God in action..

I spoke to an old friend last week, someone I wondered about, yet haven’t spoken to in almost twenty years. She is married with 3 children, and her oldest child has severe epilepsy and brain developmental issues. What was almost a near perfect life has been invaded by suffering. She told me how one has to question the existence of a loving god, when innocent beautiful children are born into a life of suffering.

I have been wanting to write this post for several days, yet a part of me feels I have no right to write it. I have had my own suffering, pain, loss and disempowerment, yet this is nothing compared to a chronically debilitating illness. I have not had to raise an innocent child who was born into seizures. I don’t know the ‘why’ of suffering on the blameless.

What struck me from my friend was her willingness, in the face of suffering, to love her child, and to find joy and blessing in the gift of the child, amidst the question of God’s existence and the feeling of separation from Spirit. I felt her heart as a mother, and saw her courage and her bravery. I came across this quote by another friend yesterday.

“So often I have remembered what the Divine Mother spoke to Amma, "You have not been born to just experience bliss and peace, but rather to give comfort and solace to humanity. Use your Divine gifts to bring relief. That will be the real worship of me, who resides in the hearts of all beings as their essence".

Through my friend’s choice to respond to the suffering of her child with Love, I saw God in existence, in action. In John 16:7, Christ talks about the Holy Spirit as ‘the Comforter’. What is the spirit in her that responds to suffering with love and care? What is it that responds to suffering with outrage and heartbreak? How can an impersonal world be filled with a desire to comfort and solace? Even if my friend could not see it, her life and response, to love and not to reject, had to be evidence of a loving God, seeking to bring light into suffering.

Shining Light

I read the words of Matthew 5 last night..

⁴"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

 

These words jumped out at me, and I lay thinking about our responsibility as Christians, to let our highest good into the world. As Christians, we are lights in the world, powered by the Holy Spirit, to bring glory to the father. In the Lords Prayer, the lines are “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. How are we bringing Gods kingdom into the earth?

 

Jesus was a social revolutionary, challenging the sin and power structures of his time. He would retreat in prayer, regain his strength, then go into the world, preaching, teaching, healing, doing Gods work to transform the earth. At the school I teach at, there is little spirituality, yet today I was encouraged when a group of students asked if they could use my classroom to pray for a sick student. This gave me hope, hope for them to become leaders, to become social revolutionaries, to choose life, honor and respect instead of lawless self-interest.  They can do this by being lights, by letting their goodness shine out while they praise their father in heaven…

In Christ’s name

I have been thinking about this line from John 14:13 recently “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

This verse is a call to radical surrender. How much do I really trust God to allow him to do everything? How much do I still feel I need to take the bull by the horns and make things happen? How much do I want to be glorified, to look good to others, to accumulate possessions to feel secure?

As I go deeper I begin to allow God to do more and more, to trust that its really Him, and not me, that makes things happen.

 

To God be the glory, great things he has done. Hallowed by thy name (not mine), dear Lord :)

Already free

 

“There is a great secret that beings throughout time have announced, the secret of an extraordinary treasure, the treasure of the nectar of eternal life. It is the nectar of pure beingness, recognizing itself as consciousness and overflowing in the love of that recognition.
If you imagine yourself to be located in a body, then you will move that body from place to place, searching for this treasure of nectar. But, if you will stop all searching right now and tell the truth to yourself, you will know what is known in the core of your bones. You will know what these great beings knew and attempted to describe. You will know it with no image of it, no concept of it, no thought of it. You will know it as that which has eternally been here. And you will know it as yourself.”
– Gangaji, spiritual teacher

Divine Tears

 

Why is the journey to the Divine Union such a painful journey? because, in the words of a Persian song,

The ego will not go with laughter and with caresses

But must be chased with sorrow and drowned in tears.

But love is more powerful than all our evasions, than all the walls we have erected around ourselves. "

From Love is a Fire: The Sufi's mystical journey home.

Dhyana Meditation

This is from a good friends blog, and originally from Llewellyn Vaughn Lee, a Jungian Analyst/Sufi Teacher :) I have been doing the practice consistently for a few weeks and it has many positive levels :)

Dhyana meditation connecting heart and mindfulness . .

" The heart meditation that we practiced was developed in India, where it is also known as dhyana meditation:For the heart meditation, as long as the body is relaxed the physical position does not matter: one can sit or even lie down.

The first stage in this meditation is to evoke the feeling of love, which activates the heart chakra. This can be done in a number of ways, the simplest of which is to think of someone whom we love. This can be God, the great Beloved. But often at the beginning God is an idea rather than a living reality within the heart, and it is easier to think of a person whom we love, a lover, a friend.

Love has many different qualities. For some the feeling of love is warmth, or a sweetness, a

softness or tenderness, while for others it

is peace, tranquility or silence. Love can also come as a pain, a

heartache, a sense of loss. However love comes to us, we immerse

ourself in this feeling; we place all of ourself in the love within the heart.

When we have evoked the feeling of love, thoughts will come, intrude

into our mind—what we did the day before, what we have to do tomorrow. Memories will float by, images appear before the mind’s eye. We have to imagine that we are getting hold of every thought, every image and feeling, and drowning it, merging it into the feeling of love.

Every feeling, especially the feeling of love, is much more dynamic

than the thinking process, so if one does this practice well, with the utmost concentration, all thoughts will disappear. Nothing will remain.

The mind will be empty. The state of dhyana is a complete abstraction of the senses in which the mind is stilled by the energy of love within the heart, and the individual mind is absorbed into the universal mind. The actual experience of dhyana rarely happens during the first practice of meditation. It may take months, even a few years, to reach this stage. And once we do begin to experience dhyana we may not realize it. The initial experiences of dhyana usually last for just a split second—for an instant the mind dips into the infinite and just for a

moment we are not present. There may be little or no consciousness

that this has happened; the mind may not even be aware that it was absent. But gradually, the mind disappears for longer and longer periods; we become aware that our mind has shut down. The experience can for some time seem like sleep, since sleep is the nearest equivalent we have ever known to this mindless state.

The experience of dhyana deepens as the lover is immersed deeper and deeper into a reality beyond the mind. More and more one tastes the peace, stillness, and profound sense of wellbeing of a far vaster reality where the problems that surround us so much of the time do not exist—a reality beyond the difficulties of duality and the limitations of the world of the mind and senses, into which, for a little while each day, meditation allows us to merge. Dhyana is the first stage in the

meditation of the heart. It is, as Irina Tweedie described it, “the first stage after transcending the thinking faculty of the mind, and from the point of view of the intellect it must be considered as an unconscious state. It is the first step beyond consciousness as we know it.”(6)In dhyana, the heart is activated and the energy of love slows down the mind. The mind loses its power of control and individual consciousness is lost, at first for an instant and then gradually for longer periods of time. The lover becomes absorbed, drowned in the ocean of love.

Then in this state of unconsciousness a higher level of consciousness, or samadhi, begins to awaken. The evolution of dhyana into samadhi happens “by easy degrees,” as “the highest stages of dhyana are gradually transformed into the lower stage of samadhi, which is still not completely conscious,” and this less-conscious state leads in turn to the higher state of samadhi, which “represents a full awakening

of one’s own divinity.”(7)

The experiences of samadhi cannot easily be described. They belong to a level of reality beyond the mind, to a dimension of unity in which everything is merged, where the mind, operating as it does by making distinctions, cannot get a foothold. In samadhi we begin to experience our true nature which is a state of oneness: we are what we experience. Gradually we glimpse, are infused with, the all-encompassing unity and energy of love that belong to the Self and

underlie all life. And this oneness is not a static state, but a highly dynamic state of being that is constantly changing. Also our experience of it changes: no two meditations are the same and our experience becomes deeper and richer, more and more complete. On this plane of

unity everything has its own place and fulfills its real purpose. Here the true nature of everything that is created is present as an expression of divine oneness and divine glory. In the outer world we

experience only a fragmented sense of our self and our life. Here everything is complete and we come to know that everything is just as it should be.

What do you want?

Matthew 6:33 ‘Seek ye first, the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you’

In the Spiritual walk, do you want something from God, or do you want God?

Will God alone satisfy, or will what you want from Him satisfy? Does being stripped of everything, your money, your family, your culture, your health, and  having only the Love of God, scare you or seduce you?

As God draws us towards him in the supreme act of Love, He wants us to want Him, not the things He can give us.

In this way, God is a jealous God.