Realizing God's Will Is Oneness

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Love Your Neighbor

Who is our neighbor?  Is it the person next door, down the street, across town, over the sea?  Just who is our neighbor?  Must it be someone we know?

The Holy Spirit says everyone is our neighbor, whether we know them or not matters not.  In our real mind they are all the same, all one with us.  This can take on a very practical note when we really begin to consider how we show love to our neighbor.  To the ego mind showing love to our neighbor down the street seems different than to our neighbor half way around the world.  Seeing a brother close by seems more personal to us.  We feel a greater ability to be connected to him because we can see him and talk to him, maybe touch him.  The brother far away we can only connect with in our mind in an abstract sort of way.  The ego demeans this as not being satisfying or real because it does not involve the body.  And yet, the ego is also quite able to label the brother whom we can’t see as the “other,” far removed from us in language, culture and geography, someone with whom communication is very difficult in human terms.

Our neighbor, our brother, no matter whom or where he is, is connected to us in the experience of God.  This goes beyond words or nonverbal language.  When we let Holy Spirit show us an experience beyonds words, beyond feeling, we leave ego behind and truly communicate with our brother.  This is the universal language of love that comes to our awareness when we appreciate its value.  We begin to appreciate its value when we trust Holy Spirit to show us how true communication takes place.  This communication is not dependent on the body or any worldly circumstance, and transcends every cultural understanding.

When we trust Holy Spirit to show us how true communication works, we can extend love to every brother in a real way.  And we can also come to the awareness of certainty that our communication of love has been understood and received.  That is the part that perhaps ego tries so hard to keep our minds from grasping, that there is a communication which transcends the ego mind.  The ego mind only invests in the story of separation and distance, and not in the intimacy of minds joining as one.

When we offer ourselves to the Mind of Love consistently, an awareness comes over us that we are truly bonded with our brother in a way that we cannot explain.  There is a bond of recognition so powerful and so true that we simply are aware of its presence.  We know all of mankind to be our neighbor, our brother in Christ, so connected through Him in the one experience of God that we come to know by the sharing of our experiences of God.  Every experience of God is for the sharing with our neighbor because he is one with us in this.  Only the ego would label experiences of God as separate and different, some better than others.

When we give our means of communication over to the Holy Spirit, He shows us the value in every experience of God.  He shows us the truth of how they are connected when we go beyond words and other symbols the ego recognizes or labels.  Our neighbor’s experience becomes open to us and ours to them.  We join in an intimacy which the ego cannot comprehend and this part of our mind makes frightening in its confusion about who is self and who is neighbor, when in realilty they are one.

When we open to our connection with our neighbor, we are joined in love.  This communication   is real.  When we accept God’s love in the truest way, we accept the responsibility and experience of extending the Heaven experience to others as they are extending it to us in truth.  Love is a mutual experience of God.  This includes everyone.  No one is excluded.  Everyone becomes a dear friend and neighbor in the Mind of God, someone not separate from us. 

For those who follow ego mind as guide, this sounds altruistic and unrealistic, in fact, downright impossible as they look upon the violence they see in the ego world as real.  But these neighbors are in truth no different when we join with them in the Mind of Love.  In truth, joining in the experience of God with my neighbor helps him to open to that mind that we share.  We need not see how this happens or even anticipate some worldly result, for the communication of love is not of the physical ego world.  There may be a result we see, there may not.  In truth, this makes no difference.  The communication of love is all that matters.  The awareness of this communication is all that matters.  There is nothing else.

And so, love your neighbor, wherever he is.  All neighbors are just one neighbor in love.  When we truly love our neighbor we know we are home and all is well.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Forgiving = For Giving Grievances Over to Holy Spirit

The important question to ask myself at every turn is whether I am willing to give my grievances over to the Holy Spirit, for surely I have grievances living in an ego body.  There is ego at every turn in the road projecting the next step if I allow it to do so by forgetting to choose Holy Spirit’s thoughts.  The ego wants to see separation and specialness and struggles mightily to write this script for me to accept as truth.  The ego wants me to hang onto grievances as a way of validating fear, anger and conflict as my existence.

Grievances need not be major ones in the eyes of ego.  Minor ones will do as well as long as I hold onto them and cherish them.  I call them treasured wounds.  Those are the hurts that I think define me because I have held onto them for so long or so tightly.  They can be from childhood or more recently acquired, it makes no difference as long as I keep them close to my heart and make them special. 

Ego wants to keep me feeling “lonely.”  When my mind is following ego as the guide, it thinks it lacks something, especially love, and it then projects this idea so that I am seeking love somewhere outside myself.  I look to relationships I have made special love relationships to complete me.  This search makes me unsatisfied and unhappy.  I can’t find fulfillment from another body no matter how hard I try because there is no love to be found from another ego body.  My expectations are not met and so I blame the other body for my continued lack.  It is this the ego wants to hang onto - the projection of guilt so that it will not have to look at its own perceived guilt.  The ego tries to hide this from me, and looks in yet another special place for love or validation.

Getting caught up in the thinking that my needs are not being met or that others are not caring about my feelings, and then feeling resentful or angry, is just getting caught in ego thinking.  Wanting physical demonstrations of love in order to make me feel loved is just the same trap of ego thinking.  The feeling of making sacrifices and accomodations for the convenience of another which must be reciprocated in kind leads to feelings of anger when they are not.  This is just ego thinking that forms can give me comfort or anxiety depending on the meaning I give them. 

The ego mind uses forms to bring me pleasure which tries to hide the pain that I think I feel lack.  The ego mind clings to forms for safety.  But when meanings change, what was once “good” becomes “bad” and leads to feeling unhappy.  The ego keeps me in confusion and chaos this way, when I forget that all forms are the same, and that some just seem more important than others.  When I let go of my dependence on all forms, then can I finally find some peace.

When I see all kind of errors in my family, friends, or people around the world, I make these people different from me.  I might think I see them as worse than me or better than me, and feel disconnected from them.  I recognize there is no peace in this thinking.  Holiness is of the mind.  It is coming into a willingness to put aside judgments and comparisons, fear and guilt, and really breaking free of this thought system because I disregard it.  As I open my mind more and more to the truth that we all are one, regardless of appearances, Holy Spirit can show me the holiness of my brother and myself both. 

The key ingredient in seeing holiness in my brother and myself is giving over all my grievances to Holy Spirit.  I do not have to deny that I have them for that is not being honest, but I do have to deny that they are real.  I must come to an acceptance that Holy Spirit’s vision is correct, not the ego vision and turn away from this vision that does not serve me.  It truly is my choice on which vision I focus.  Seeing with ego makes me think I see separation which brings anxiety and a feeling of dis-ease.  Seeing innocence with Holy Spfirit brings me true happiness and peace.  I make the choice in my mind.  Either I can hang onto perceived grievances or give them over to Holy Spirit for healing.

If I am willing to see holiness and innocence, Holy Spirit shows it to me.  If I give all to Him, I can see with eyes of forgiveness.  The eyes of forgiveness help me see more, more light, more oneness, more of everything peaceful.  This becomes easier with practice because it is supported by Holy Spirit.  When I am giving over all I see to Holy Spirit, even if I have labeled it as a grievance, Holy Spirit will take it and transform it into holiness.

When there is no longer any desire to exclude anyone from wholeness and innocence, Holy Spirit can bring me complete forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit is in everyone’s mind and when I look at someone not with body eyes but by listening to the Holy Spirit level of truth, I can focus on the connection that exists with everyone.  When I make no exceptions to oneness, then can I feel truly complete and whole for there is the sharing of the Holy Spirit mind in perfect willingness to see oneness.  I am for giving all perceived grievances to Him Who shows me perfect forgiveness.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

Ode to Holy Spirit

I rely on You, Holy Spirit.  You are my strength and my light.  I totally trust in You.  I see the illusion but I do not trust it.  I trust only in You to be my guiding strength.  You lead me into peace.  You lead me to the still waters of my mind where I can see reflected the truth of what is.  I can give my life to you.  I do not know the way or the meaning of the illusion and so I give it all to you.

I want to be healed.  It is my only desire.  I rely on You to be there for me in every step.  You support my mind with strength and light.  I surrender to You.  I am most willling for You to lead me, to be my only guide and my only support.  I lean on You, giving You the total weight of my burden, knowing that You will take it from me and give me healing in return.

I give You every thing I see and feel and You give me Everything Eternal in return.  I give You anxiety and You give me peace.  I give You worry and You give me joy.  I give You dissatisfaction and judgment and You give me love.  You take all I have and give me salvation in return.  I give you weariness of the world and You show me Heaven in return.  In my gratitude I follow You.

You take my hands and lead me gently away from the oppressive burden of illusion I have made.  You comfort me and heal me.  You take my cares and woes and transform them into glad opportunities to see the power of Your love.  I rely on You.  I rely on Your vision of truth to support me.  In the vastness, there You are with me most gently and caringly.

There, underneath the illusion, lies the truth fully supporting me.  I know I cannot falter or stumble as You are there to place me firmly on the path to God again.  You right my feet and my mind, point me into the direction I am to go and then walk with me holding my hand until I can walk again sure-footed listening only to Your Voice.

When I seem afraid, there You are appearing to me as God’s Saving Grace.  When I am calmed again, there You are as the part of me You always were, not separate but with me still.  How miraculous is this love You bear for me.  You bring miracles of love from Oneness to where I am.  You love me always.  I know I can rely on this.  You show me love and I follow love.  Love can see only itself and so I know again that I am only love.  In my following You am I healed from all illusion.

Holy Spirit, I give you gratitude for Your healing presence, for Your perfect willingness to show me love, for Your role in bringing me to remembering that I can only follow love for love is all there is.  I can be at peace because You help me remember I am one with peace.  This is all there is, just peace.  In my gratitude, in my willingness, I can let illusion slide away and return in this instant to the awareness of what I am in truth because of You, Holy Spirit.  Trust turns to gratitude in the miracle of Your love.

© 2004, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
You may freely share copies of this with your friends, provided this notice is included.

Tell a friend about this post.

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Posted by Rev. Barbara Kraetsch.

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