Creation Spirituality: Regaining Paradise

In the beginning, there was light. It was, and still is, a light so bright it has the power to create whole worlds beyond our wildest imagination. That light created us and imbedded itself within us forever.  But, something happened, and we forgot what we are.  We didn't lose our light.  We forgot that's who we are.  And, the world's long sad story is the result of a forgotten dream, a lost paradise.

As beings of light and nonmaterial, in our perfect unclouded state of light, we are enlightened, powerful, visionary, wise, loving, merciful, compassionate, kind, creative and contain most of the qualities we ascribe to our Divine Creator.

It may not look like that from where we are today, but that is what we are if we stepped out of the grand illusion we have all come to believe and by believing it, make it real. It's a very bad dream, a nightmare, and we need to wake up. 

There is a profound truth revealed in the creation stories in Genesis which will help. Since the creation stories are the foundation of the three Abrahamic faiths - Hebrew, Muslim, and Christian, and most of the world's population is at least one of those religions, clearly these stories are fundamental to the world's understanding of life itself. 

The origins of these creation stories are ancient and stem from oral tradition, from a time when myth was understood at a deeper level, closer to spiritual truth. 

When read aloud, the stories lead the listener on a journey into an imaginal, poetic state, a deep interior realm. This other realm is humanity's primordial psyche or our a priori condition, common to all humanity, and it is the beginning to which we can and must return.  

Genesis 1:1:  "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth." Then, after creating every living thing, God said, "It is good." That's the first creation story.  

The second one concerns the creation of man and woman, the serpent, the temptation, eating of the forbidden tree of life, and being cast out of paradise. 

Then, life as we know it begins. Misery, alleviated by intermittent pleasure, joy, tears, struggle, pain, and ultimately suffering become the daily state of affairs. Adam and Eve leave a world of light - of peace, enlightenment, spiritual wisdom and eternal life and enter into limited lifespans marked by disease, pain, fratricide until finally devolving into a state of insanity - which is obvious today.

St. Augustine (c. 380 AD) claims the second story in which Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden is reflective of humanity's "original sin." That concept has spun a global story that needs to be rewritten to uncover a deeper truth which is understood by those "who have eyes to see" or have the inner spiritual vision to perceive the deep truth in it.

(If you're sick and tired of the misery, then you have eyes to see and a mind ready to listen.) 

Today, the world needs to hear that other story. It is the real truth and has the power to turn things around.  

Over the millennia, the doctrine of Original Sin gestated in western civilization's dark subconscious weaving into it a toxic psychic sense of deep unworthiness, inferiority, shame, judgment, condemnation, fear, and spiritual impotence. In fact, over the centuries it bred the very thing it claimed was our downfall - sin and death.

(Many assume the doctrine of Original Sin is actually in that second creation story, but it's important to know it is not. St. Augustine developed the doctrine after Rome accepted Christianity as the official faith of the Empire at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD ending a couple centuries of torturous persecution of Christian believers. Soon after, Rome fell, leaving the Church head of its former holdings, which were now languishing in desperate poverty.  For the next 17 centuries, the western Church and western civilization have focused on sin and death, rather than spiritual life and our potential for incredible goodness. This is obvious in our media and everywhere in our western culture.)

Today, the western world has stagnated into an apocalyptic worldview of impending damnation. We definitely need a new story and it might be in that second creation story if we look at it again without the Original Sin lens.  

This may be a new story, a new way of understanding ourselves which opens the door to a new world: 

We are made in God's image, and since God is Spirit, God's image is Spirit, which means we are Spirit.  If we are made of God, then we are like God, and this is important - we are Love, and we are Good.  In our original perfect spiritual state, after we discard all the lies, the neurosis, the limitations of the illusion, the killing, and self-condemnation, we are made of God's light.  

After Adam and Eve ate of the tree, they became infleshed and subject to the qualities of being embodied in denser material.  They appeared separate and were fearful of their vulnerability. Their original and authentic identity of light seemed blocked by their new state of being infleshed. They lost the ability to see and hear the divine as before. Also, the qualities of being infleshed gave rise to the "ego," which is the great and terrible judge both within us and in our communities. It is the ego that judges, condemns, and creates that sense of shame Adam and Eve had when they realized they were naked. They didn't feel naked when they were light. They felt naked when they weren't.

This is the original story, the true one.  It was always there, waiting for when we would be ready to see it again.  It is the new beginning which calls us to return to the garden, now, without shame, without judgment, clothed in our light. 

The garden has always been there.  Seeing it, and accepting it is all a matter of free will.  We can choose to see ourselves as sinners and lost from God's love, or we can see ourselves as beings of light who have been blind, temporarily in the context of eternity.  We can choose to accept our innate divinity, and accept it, live into it, and help each other regain paradise. We have - as a human race - matured enough to see this now.  We are able to pull off the lesser cloak of condemnation and judgment and stand bravely in the light of Divine love.  We are ready.  It is time to do this.

It seems the Eastern religions, and Gnostic Christianity, the Yugas, Vedas of India, and Sutras of Tibet, along with the Jewish Kaballah, Sufi and Islam's holy writings all offer us a way back into Paradise, into the Garden. Jesus describes that garden as the kingdom within. Now, we see with our inner vision of which we had been blind. Now, the blind see, the deaf hear.  Now, all the words of the prophets, sages, seers and wise men and women of the past make perfect sense.  

Today, the world is poised on the brink, driven there by our global ego and darkened consciousness. The world has become a culture of sin and death.  What if we chose a culture of goodness and life?  If we can return to the Garden, regain our sense of blessedness and holiness as the beings of light we always were before we fell into delusion, we may be able to reverse what looks like an apocalyptic global holocaust.  The urgency to do this is now.

We can begin by having compassion for our deluded state for so long, that has mired this beautiful creation.  We can love ourselves again and each other.  We must stop judging. If there is one single thing we must do, it is to stop judging ourselves and others and start loving ourselves and others.  It sounds easy, but it is the hardest thing any of us can do.  As you listen honestly to your own words and actions and challenge your intentions and motivations, you see there's work to do. And, to love your neighbor - not to mention your enemy - will ask for all the faith, love and courage you have - and you may need to be on your knees to receive it.

You are the beloved

With what instrument do you measure or come to know yourself?  Are the voices of your tribe your authority?  Your school?  Your country - the laws or the culture of your land?  Do you have any idea, really, who you are?

You are the Beloved.  You are the lovely human face of the most beautiful love in the universe.  You have the most powerful creative power right there in your imagination.  Your thoughts create what you think.  You know this, so why do you think negative thoughts when they only hurt you and degrade all that is?  Why not think beautiful thoughts that would extend out beyond your own personal self into the world and make it more lovely?

Can you realize that, feel that, allow the very idea that you actually have both the power of creation and the passionate experience of that eternal endearment within your very own self?  Is it so hard to believe that you are part of the on-going creation of everything?  But, the importance of that realization is of an absolute dire necessity today.  As we forego that consciousness, that deep awareness of who we really are, we allow the world to continue to spiral out of control by those who are at the mercy of their blind lower natures and unconscious drive to control. 

Why is it so hard for people to feel loved, to feel safe, to trust life?  Why do human beings go to the lowest common denominator and judge others, blame others, think the worst of others, rather than consider more loving reflections?  It's so sad that so many steep their lives in fear and in that contracted state of existence squeeze out the love that is waiting for release into their hearts, their lives, and the world.

What if we simply loved ourselves, treated ourselves as we would like others to treat us and then treat others as we would also like to be treated?  What if all of life were a lovefest, a celebration of all that is beautiful and alive all around us?  What if we slowed down just a little to feel more and think a little less?  What if we gave our brilliant brains a bit of a rest and allowed our senses to experience the sheer delight of life all around us?

What if we all fell in love again with eveything and everyone and allowed ourselves to be loved and allow ourselves to drop our defenses and trust and allow the divine beloved who is within us to smile upon our lives and life itself?  

And, what if we allowed ourselves to dream luscious visionary dreams about what we would really like to see in our lives?  

And, then what if we allowed ourselves to imagine a world without war, without any cruelty full of brilliant creative alternatives to fossil fuel and more beautiful cityscapes? 

Awakening Faith

"Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."

-The Lord's Prayer

An iridescent radiance mysteriously flows into the inner chambers of our being like liquid light beams, transforming us by its warmth and words of wisdom. This ineffable presence seems to whisper to us with a unique kind of knowing, reminding us of who we really are and by this knowing knits us to itself with a love we only faintly can remember, if at all.

We are empowered by our own self acceptance, knowing that by just accepting ourselves as we are, we are filled with a joyous peace - a peace that does transcend all understanding, that does accept the power of the divine other, surrendering to its care, compassion, wisdom and guidance.  We become wise with a mysterious intelligence which reveals itself as a profound humility, a kind of non-doing that illuminates our minds and life by an ingenius choreographic design. Filtering into our lives, it stirs a recognition, daystars of awareness as we realize the synchronicity of little things occurring in our daily lives.

It is clearly in surrender to that invisible divine presence, inviting and allowing the goodness and intentionality of that vast consciousness, that births our faith. This newborn act confronts and soothes away our need to control, once created by our fear, to allow a real and potent faith to bloom within us. 

It is seeing in the dark, allowing an unknown other to guide us, help us, inform us and love us, even when we don't have a clue how to do anything, that evolves our spirits, growing us up into the powerfully creative humans we were meant to be.  It's in our most helpless state that our divine parent most clearly and powerfully delivers us from all that would tempt us back into the fog.

While we do not see with our eyes, as Shakespeare wrote, we can see with our mind, our inner wisdom catalyzed by our imagination. 

Love does not see with eyes, as we do, because it if did, in our dark, oppressive dimension here, it would not see at all. Love sees the truth of the soul, even loves that which we cannot. It sees with the eyes of the divine. We would experience the greatest encounter of our lives and meet the most joyous of loves if we simply invited the light of that great presence to enter into our dark inner caverns.  
How do we encounter this great lover and creator?  How do we catch the scent of the fragrance of the divine?  We ask, summon the great presence closer at our invitation, surrender our need to control the outcome into the care of this brilliant creator. 

I don't know how it happens, but the sacred other, master or mistress of the universe is consciously aware of our need and pauses only for our sincere invitation, borne on the sweat of our brow, the ache in our back and the longing in our hearts. Our divine parent seems to always show up when we are finally and completely out of our own resources, when all our own plans have been exhausted and we have absolutely no idea what we're going to do.

Candidly, it is as if our divine master, while casting a lifted eyebrow toward us, says with a kind smile on his face, "So, are you really ready this time?  Do you really want my help or are you going to try to take over again?" 

Softly we surrender, and then when the intense moment of our need, presented respectfully and intentionally into the care of our great lord passes, something seems to happen.  It may be a kind of deep, vague knowing that somehow our need has been heard. 

Then, when we are least aware, something happens, a little unexpected answer or opportunity is offered.  As we recognize the answer to our need in that little unexpected e-mail, or phone call or however it shows us, our faith takes hold, rooting and blooming in that instant.  In that single instant, we are changed.  Now, we know. We really know we are not alone.  We never were alone and we will never be alone, ever.

But, I'm sure, unlike anything we may have heard from some of the new thought out there, this is not our doing.  We did not control this response from the divine, or gift from heaven.  We did not make this happen.  It is God's will to respond to us, to give us that which we need.  The divine is in some incomprehensible way working with us, as a dance partner, nudging us along but not taking away the hard challenges and lessons, only lifting the burden when we're truly ready to release it.  

In our world, raging in a turbulent sea of violence, wracked in fear, succumbing almost daily to dark oppressive powers, we may have forgotten the way to the divine other who waits patiently for us.  Too many of us have felt let down by our religions, which have become polarized, prejudiced and have failed.  Someday the recognition will come of  a "Heaven" another realm beyond this one, perhaps existing in another dimension, which our scientists will discover, or we will find ourselves in as we become more whole, less fearful, more peaceful and more whole, embodied by and embodying love.  Maybe.

But, in the meantime, we continue to reach for hope, for healing and for an answer. We reach for the very substance of the divine, which is love, to fill our empty hearts, bodies and souls.  It is by invitation and surrender that we encounter our great lover, parent and partner. Today, while the whole world is throbbing in pain, each of us can decide to invite the light in. We can choose to lighten the heaviness everywhere and anywhere we find ourselves.  There are many who are still lost, fearful to the bone, wearing masks, or spending their lives at the helm of their egos building images and personal empires, spending their time and money on soulless endeavors. Those are the shadows that stalk us at night.  We have to get out of our way and allow the light to shine through us, into the world.  When we're finally finished attempting to build these false lives, then we will hear the angels sing and catch a rainbow in the eyes of another.  

When we let the light flow, like a river, bubble up and through us, overflowing into the cities and streets of our daily lives, the world will change.  This, I truly believe, is the only way we will ever have Heaven on Earth.

A New Story: Rewriting the Future

Our true self is like that pearl of great price or treasure buried in a farmer's field. It's like a beautiful, glistening radiant diamond, carved and shaped and worn as the most precious jewel as a forever keepsake from a lover.  Only, the Lover is our beloved Father Creator and the diamond is our eternal spirit which he has always and will always love as His own self buried within us.  We were created in love and live in love.  We are beloved forever and always will be.

Yet, sometimes it just doesn't feel like that.  The past has darkened our hearts leaving an ashy footprint in the ruined days it caused us, and when we look into the future through the lens of the past, it looks just as bleak.  It's been a long time since love graced the doors of our hearts and life has been a long thankless, tedious, empty journey.  Where did the hope for a bright future go?  Where is the music that sang in the heart?

The past was only our perception anyway, just as the birth of the future will also be from this moment on.  How will it be?  Will it be darkened by the ashes of our past, or can we leave the past behind and create our future with new hope, a new vision. Without a new story, we will perpetuate the old one, chapter after chapter, year after year.  We will drag the old into the pristine new future, only to darken it too. It's time for a new story.

The new story is the one we write, not the one that was etched into our lives by others.  It will require courage, trust, faith, and a genuine, sincere, desire for something better, something new. It is our story.  It is our life.  It's time to cut the cords to the past.  It's over, so we have to let it go.  The future is ours to dream new life into being just as a fresh new canvas calls to our inner artist.  How beautiful do we want it to be?  How colorful, how alive, how radiant, how joyous?  What, where, when, how and with whom do we want to live our new life?  The possibilities are endless.  Life is long.  Life is good.  Life is joy. Life is a gift given to us by the great lover of life itself.  As love is the ultimate inspiration for creation, there is no situation that love can't remedy.  The solutions are endless - as endless as life itself and love itself.  It is all good.  All of it.  

A new hope dawns

You have no need to travel anywhere.  

Journey within yourself,

enter a mine of rubies and bathe

in the splendor of your own light.

 - Rumi

The times were a-changin' when Bob Dylan* sang to a whole generation awakening after the Second World War.  Today, the times have changed. 

While we continue to pick up the pieces of a fallen cultural empire, the revolution is complete. An ancient religious hierarchy which had controlled the western world is crumbling and now revealing a truth unseen in 20 centuries. Today its once suppressed and hidden message has been discovered revealing a timeless truth with unimaginable power in the daylight of our new age. 

When Dylan sang his prescient lyrics, the country was immersed in a counter-cultural call to end a bitter, ruthless, immoral and illegal war.  Courageous college students around the country stood up (well, actually sat in) to protest the war.  In their righteous call to end the war, they ripped off the government's covert political agendas revealing an astounding level of corruption. As they tore down systems of national and international exploitation, they effectively left no stone unturned.  Everything from national and foreign political agendas, health, environment, education were scrutinized and challenged.  No sacred cow was left unexamined.  

Then, as if heaven itself was herding the rebellious generation's mission to find light in the darkness, the Nag Hammadi, which had been found in the desert in 1947, was translated from Coptic into English. The translation shocked the Christian world.  It shed truth on the last remaining untouchable system of control - The Church. The authentic and original teachings and ministry of Jesus was revealed and is anything but what the church had taught over the centuries. 

In fact, it seems the church had gone to great pains to hide the truth.  It had effectively crucified Christ's teachings so badly that when the post-war generation began exposing its errant systems, the church began to lose its ability to guilt and control the masses, leaving a spiritual vacuum in the wake of its fall.  

Dark angels took hold in the decades that followed as the next generation staggered and stumbled in a spiritual void. Slowly and persistently, many continued to seek the truth amid the ruins of a theologically fallen spiritual empire only to discover -while the truth was hidden - it was always there. 

As the image of  the Good Shepherd painted on Catacomb Walls, where once persecuted Christians hid from their Roman oppressors, Christ stands in broad daylight and in full power to gather the people of the earth together in love and in power. (The irony is not lost on those of the new revelation and only drives home the ancient truth that what was hidden in the dark would one day be revealed in the light.)  

The Good Shepherd still lives, and delivers a message which resonates around the world in alignment with those of other ancient faiths.  Today, as the earth is hurtling on a collision course to self-destruction, if the world now has ears to hear and eyes to see the power in this spiritual truth tragedy may be averted.

The following is from the Gospel of Thomas, verse 3, in the Nag Hammadi:

"Jesus said, If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you.  If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.  Rather, the kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you.  When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons (and daughters) of the living father.  But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

_________________________________

Bob Dylan's The Times are A-Changin:

Living in Love

Artwork: Goxwa Borg

Peace is born within the silence of our minds. As Martin Luther once wrote, the mind is a war zone and we struggle for peace there first. It is always there.

Tragically, too often peace is lost when we are distracted by fears, worries and the million other thoughts that bombard us. They overtake us.  While we fight them, struggle to gain control over them with the use of alcohol or drugs - prescription or otherwise - to dull their power to inflict emotional pain, they ultimately cause us to suffer.  This is Buddha's definition of suffering and its root cause.  There is another way to peace and relief from the suffering for which all the great masters and teachers as Buddha, Christ, Krishna and the Yogis advocate.  That way is simple. We can all do it. We all do it every day, yet too many of us just don't know it. The masters invite us simply to breathe and enter the rich, palatable silence within. Christ calls this an inner kingdom, a vibrant and beautiful place of encountering the divine knowing.

Breathing slowly amid incoming thoughts, yet mindfully hearing them, even briefly lingering with them before departing again into the silence, we begin the way into the "kingdom within."  Breathing deeply, inhaling, exhaling while directing the mind, as a plane slowly lifts off from a busy airport, softly an inner space is finally reached. Imagine the deep silence of space outside the earth's orbit. While the same thoughts or even more thoughts and worries attempt to reach the mind as heat-seeking missiles would search and destroy the peace, once the outer ring is reached, it's too late for the invasive thoughts. We've reached the quiet inner plane of mindfulness where thoughts cannot enter or contaminate the peace.  Eventually, the outer mind - often called the ego or "monkey mind," dims into the distance.

Quieter now, having lost the power to distract, thoughts sound more like a distant radio in a neighbor's garage. It becomes easier to tune into the interior plane and rest in that quiet. Time seems also to disappear.  While thoughts will return occasionally, we can steer our minds away from them, concentrating on a word or thought-feeling, which keep our minds on course by pushing consciousness deeper into the silence. This may be a bit of a process for a while, but eventually, the thoughts dim and peace is reached. As a cool breeze and warm embrace from a lover, we are overcome by peace. The longer we remain in the silence, the deeper the peace.  It can last the entire day until we return to the silence. 

Rapt in peace, now we respond to daily life with a calm we didn't have before. Decisions are made with more clarity, mindfully and intentionally on behalf of retaining that peace.  Love becomes an easier choice to make. That place of peace we'd encountered and lingered in earlier in the day is recalled throughout the day. Small minor thought corrections are made throughout the day to retain that inner peace. We find ourselves often turning away peace-sabotaging thoughts. This is just the beginning of entry into the presence of the Divine, the peace of Christ. 

This is the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding.  It becomes an experiential even intuitive knowing rather than a deductive theologically rational understanding.  You don't need a college education to enter the peace of God.  All you need is the unwillingness to be swamped and controlled by the world's cacophonous control and predatory mind-sweeping any longer.  This is freedom, ultimate freedom.  The thoughts are generated by the world's reach into your mind. 

The great masters and yogis call us to still our thoughts for just a while until we gain control of our minds - and consciousness - through that mindful awareness.  Then we can choose what we want to think about and what we want to avoid. Once we can do this, we can think with our bodies, sense how thoughts make us feel.  Does a thought make us feel lighter, happier, more inspired, more motivated, calmer?  Or, does it make us feel tense, frustrated, slower, sadder, apathetic, somehow dimmer?  As we regain the power of choice over our thoughts we learn to choose to release our power into all the choices we make.  This is what it is to be a powerful being.  

Jesus said we are all sons and daughters of God.  He said we could be like Him, if we so chose.  He did not ask us to worship him, He did not come to create a new religion. He came to teach us how to unplug from the world's control by stilling our minds until we could gain control of them and make more conscious and loving decisions, including reaching for a more enlightened dimension far beyond this one.  When we enter into the divine presence, we can become instruments of peace and that will change our lives and the world. We can become troubadours of peace, ambassadors of love by gently impacting life itself with our peace.  

Maybe, we can bring a little bit of heaven to earth with each breath. Maybe, we can just imagine a world as one, at peace.

True peace awakens in love

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: 

not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

   John 14:27 King James Version (KJV)

As global political tensions sweep across nations in cresting waves of fear as palatable and dense as the toxic air pollution seeping into our bodies, minds, hearts and homes all of life as we know it is threatened. 

This dark smog of fear gnaws at the hearts and minds of everyone, slowly eroding any hope for happiness as it tempts each one's sanity with an outlook so bleak many find themselves descending into suicide's bitter pit of despair.  This global poison is everywhere.  

Survival for each of us, as it is for all of us, depends not on our denial, or optimism, or community organizing or even democratic caucuses. It is an infection of the mind with no medical remedy.  It is most certainly evil as wicked as humanity's ancient foe.

Yet, there is an antidote that would free each mind from its cold, grip of despair.

It is peace. It is the peace finally penetrating a landscape the brutal cacophony of war pummeled with gunfire, bombing, and screams of terror. It is even in the eerie silence after all the men have gone home when the battle is finally over.  It is the morning after, when a soft rain washes the blood of death away, readying the land for the lark and nature's recovery.  And, yet, that is only an outer peace.  As all outer events are first born in the heart, for there to be peace anywhere, it has to begin in the mind. 

When Jesus breathes His peace on His disciples before His final departure, He says His peace is not like the peace after a war.  He is describing the most important peace, one that has the power to prevent wars, neighborhood gang violence, drug addiction, and so much more.  If each mind could find this peace, we would evolve into a peaceful world.

His peace is the gentle breath of peace which calms the heart when the mind finally is reassured that only love is real and that self-condemnation and judgment destroys our individual self-determination and self-valuing. It is that inner destruction that breaks down our inner peace, creating a war zone in our minds. So, the remedy is in realizing the world spins on judgment, not love, and we have been infected with its lies.  It is a frothy place of deception, corruption and predatory exploitation of innocence.

It is not eternal or divine reality.  It is only our collective illusion. Blindly, we all play a part in that global theater.  But, what if we could awaken and know, really know, that this world is NOT real and that there is something, somewhere that is.  It is that place of love and peace that Jesus is steering us to.

His peace comes when you realize and know in the furthest recesses of your soul, there is another world that is real and that world only loves.  Once you realize this, you will be able to cast off all your worry, fear and judgment. To embrace this truth - that love is the fresh air of our real world - the world's power to control our minds by feeding us the poison of anxiety, fear, and violence, is eliminated.  It melts as fast at the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz.

Then, you can look across your inner mind and breathe in the peace of the silence where once the terror of wrong thinking, of self-judgment, where once the thoughts of controlling others seeped into your mind and caused you so much despair, and know you are finally free.  Jesus' peace is liberation. It frees your mind from anyone else's control of you and sends away all your fears, anxieties and worries. 

As you take back control of your mind, you may want to sit in meditation and put in place an inner watchtower to guard your mind against the outer world's control of it through judgment.

Jesus' message was never about religion. It was always about peace which prevails in the knowledge that while you are in this world, you are not of it.  You are from a place that is real and you can return whenever you choose to love yourself and others.  This peace is compassion, first for yourself and then for others.