Meditation 2

Yesterday I spoke of "the warm and powerful feeling of God or unconditional Love" that I focus on when I meditate. I meditate on that feeling at least once a day and often several times. I have realized that the feeling is a part of me that was, previously, undeveloped and is now growing. I make use of that feeling during exercise, for physical healing, when working with spirits and in my relationships. There is a lot of power there. Power that helps me in everything I do. "Few things — no things that I know of — are so completely and effectively restorative as the discovery that this World of the environing Spirit is verily closer to us than breathing and is charged with the resources of Life for which we pant."(Rufus Jones)

Meditation

Yesterday Maria, my wife, and I went to a local park and took a short walk through the brambles of a fallow field down to the bank of the Patuxent river. Once there I joined with the plants, animals and forest, told them how magnificent they were and meditated on the warm and powerful feeling of God or unconditional Love, a feeling near but just below my heart center that I was shown during my sweat lodge experience. It was a wonderful, joy-filled experience. I allowed that feeling to grow and then broadcasted it. "The very fact that such a mighty experience [mystical worship] as this is possible means that there is some inner meeting place between the soul and God; in other words, that the divine and human, God and man, are not wholly sundered."(Rufus Jones)

Life's Process

I have had several contacts in the last few days which have reminded me of several important guiding principles. Some of those are that God's Love is absolute (no sign of duality) and unconditional (no levels of love, pleasing or displeasing, judging or any other variation for any reason, just love) and much stronger than anything of human origin. If I encounter anything other than that, it is human, not God. Another is that I need to respect and not try to alter someone else's life process out of Love for them and because I do not truly understand their process. "Some course of action which seems so clearly to be leading to disaster may contain a twist of fate which lifts it to success. That accident whose cause was so apparent may have had an inner meaning we cannot see. That sudden death which we think could have been so easily avoided with greater consciousness may not have been the tragedy it appears. The man who died may have been needed elsewhere. We simply do not know. Scientists discover and theologians affirm; but faced with the mystery of life and death we know almost nothing. We can learn from the experts, but our experience may not fit their theories and it is our experience and our experience alone that we should trust."(Claremont deCastillejo)

Spiritual Path

Other than my exercising and regular household duties, I spend most of my time in activities of service to others or working on my own spiritual condition. I also do a lot of self care but even then minimize distractions from spiritual pursuits. I watch one or two movies a week and prefer fantasies of various types finding that I get enough realism in my daily life. In all of this I never lose track of the fact that my primary goal is to develop my spiritual condition. I am quite aware of how easy it is to become involved in worldly pursuits and lose track of my goal. "The most awful calamity which can befall our Religious Society is not a split in the unity of organization, not a loss of social prestige, not persecution by civil authorities, not loss of all our wealth. It is rather the subtle, unseen, slow, everyday weakening of our testimony and practice of absolute devotion." (Kilpack)

Joy

Every morning, at dawn this time of year, I go out the back on our deck and experience the "joy of being" along with all of the other plants and animals. The air is usually chilly and full of the moist smells of the beginnings of spring. Birds are just beginning to sing the spring song. I carry that joy and Love with me during the day. I distinguish between joy and pleasure since I have access to joy but cannot do many of the activities associated with pleasure, things like dancing, snow boarding, running or long walks in the woods. There are also many pleasurable activities that I can do such as eating or sitting in the woods but the pleasure is short-lived while the feeling of joy lasts. "Seek not pleasure neither of body nor of soul. This too is a gift, eluding those who seek it, seek God, for He alone is able to give joy, which is infinitely finer than pleasure.

Growth In Love

This morning we had a meeting of our reading group in which we are reading and discussing Healing The Heart Of Democracy: The Courage To Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit, by Parker J. Palmer. He takes a very loving and spiritual approach to democracy which, as I mentioned this morning, many people are not ready for. The recent election and our now president demonstrate that people are continuing to embrace their dark or shadow sides, including judgmentalness, anger, racism, materialism and selfishness. These "urges", as John Yungblut calls them, are part of all humans and, often, part of our movement or growth to a more loving and spiritual approach to life on this planet. "It was the revelation that not only might good be wrought from the darkness of the unformed abyss, the unconscious, but that part of the very energy of the evil urge in man, if one would but wrestle with it, as had Jacob with the angel, would yield its own peculiar blessing." It is my hope that we can continue without destroying the earth we depend on. "It is not that the demonic forces within the unconscious are not capable of destruction and disintegration. It is rather that within the mystery of the conjunction of opposites their sting can be drawn, their poison drained, and their very energy harnessed to realize a more profound individuation.