Difficult Times

Today, during my recovery meeting I commented that I had been "privileged" to experience difficult times during my own recovery process. The fact is that my growth has been largely due to the support and guidance I have received in order to get through the numerous difficulties I have encountered. This process reflects what I often refer to as the "empty fullness" of life. When I am in the midst of hard times, I tend to view life as empty, meaningless or even tragic. Frequently, after I get through the hard times, I realize that I have grown in love, empathy and compassion.

Spirit Person

I like the approach to God or Jesus expressed by Borg when he commented that "Finally, the image of Jesus as a spirit person has implications for how we think of the Christian life. It shifts the focus of the Christian life from believing in Jesus or believing in God to being in relationship to the same spirit that Jesus knew." I know God or love. I feel the presence and have incorporated that presence into my life, giving my life a very strong feeling of joy and fulfillment.

Connection and love

In preparation for the coming retreat, I have been reflecting on the importance of my connection with all things and people. On the one hand, I find a great deal of depth and fulfilment because of those connections. I also recall a time when I was totally focused on the task at hand with no messy or complicated emotional or spiritual connections. At that point my life seemed simple, logical and straight forward. However, I also knew something was missing from my life, I just had no clue that it was love and connection.

Meditation & Prayer

For the last days I have been thinking a lot about the question that I ended my last entry with, basically, what to do with the information I have received. I have had numerous miraculous, numinous, sacred, God-shot experiences and am quite familiar with the Christian perspective to those experiences. I have experienced and explored several aspects of the Native American approach to the sacred and I also have some familiarity with the approach of other indigenous people. Through my prayer and meditation I have come to know the Buddhist perspective expressed by Jack Kornfield and Nisargadata Maharaj. I also have some familiarity with the more scientific but approaching the spiritual approach of quantum physics. I am also quite aware that they are all talking about the same thing, using different words. I am aware that all of these approaches support each other. At the present time I do a great deal of prayer, meditation and contemplation to sort all of this out. That seems to be working.

Time to Meditate

As I commented a few days back, I am aware that I am what has been called a "a spirit person, one of those figures in human history with an experiential awareness of the reality of God". I am also aware of having been gifted to know things like "The particles that comprise the physical world are the plenum [love/God energy] taking form" (Conrow Coelho), meaning that what we know as reality is in fact produced by the loving force I choose to call God. I know that we are all part of that force and that it connects us all. However, I do not know what to do with that knowing. It is time to meditate & sort things out!

Connection

The theme for the upcoming retreat is "connection", the sensing of which adds a tremendous amount of depth and meaning to my life. I feel a very strong, loving connection to everything and everyone, even supposedly inanimate objects. The feeling of connection is stronger with living things but also there with rocks, the earth and other non-living objects. I learned to feel and appreciate my connections through my association and experience with Native cultures.

Understanding is Not Required

The second chapter of my book, "Understanding is not required", kept coming up for me today. It is relatively straightforward to grasp the cause-and-effect, linear or Newtonian nature of the particle portion of physical reality. We can and do design experiments which illuminate that part. According to what we now know from quantum physics, what appears to be solid is actually 99.99% space and as Conrow Coelho points out "The particles that comprise the physical world are the plenum [love/God energy] taking form". That 99.99% follows the laws of quantum physics and we understand it very little.

Remembering

I really like the words of Conrow Coelho ( Recovering Sacred Presence in a Disenchanted World) when she commented that "Panentheism avoids the concept of dualism between God and the natural world. This is consistent with what we know from quantum physics, in which such dualities also break down. There can be no clear division between the two. The particles that comprise the physical world are the plenum [love/God energy] taking form. The generative force can be distinguished from the world of matter and mind but not separated from it." In other words, what we know of as reality is manifested love or God energy, the plenum taking form. Primitive cultures have known this for centuries - we have forgotten.

Knowing God

I have been reading Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & the Heart of Contemporary Faith, by Marcus J. Borg which I find very enjoyable and informative. He refers to Jesus as "a spirit person, one of those figures in human history with an experiential awareness of the reality of God", which reminds me of myself. I experience daily a force or power that others refer to as God, as do I, for convenience. I have said many times that I would be foolish to deny that presence. Today I have been reflecting on the fact that I actually find it difficult to conceive of a life where that concept was only theoretical.

Love Versus Fear

It has been a busy couple of days, with two new clients, two groups and several individual sessions along with some less intense activities. During the interactions I have been particularly conscious of the potential impacts of love versus fear on my choices of action. If I approach my activities fearing that I will not get a favorable outcome, I am likely to "stumble" and not be open to intuitive guidance. On the other hand, if I approach the same activities with feelings of love, peace and confidence my actions tend to be harmonious and easy. Today, I did pretty well staying on the love side.