes.  The reverse is true.  If you give out of your abundance, in love and compassion, your abundance increases.  Positive, loving, thoughts and actions are like yeast in bread.  They cause the bread to expand and rise.


We're in a big mess here today on planet Earth because we forgot this and because well meaning folks have been stalked by those who would sack our power.  If we focused our positive thoughts, believing in the power of the substance in which we are immersed and know without a shadow of doubt that our creator wants us to be powerful, loving, creative and abundantly generous, we will increase our own abundance. We need to let go of the thought that it is more blessed to be poor.  It isn't.  That wasn't what Christ meant.  He meant he came to the poor to help them heal their minds and grow in their innate potential to be powerful.  He came to the poor to heal their poverty and free them from a mindset of powerlessness. 


In short, it's all a win-win. The more we give, the more we receive.  The greater, more powerful our creative thoughts, the more they grow in power.  We have to be careful about is our own motivations.  If our primary motivation is to be one with God, as God is already one with us and always has been, then God who is in us and around us and in whom we are immersed, will increase our power to attract more of what's on our minds. That may be happening already but since we've been careless about what's on our minds or going into our minds, we are getting - individually and globally - what we've been thinking about.  We need to manage our thoughts.  We need some serious mind management.


With the awareness, we will naturally be careful about our thoughts, guard our minds and realize that all stress is simply poor mind management as is all illness, poverty, powerlessness, despair, depression, anger, domestic strife, and even - and maybe especially - all reactionary gang and international warfare.


So, if you're not realizing all your dreams, take a deep breath, invite God into the situation, into your life, and think again.  Think as big as you can.  Dream as large as you can.  Use the whole world canvas, fill it with all the color, life, vitality and light as you can.  You are a divine creator so get to work.  Let's all get to work and recreate this earth with love and light and joy, love and power.


Claude Monet, "Japanese footbridge".

Once upon a dream

"... with God all things are possible"

Matthew 19:26

Maybe we all forget sometimes who we are. That's assuming we ever knew in the first place who we really are. Then, even if we once knew because someone told us who we are, maybe we didn't understand it really and without understanding there is no reception. Admittedly, it is a huge mind stretch to realize that we are the children of the creator of the universe and that our universal parent is really with us, "closer to us than we are to ourselves," to quote St. Augustine.


So, if we are children of the great One, why do we live like paupers, sick, discouraged even depressed sometimes? Maybe it's because we forgot who we are. And, it's a fact that the more discouraged we become, the less we can do and accomplish and so things just get worse.

We all get distracted by all that is coming at us in our lives, our families, our countries, our entire world, and if we're not careful we might just succumb to the temptation to forget who we are and enter into that terrible state of forgetfulness. Today that forgetfulness is rampant and ruining our world. We feel powerless, unable to make our lives work as we once dreamed. We try and try a million different ways, we try. Since we had forgotten from whom our real power comes, from whom the power of miracles comes, we remain stuck, frustrated and powerless.

Sometimes we even forget for a long time ..... a very long time. And, in our forgetting, we slowly slip down the rabbit hole, down, down, down into a darker place. Maybe the whole world has slipped like that, too. Then, one day, we feel a hard thump as we hit the bottom of that rabbit hole, where its cold and damp and dark and we can't reach back up to where we once were, where we once lived a life with so much promise. 

Sitting there in a rumpled mess, we look around in shock and wonder, "How did this happen?"

We may remember that we had forgotten the key to life. Who tries to open a door without a key? That remembering may feel far away. The thought we're reaching for almost feels illusive. Yet it is our only hope. We try and try to reach for it. Instinctively, our very survival depends on our ability to remember. As tears streak down our faces, we slowly remember that we once had a dream, a vision for our lives, something radiant and beautiful, prosperous and wonderful. As children we were all going to be some kind of superhero. As teenagers our dreams took on a bit more shape and we pursued higher education.

Slowly, gradually, our dreams were eroded away by all the daily demands and a global recession, inflation or deflation or just plain everyday life. Then, in pure frustration, we may - if we're lucky enough to realize it - cry out into the dark hollow cave for help. We'd forgotten for so long, our faith that anyone could ever hear us, was gone. We even realize that and tears turn to sobs. Desperation and despair begin to take over and a kind of comic claustaphobia attempts to strangle us. We almost can't breathe and panic begins to sweep over us.

Then, miraculously, we remember something. It's a little thought, a whisper from deep inside us that we can just barely make out.

"What?" we wonder, "Please say it again.".

"You are powerless without me," you hear deep inside, gently, kindly yet firmly. You really heard that.

"If you invite me into your life, your life will be more than you ever dreamed. I will help you. I am with you. I have always been with you and I always will be with you. Just call on me."

Then, like a flash of lightening, you remember you had forgotten this.

"When did I forget?" you ask yourself, realizing simultaneously as the whispering voice within tells you that it doesn't matter when or how or even why you forgot, but you must remember and remember fast!

In that dark place, cold, hungry and certain that you will die, you get down on your weak knees and softly, sincerely and earnestly cry out,

"God, I turn it all over to you. My life, my choices, where I'm going. No matter what happens, it doesn't matter because I'm turning it all over to you."

Maybe we never really believed God could hear us in the first place. And, if we're honest maybe we couldn't hear God because we never stopped to listen hard into the silence in our minds.  We never even gave God a chance to be heard before.  Maybe we never knew how to listen for God. But, now, we - and the entire world - have no choice, no other alternative, but to listen, to accept and allow God in, to receive all the blessings and goodness God wants to give us and which we need so very dearly. We also realize what fools we have been because if we had invited God into our lives a long time ago, if we had not forgotten, if only we had asked God to help us to surrender our will to His will, maybe this wouldn't have happened and the reverse would have. We might have realized our dreams, rather than this long, dark sojourn into the wasteland and void.

At first you think it's going to take a really long time to get your life back on track. But, you have to start somewhere. Then, the beautiful Hawaiian prayer comes to you, (wonder from who). It leads you, rather than the reverse, 

"Oh, Father, I'm so sorry that I forgot to invite you into my life, into every single aspect of my life. I'm so sorry. I truly am sorry. I mean it. Please forgive me ...." you say over and over again as tears streak down your face ...

"Please, please, please forgive me ... " and in the depth of that earnest plea for true forgiveness, in your most sincere plea, you enter into a time warp of some kind. Maybe it's only minutes, but you know for sure that something just happened and then you feel it. You feel genuinely grateful because you know somehow, in some inexplicable way, God heard you. Instantly, a fresh joy rises within you, and you cry out,

"Thank you, thank you, thank you ... I love you, I love you, I love you." 

Softly you can feel all your tenseness lessening and you can even still hear your inner mind saying over and over again, "I love you ... I love you ... I love you ..." as you drift off to sleep.

The next day when you awaken, you realize you're not feeling helpless anymore. Somehow hope has come to your aid. In that hope, you continue to invite God in more and more, more intentionally, more deliberately because you need God. You need God so very, very much. Then, you find God is giving you ideas, more and more ideas, and you realize that God is helping you help yourself. You realize as you had slipped lower and lower, you were also losing your own creative ingenuity, your right for so much more than you ever dreamed you could have.

Now, miraculously, you feel like you're beginning again, there's a sense of some kind of momentum. Maybe you'll have to do some damage control for a little while, but now the most amazing and wonderful thing has happened. You are not alone. God is with you as God has always been with you. You had forgotten that God was there and ignored God and didn't invite God into your life. You know God is there and in that real life awareness, the joy, the most inexpressible joy floods your mind. Now, you know that you will never forget again, ever. 

You almost feel like Dicken's Scrooge on Christmas morning. Life is flowing again in your heart, mind and body . You feel love and hope and joy and all you can say, deep inside your heart and mind like a mantra ..."Thank you ...  I love you" ... and you know that you will never forget again and might just say that forever.

Acending Age

Ascending Eagle / Águila en Ascenso \ by David Frank

All of you - every single one of you - are beautiful bright people of the truth. You have so much yet before you, so much to discover, so much power and vision to yet step into.Yet, even now, you are unaware of your grand natures and languish in your longing for life! Awaken and come out of your bondage to this dark age and place, this spiritual tomb which you think is life, trapped in all the depreciating value of life all around you, fueled by those who would hold you back, squelch your light, suffer you to endless agony as you slowly die from lack of God light. Release yourself from its control and courageously face whatever happens as you step outside the tomb.  Just leave it.  You have the power to leave it, now.


Bound and tethered by your fear, you are being held captive by an illusion that controls you, limiting your flight away to a greater, more magnificent experience of life, abundant and full, overflowing in the joy of a deep, pervading peace only experienced in freedom.  


All the spiritual masters and prophets have come and gone leaving with you one single message: only love is real and life emerges out of that love.  The universe is alive, Einstein said, teeming with the energy of life, sourcing from an unknown beginning and flowing to an unknown end.  Endless and eternal, this life that is everywhere and in everything, this ultimate intelligence and consciousness, is grace and love, kind and allowing, waiting for your awakening from the dim dungeons of fear and powerlessness, to cast creative nets of life and more life.  


Don't you know who you are?  You who were small and weak in your powerless prison cell are really beautiful beacons of light to your world. Can you for one moment hold the thought that you are powerful beyond measure, wise beyond your own knowing, creative masters of universal manifestation that would change your lives in an instant if you were not so chained and silenced by that fear?


"Only love is real," Neale Donald Walsch writes in his Conversations with God series. Fear is that heavy chain that locks you in powerlessness, blanketing and silencing your sweet soul song.  What if your soul were free?  Maybe you could imagine for a moment what it would feel like if you were free of the fear and worry. What if you changed your mind that you are not safe and that life is unkind and cruel and all is a pointless miserable endless agony of limitation? 


Fear is only "false evidence appearing real,." Walsch continues. You are safe.  You are powerful creative beings who can only live and breathe in freedom.  Peace is only experienced in freedom.  Love and life are only experienced in freedom.  Even if you are in a very real prison or oppressed by a political dictator or regime, or locked into a traumatic life experience - even then - you can free your mind.  In that freedom, you will reach for and find it is easily available, a new thought.  When you reach for that new thought, you will touch the reigns of your own soul.  Once your  mind is free and you choose what you will think, no one and nothing can control you anymore.  It is the beginning, the first step to freedom, to life, to truth, to abundant and real and eternal life.


If that all pervasive life force energy lying in potential throughout the universe is loving, allowing, and powerful, then that which would keep you silent and powerless, is itself terribly afraid of your ultimate awakening and is disowning its own fear by its enslavement of you.  In psychological terms, it has projected its fear onto you and you in your innocence, unwittingly have carried it. 


"Give to ceasar that which is ceasar's and to God, what is God's," Jesus said to those who asked him if the people should pay taxes.  Yet, that idea can apply to your fear.  Give it back to that which holds you down, keeps you away from life.  It is not yours to carry.  It is not even real, yet the experience of it is real. It feels real and that feeling is the chain, linkage to illusion. Your fear is not your fear, either.  It belongs to another who will not take responsibility for its own blind bondage. It is like an ignorant, lumbering entity whose own soul hunger feeds on your life force to feed its vacuous soul's rapacious need because it has lost its own connection to true life. 


You will be liberated from the fear that has held you from your life, all of your life, all of everyone's lives, distanced you from your own source of power, your own true parent who awaits your heart's return, when you see those shadows in your mind that hold you down are only phantoms in the night.  When you awaken and the light is turned on, you will see they were never there.  You only thought they were there, yet their control was real.  Too many years were wasted in that illusion.  


Love is the updraft that lifts you into freedom, unlocks your creative potential, allows you to mold life into your own joy and making and lifts you to life, as on the wings of an eagle.  Seek it and it will be found.  Reach for it, ask for it, and it will be provided.  It is waiting for your asking, for your invitation, and as you learn to liberate your own mind from the fear that has taken the whole world captive, you will find life and see something so beautiful you can't believe you never saw it before.  Then, the bird song will be heard, the flowers' fragrance will perfume your whole life and the sweetness of being alive will overcome you and in that moment nothing else matters.  You will have met life itself. 


Art::  http://peregrinadance.wordpress.com/category/chavin/

Light among the Lilies

Dark Night of the Soul**

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings

-- oh, happy chance! --

I went forth without being observed,

My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure,

By the secret ladder, disguised

-- oh, happy chance! --

In darkness and in concealment,

My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,

In secret, when none saw me,

Nor I beheld aught,

Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

This light guided me

More surely than the light of noonday,

To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me

-- A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,

Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,

Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,

Lover transformed in the Beloved!

Upon my flowery breast,

Kept wholly for himself alone,

There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,

And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

The breeze blew from the turret

As I parted his locks;

With his gentle hand he wounded my neck

And caused all my senses to be suspended.

I remained, lost in oblivion;

My face I reclined on the Beloved.

All ceased and I abandoned myself,

Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

Spring is in her full blown glory today, the First of May, softly and elegantly allowing springtime lovers to emerge from a long dark night of winter. There is new life everywhere, mama and papa Canada geese nudging and protecting their fluffy down goslings, a symphony of bird song resounding among the fragrant dogwood and magnolia trees, and even a tiny tribe of baby rabbits engaged in a round dance. All of life is in love today, even the cherry blossoms are bigger and brighter.  


While the love between two human beings is gorgeous, what would love between a human being and God be like?  Even more gorgeous, a stirring unlike anything else and a sweetness that nothing else could ever mirror or imitate. The best marriage would be between two who are also in love with the great Beloved. 


In St. John of the Cross's mystical theology, we are called away from all attachments and cares into that divine love affair.  This life that we have right now - this daily grind - is only the reflection, not the real thing.  The paintings of water lilies by Monet are especially awesome in Monet's awareness of light and reflection on water.  He must have been well aware of St. John's Dark Night poetry.  Maybe Monet also left his cares "forgotten among the lilies," and then was able to draw from a deeper, now clearer, well of the divine, in order to create such magnificent spirituality on canvas.


In that creativity, we are like God.  Another St. John quotes Jesus, in the Gospel of John 10:34, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" 


While Jesus is not admonishing us as sinners, he is calling us to leave behind, "forgotten among the lilies," the false images of non-reality, the things and  memories of them that we have done that cloud our vision, drown our light, dim our own magnificence and power and gorgeous divinity, which when combined with our human passion, lift us up into the most beautiful of God's creation.


St. John of the Cross's theology calls us to detach completely from all the cares of our lives - all of them - including looking for that illusive job - or whatever, and enter into a state of oblivion, where God has access to our souls, merging with us, transforming our earthen nature into divine nature.  It is only this way, that we can attain our "god" state, that Jesus talks about in the gospel. This way, and I truly believe only this way, can we realize our innate power and light and miracle-making.


What if from the beginning, the church taught us that we were divine, rather than sinners?  What if we grew up knowing that we were loved, rather than punished?  What if we learned how to meditate and enter into mystical contemplation rather than learning a book of rote prayers?  What if we really believed that we had this gorgeous divinity within our human souls? What if we really knew our true selves, rather than these dim mirrors we think are us?


"When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty." Gospel of Thomas vs. 3


I wonder what our lives would be like now if the church had not inflicted on us centuries of sin indoctrination?  What if we had always known who we really are?  What if we had left our cares among the lilies and worshipped in the light of truth, rather than dwell upon the dark images cast  from shadows passing over us? I can only imagine how different and wonderful the world would be today if we had learned His message correctly from the beginning.


*  Photo:  Memories of a water lily's dream by Joel Olives from http://www.photographyblogger.net/35-beautiful-water-lily-pictures/

**This mystical poem, Dark Night of the Soul, from "Ascent of Mt. Carmel," was written by St. John of the Cross, between  1578 and 1579 in Granada, Spain, after his escape from prison.