Meditation

When I get up in the middle of the night to pray and meditate I am primarily listening for guidance concerning timely events and their position in eternity.  Many life events, like finances, have little impact on eternity and others, like loving relationships, have greater meaning.  All take on a feeling of peace and all are wrapped in Love. “Faith, then, means putting trust in a process that slowly builds an intimate relationship with someone I can neither see nor fully understand, but only feel.  Living a life of faith implies being in continual contact with God and opening up to being searched and known.” (Elizabeth Ostrander Sutton)

Gratitude

I was struck with gratitude yesterday that I no longer lie to, attempt to control or manipulate other people.  I was reminded of this when I went to pick up my car after having some routine service.  There was a dispute going on between another customer and the mechanic.  That customer was exhibiting very loud self-righteous anger and using the same exact techniques I used to use in order to force his will on the mechanic.  There, but for the grace of God, go I.  I hope he is not feeling as hurt and angry as I did and I hope he finds a solution.

Meditation

When I get up in the middle of the night. After drinking some harmonizing tea, I go into deep meditation and a strong connection with God and when there I work with spirits and self-healing.  As Elaine Pagels comments below, I encounter “something compelling, powerful, even terrifying” and I am, indeed, in the process of transformation.  I find the meditation exhilarating. Exciting and disturbing.  “Yet I sometimes encountered, in churches and elsewhere—in the presence of a venerable Buddhist monk, in the cantor’s singing at a bar mitzvah, and on mountain hikes—something compelling, powerful, even terrifying that I could not ignore, and I had come to see that, besides belief, Christianity involves practice—and paths toward transformation.”