Come to the Mountain

Stop trusting in man,

who has but a breath in his nostrils,

of what account is he?

- Isaiah 2:22

We all worry too much.  It is almost compulsive, habitual, even addictive.  Somehow we have to stop because whatever it is we're worrying about just doesn't matter.  None of it matters at all. All the worries, all the fears, all the what ifs, all of it is just a mirage in the sands of time.  None of it matters. because none of it is real, really.  And, while we're worrying we're missing the whole reason we're here, the gorgeous experience of being alive.  

The whole world is engaged in a huge planetary drama which we take so seriously - seriously enough to kill one another over different viewpoints or borders and boundaries and stuff.  To really experience this, I think we need to step off the world stage for awhile.  I think we need to go inside our minds and go up to the holy mountain where we can and will encounter what is real, real in time and real in eternity. It is right here, right now, but we can't see or feel or experience it because we're so busy worrying.

We are being called to come to the holy mountain, where we will encounter the great presence that is spread out across the Earth, Who is in everything, knows everything and is of an unimaginable intelligence and awesome love and power.  This great presence is not just a force or another inanimate scientific energy wave.  This great presence is beyond quantum physics, more approachable and relational than religions ever told us.  The great presence is knowable.  We can hear the voice of this presence in our minds when we step outside the mind swamp in which so many of us are so fully immersed that we can't listen to the quiet between thoughts. 

Whether you are a rational scientist or a mystic, despite what faith or culture or clan from which you draw your identity, it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what you've done or left undone, how much you have or don't have. None of that matters.  All that matters is that you step outside all of it, even for just one imaginal moment and consider that there is an everywhere presence here that is knowable.  The ancients had all kinds of names and descriptions of that presence, who we most commonly call God.

We are all so busy planning our lives, writing our stories, painting our life canvases, marrying and raising children, working or going to school, reaching for some kind of understanding about what's going on in Washington that we might forget to consider the authentic reality of God who is really out there, in here, everywhere, but who speaks to you in your mind if you listen.  You hear God all the time, but you don't know it.  

Recently in meditation I asked God to reveal Himself.  In seconds something in my inner mind said to me that I was going to hear a voice and then I did.  I will never forget what God said to me that day, but there it was - there God was - right there with me in my mind.  More recently, my daughter graduated, we moved - again - and in the busyness of everything never did I forget what God said to me.  It was simple and it was profound; it was powerful and as strong as it was gentle.  What is most important is the news - yes, The News - that God is real and is just as Jesus describes God in the Gospel of Thomas.  He is there, everywhere. In the following quote from the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus, who was filled and completed with God's presence, makes a bold declaration and elsewhere encourages and teaches us how to enter into that same state with God. 

"The (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you ... seek his treasure that is unfailing, that is enduring, where no moth comes to eat and no worm destroys."
77. Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.
Split a piece of wood; I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

We are vessels into which God communicates His power, wisdom and spirit and with whom God relates.  This is life. This is the life Jesus spoke about.  It is the ecstasy of Rumi.  It is the wisdom of Moses and love of Krishna.  It is the experience of life. Nothing else matters.  As St. Thomas Aquinas said after such an encounter with God, "It is all straw."

I think we waste so much of our time wandering in the wasteland of this toxic culture we've all contributed to constructing.  I wonder what it would be like if one by one we started stepping away from it all and began climbing up the Holy Mountain in our minds where we might wait patiently, reverently and prayerfully to meet God.  

"Canticles of the Heart" has been published

Finally, Canticles of the Heart, has been published and is available on Amazon. 


Many of you may be familiar with some of these short reflections, but this is a version you can take to the beach or the coffee shop or on a plane.

It is a collection of reflections inspired to help us transform our turbulent world with love.  It draws from the essence of all the world's great religions and spiritual traditions to reveal the common ground shared by our entire global human family.

Each canticle is a love song to the human race, offering a divine wisdom to catalyze healing at all levels of human life - from individuals struggling for a sense of dignity and direction in their personal lives to those surmounting political, economic, or personal exploitation and oppression anywhere in the world.

Drawing from the beautiful love poetry of Rumi, the heart of the Torah, and the mystical theology of St. John of the Cross, each one whispers to the human heart in ways the ancients understood.  Each expressed the power of the heart to raise the level of human experience to a new place, an inner place of magnificence, radiance and creative potential.  The collection supports the relationship between human and divine and invites readers to taste the sweetness of life in all.

For ordering information see: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&ie=UTF8&field-author=Victoria%20Kearns 

... or for more information, you can e-mail me at www.tigerlilieslife@gmail.com

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A Distant Star

Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they
Let them not pass like weeds away
Their heritage, a sunless day

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

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

Loose thoughts flickered through my head like butterflies in my garden, as the spirit whispered to me, calling me to look into the deeper meaning locked in this most marvelous event. What beautiful diamond lies at the core of everything? What marvelous power and light is inside even the most remote stars in our universe? All of life is a sacrament, every material thing a reflection of the divine. Truth is buried within all earthen vessels and while we might say that on the surface these are just happenings with no particular meaning or essence, on the contrary, they are all outward manifestations reflecting an inner truth, a greater, more profound eternal essence. We are all particles of the divine. To find ourselves is to find God, distributed like dust across the face of the universe. In every microcosm, lies the entire cosmos.


God’s face is imprinted in the tiniest particle of light, each imperceptible glittering quanta, as much as in every exploding sun. How awesome! Breathless, I knew that for an instant, I had glimpsed a truth so profound.


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


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


Buried within us is the light, the power and the dynamism of life itself. Nowhere else is closer to God than right here, within these fragile bodies of ours. As we peel away layers of time and teaching, we find that in our most simple nature, most humble origins, also lay our greatest treasure. We are material vessels for the divine. Within us is also a diamond, exploding with power and light across time, and all we have to do is look within and there we find universes of light, eternally unfolding. As simple as this sounds, tragically, it is one of the most difficult things for us to do. We want to do this, we strive to do this, and oddly, it seems to elude us, sweeping us off course just as we’re about to grasp it.


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


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


This was written for "Canticles of the Heart" which will be available within the next couple of weeks from Amazon.

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.