Friday, July 30, 2010

Nature of God

"God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints."

~Ibn Sina, "Kitab al-Najat"

Dharma 2010

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

~Steve Jobs

Downward Causation

It is quite clear now that many of the original meanings of Yeshua’s and early Christianity’s teachings have become lost or clouded over with later doctrines and interpretations. Today, however, we are in a period of rediscovery and recovery of much that has been lost. Despite the passage of time, many items out of that original treasury are coming to light. Not the least of which are the Dead Sea Scrolls in Israel and the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt.

An original word that all agree was used both in first-century Judaism and early Christianity has to do with the critical term Messiah. Even this English transliteration is somewhat removed from the essential feature of the Hebrew word meaning the Anointed One. We know, of course, that this was the original meaning, but in a too literal understanding we often take this simply to refer to priestly, prophetic, or kingly anointing ceremonies that were practiced by the ancient peoples of Israel.

The meaning, however, is more interior and more complex than this. The act of anointing at the baptism of Yeshua was discovered to be a divine action, which caused the Spirit to descend in a great downward flow of Spirit suffusing and filling him. It was from that deep connection through the Spirit to heaven and the Source (the Father) that Yeshua moved across the landscape of Palestine in his work and ministry of healing and restoration. It is that same Spirit that he said would fall equally on his followers and become their constant companion (as paraclete) through the ages.

What is crucial for us to understand today is that such an anointing is primary to a vertical relationship that grounds us in Christian wisdom and spirituality. Without the uninterrupted flow of Spirit as the primary mover in the human soul, we remain lightless and lack the necessary energy and guidance, which is the core to all true spiritual action in this world. Downward causation and not isolated lateral movement across the human horizon is the key ingredient without which we remain cut off from our original springs and sources—which as Yeshua pointed out was a “sin” (a falling away) which could not be amended through simple “forgiveness.” It could only be rectified by a complete vertical restoration within us.

Do not desire crosses

Do not desire crosses, unless you have borne well those laid on you; it is an abuse to long after martyrdom while unable to bear an insult patiently.
- Francis de Sales

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

We Are All One

“ the arms of the trees, their hands,
their very fingertips reached into the sky and
grabbed my heart. somewhere up there,
we danced, the trees, god and me. ”

~terri st. cloud

Turquoise level thought

"The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it has ever contained, contains, or ever will contain. That is the native city to which we owe our love."

~Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Thy mysterious companionship

Holy Spirit of God, visit now this soul of mine, and tarry within
it until the eventide. Inspire all my thoughts. Pervade all my
imaginations. Suggest all my decisions. Lodge in my soul's most
inward citadel, and order all my doings. Be with me in silence and
in my speech, in my haste and in my leisure, in company and in
solitude, in the freshness of the morning and the weariness of the
evening. Give me grace at all times to rejoice in Thy mysterious
companionship.
- John Baillie

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

God's special favourites

It is a fact of Christian experience that life is a series of
troughs and peaks. In his efforts to get permanent possession of a
soul, God relies on the troughs more than the peaks. And some of
his special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.
- Peter Marshall

Monday, July 26, 2010

A cord of love

Here is a cord of love let down, and the upper end of it is
fastened to Christ's heart, and the lower end of it hanging down
the length of your hearts. And, O! shall not Christ's heart and
yours be knit together this day? Here is a cord to bind His heart
to your heart, and your heart to His heart.
- Ralph Erskine

Friday, July 23, 2010

Christ, the Person

To have faith is to rely upon Christ, the Person, with the whole
heart. It is not the understanding of the mind, not the theological
opinion, not creed, not organization, not ritual. It is the
koinonia of the whole personality with God and Christ. This
experience of communion with Christ is itself the continual
attitude of dependence on the Saviour which we call faith.
- Kokichi Kurosaki (1886-1970), "One Body in Christ"

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Being Love

"maybe being love is knowing you're okay-
that they can't hurt you...
knowing the power to hurt you is yours alone.
then maybe being love is using your power
to offer compassion.
all the while knowing they're okay too."
~terri st. cloud

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Beauty

"It is told that once Ananda, the beloved disciple of the Buddha, saluted his master and said: 'Half of the holy life, O Master, is friendship with the beautiful, association with the beautiful, communion with the beautiful.' 'Say not so, Ananda, say not so', the Master replied. 'It is not half of the holy life; it is the whole of the holy life.'"

~Samyutta Nikaya

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

~John Keats

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

I protect you absolutely

God wants us to be like Him in undiminished,
unending love towards ourselves and our neighbors.
God wants us to hate sin(imperfection)as He Himself
hates it and to love the soul as He Himself loves it.
God brought these words to my mind, and they have been
an endless strength to me: "I protect you absolutely."
- Julian of Norwich, "Revelations"

Monday, July 19, 2010

Faith and works

It was an unhappy division that has been made between faith and
works; though in my intellect I may divide them; just as in the
candle I know there is both light and heat: but yet put out the
candle, and they are both gone.
- John Selden (1584-1654), "Table-Talk"

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Universality

My heart is capable of every form: it is pasture for gazelles
and a convent for Christian monks,
And idol-temple and the pilgrim's Ka'ba (Mecca),
and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Koran;
I follow the religion of Love, whichever way his camels take;
My religion and my faith is the true religion.

~Ibn al Arabi


Thou didst fittingly.......inspire as Teacher millions of religions.
Thou didst in each religion, while it like the rest showed in
splendid fullness of treatises, disputations, sciences (make)
each its tenet to be the truth, the final goal.

~Tayumanavar


"....the very thing that is now called the Christian religion was not wanting
amongst the ancients from the beginning of the human reace, until Christ came in the flesh, after which the true religion, which had already existed, began to be called 'Christian'."

~St Augustine


"We have come to think of religion more as a set of rules of conduct than as a
doctrine about God; less as a doctrine about what we should be than one of what we ought to do; and because there is necessarily an element of contingency in every application of principles to particular cases, we have come to believe that theory differs as practice must. This confusion of necessary means with transcendent ends (as if the vision of God could be earned by works) has had unfortunate results for Christianity, both at home and abroad. The more the Church has devoted herself to "social service", the her influence has declined."

~Ananda K. Coomaraswamy

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Stillness

Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.
Listen....
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
Stand still.
The forest knows where you are.
You must let it find you.
~David Wagoner by way of Charlotte Coyle

The Fire Within

"may you know the fire within you.
may you never doubt your connection to it.
may you learn the balance of holding it close
and giving it freely.
and may you dance with the light that you shine."
~terri st. cloud

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Opposites

God created suffering and heartache so that joy might be known as their opposite. Hidden things become manifest through their opposites, but God has no opposite so he remains hidden. Light is known as the opposite of darkness, but God's light has no opposite. Thus we cannot know him through our eyes.

~Rumi

The Wisdom of Poverty

The poverty mentioned by Jesus in his teachings is of a very special kind--having to do with things of the spirit. It is a form of "spiritual poverty." Here is one way of understanding it:

For someone whose trade is emptiness, kenosis,
and whose work is letting go (fana'),
the search for certainty, knowledge,
or even religion itself
has come to an end.

When what we thought of as our "self"
is gone,
only God remains--
just God.

This is the meaning of
"Blessed are the poverty-stricken,
for they shall see God."
When the poverty of "letting go" become complete,
you find God.


--Based upon a poem-prayer by Abu Sa'id Abi'l-Khayr from Love's Alchemy

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Understanding

As long as you have not realized the great principle that permeates all, it is essential that speech and action should support each other. Do not hold to the intellectual understanding of others; turn the light of awareness back to the root, and it is not there at all.

~Pao-chih

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Meditation

Brahman is the Self hidden in everyone. He is only obvious to those who, minds focused one-pointedly on the Lord of Love, nurture intuitive knowldege. Meditation leads them deeper into consciousness, passing from the world to thoughts and beyond thoughts to the wisdom of the Self.

~Katha Upanishad

Near death experiences

There is a new website with information on near death experiences, consciousness, etc. The website is: www.nderf.org.

Mushrooms

This quote comes to us through Catherine Crews who was with a gathering at Praxis through the 4th of July weekend. We had discussions as to our purpose and "being" here in space-time, and this summarizes a very strong point made my Linda Diehnelt in our discussion.

The world exists, not for what it means
but for what it is.
The purpose of mushrooms
is to be mushrooms;
wine is in order to be wine:
things are precious before they are contributory.


--Father Robert Capon

Our union with God

Our union with God--his presence with us, in which our aloneness is
banished and the meaning and full purpose of human existence is
realized--consists chiefly in a conversational relationship with God
while we are each consistently and deeply engaged as his friend and
collaborater in the affairs of the kingdom of the heavens.
... Dallas Willard, "Hearing God"

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Divine Fire

It is easy to interpret the tenth Logion in the Gospel of Thomas:

See, I have cast fire into the cosmos, and I shall guard it carefully until it blazes.

as a sign of judgment. But it is not, in my view. Fire from heaven signals something else--the divine energies, the light of divine Consciousness being cast into the human world. Yeshua is introducing a new, surprising element, the energy of the Divine Mind or Consciousness which shall catch fire on earth and within the human heart. It is the nous which shall be activated by divine Intelligence--the fire of Heaven.

Each of us, then, possesses some spark of that fire within us. We hold, like containers, the energy of divine Consciousness within us. It is meant to "catch fire" and blaze up as a force which will eventually take hold and change the nature of our own being and consciousness. This is Yeshua's act of subversiveness, and his ability to potentiate something brand new in the human condition. And he shall remain watchful until that act is accomplished.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Another World Inside

Here is this wonderful quote from Anam Cara by John O'Donohue sent to us by Linda Diehnelt. Very provocative.

"It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world exists. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world. "

Friday, July 02, 2010

Joy

Hidden in the cave of the heart, leave pain and pleasure far behind. Those who know they are neither body nor mind but the immemorial Self, the divine Principle of existence, find the source of all joy and live in joy abiding.

Katha Upanishad

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Trust

"All knowledge is but a branch of worship, and all worship is but a branch of abstinence, and all abstinence is but a branch of trust in God, and trust in God has neither limit nor finite end."

~Makki