9/28 book Prologue 1

As I mentioned in our class Sunday, this is not new stuff, HOWEVER, it is good for us to realize that we are swimming in a different pool of spirituality than we have been before.

Even though most of us have moved from the moralistic, blame, shame and guilt we grew up with, we have not been offered a whole lot to put in its place.

So what happens then is this unfilled void in Christianity and spirituality becomes something like, "Jesus was nice and we are supposed to be nice too."

The reason why most of us are stepping into a class like this one is because we do recognize that void, and we want to fill it with more than just little fortune cookie sayings. We want SUBSTANCE; we want EXPERIENCE. We want to go beyond the material world of thoughts and feelings.

I’m going to present a word and idea that is not generally part or our spiritual vocabulary. Are your ready???? MYSTIC.

Yes, we are being called to be mystics—please read on.

Of course in years past, mystical consciousness was only for monks and nuns locked away in cloistered monasteries or hermits on the mountain top.

But today, this consciousness is offered to everyone. A mystic is simply one who is consciously living in the presence of God, the presence of Love. And so, here is the heart of our yearning. To be in Love; to be One with; not just to have peace, but to BE peace. 

The scary part is that this poor little isolated ego which we have been identified with for so long, thinks that it is going to die if we take the plunge. The truth is that it will disappear for a second or two; it will "die" for a moment, but it will be back. This work is not about killing or destroying the ego, it is simply about putting the ego in its proper place and recognizing it is not who I am. 

So that brings us to some reflections on last Sunday's work.

Being the Word, simply means recognizing we are a creation of God, a creation of Love, that is our nature, that is our essence that is who we are underneath or beyond all the stuff, all the roles, all the labels.

When I say, “Word, I am Word,” that is simply a shorter version of saying, “I am a a creation of Love; I choose to see all things in and with Love; Love is who I am and who you are. There is nothing else of importance.”

Here are a few quotes, old and new, that describe this journey.

from some of the great teachers of the 2nd and 3rd Century:

Clement(of Alexandria): ``The Logos(Word) of God had become man so that you might learn from a man how a man may become God.’’

Origen: ``From Him [Christ] there began the union of the divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine.’' 

``Identification with Christ would lift the believer through the human nature of Christ to union with his divine nature and thus with God and thus to deification.’'

Irenaeus: "The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."

Meister Eckhart 14th Century: "The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.

Scott Peck: "This is the meaning of our individual existence. We are born that we might become, as a conscious individual, a new life form of God.” 

and from our book:

“Why you have come is to realize yourself as the Christed Self that you were intended to be. That is the mission of man. That is the mission of every man. That is the mission that you have been bequeathed and that you are answering to , each  one of you, in your way, as you transpire to move through this time.”

“Now many of you are going to ask, “What does this mean? What am I then? What does it mean to be the Christ?” And we will tell you very simply: what it means to be the Christ is to be in the frequency of Christ, and to recognize the self in its divinity as one with the Creator without the separation of self that the ego process would keep in place to diminish the glory of the self as one with its Creator.”

“If you understand that your light is a piece of the great light, then you have the beginning of the understanding of your Christed Self.”

Last week I shared that wonderful parable from Richard Bach’s Illusions.

I just came across another one that fits beautifully with some of he ideas expressed above:

Once upon a time, in a not-so-faraway land, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their business with purposeful energy; and since they were midlife, baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called "Getting All You Can out of Your Shell." There were wounded-ness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their original fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped "out of the blue" by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. As he crouched beneath the oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing upward at the tree, he said, "We ... are ... that!”

“Delusional thinking, obviously,” the other acorns concluded, but one of them continued to engage him in conversation: "So tell us, how would we become that tree?" "Well," said he, pointing downward, "it has something to do with going into the ground ... and cracking open the shell." "Insane," they responded. "Totally morbid! Why, then we wouldn't he acorns anymore." 

Humor aside, the point is obvious-at least when it comes to acorns. An acorn is only a seed; its nature and destiny is to become an oak tree. Everyone knows this. What's much more difficult is to apply this same parable to ourselves. Cynthia Bourgeault. The Wisdom Way of Knowing.

Jesus said, “Unless the grain of wheat fall unto the ground and die unto itself; it shall not live.”

I know its scary, but we are not flying without a net. God has promised, just as Jesus reached out to Peter when he was sinking under the waves after his abortive attempt to walk on water, “If you ever think you are falling, I will always be here to catch you.”

You really don't have to be different from who you already are.