WE LIVE IN GOD
In God, we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28. That is the reason all things are possible in God. All things are possible because we are in God. Why is that so hard to believe? If we are in God, why do we seem to be so unhappy much of the time? Why do we experience pain and fear and guilt? Why does there seem to be so many miserable people leading sad lives? The circumstances of our lives seem to argue against God, or argue for an insane God.
The answer is simple. We dream in God. Genesis tells us that Adam (who is representative of all God?s children) went to sleep. Nowhere does it say that he awoke. We still sleep, and we dream. We dream that we left God, that we turned our back on Him and walked away. We dream that we recreated ourselves and instead of one we became many, separating ourselves into man and woman, into different colors, different personalities. We kept dreaming separation dreams until the differences became endless. We splintered our one holy self until it seemed impossible to even discern the child that God created, much less put it back together.
And in our dream of abandoning God and our true nature by walking out of paradise, we experienced the crushing fear and guilt of turning our back on our Creator. We became afraid of our loving Father, and afraid to wake up. So we chose to forget that we went to sleep and dreamed.
But God, Whose love for us is all encompassing and endless, put His Voice in us as a gentle reminder of our true reality. We call the Voice for God the Holy Spirit. This Voice is always available to us and will lead us back to God when we are ready to listen; when we are ready to wake up.
So, wake up! Wake up to the joy of who you are. Wake up and know the peace of God which passes all understanding. Wake up and know your oneness with your Creator and with each other. Do you feel lost? Do you feel so distant from God that you cannot imagine that you are in God? Do you sometimes feel so crushed by a life time of disappointments that you cannot imagine living a life of pure joy? Have you made mistakes? Does the weight of those mistakes seem awful, so smothering that you can?t see yourself lifting the weight of that guilt from your shoulders?
Well, take heart! All you need to do is wake up. And God placed within us the means to wake gently and surely from this nightmare. The Holy Spirit speaks to us of our Father and the home He has prepared for us. He tells us of our Father?s endless and unwavering love for us. He gently reassures us, like the spiritual children that we are. He reminds us that we don?t have to remain in this bad dream any longer than we want to-that our Father waits patiently for our return. God doesn?t condemn us. He doesn?t believe in our ?sins?. He is the loving Father, joyfully awaiting the return of His prodigal children.
Could this be true? Could it be that simple? Is there truly hope? If so, how do we awake? How do we come out of this dream? In my guilt and fear I have worked hard to block out the Voice for God. Perhaps the same is true for you as well. Rest assured, God would not have given us His Voice if He did not mean for us to hear It. He made it easily assessable to us. The first step to returning to our natural state, which is Heaven, is to recognize that the world has nothing to offer. This is also the hardest step. I experienced a huge resistance to this, and still experience resistance, though the resistance is never as strong as it used to be.
I argued against the idea that the world has nothing to offer me because it seemed to me that, with all the bad, there is a lot of good as well. I asked the Holy Spirit about love. What about falling in love and wanting to spend the rest of your life with that person? This is the knowing I received from the Holy Spirit. Love as the world offers it is conditional and temporary. It is uncertain and fragile. Like everything the world offers, it is like a beautifully wrapped box with a bomb inside. No matter how lovely it is at first, it has the potential to blow up in my face. So even while things are going great, somewhere deep in my subconscious, I am plagued with dread of losing it. What kind of gift is that? Is this happiness?
So, does this mean that love is not a good thing, and that I should not seek it? No, because there is a way to love even in this dream that is of God. If I choose God instead of the world, love comes without conditions, and it is eternal. In fact, when I choose God and only God, love is all there is. Call it special love, and holy love. Special love is of the world. It is for some people and not for others. It is different depending on circumstances. There are many conditions which must be met before it can enter, and it can easily be lost.
Holy love is from God rather than from the world. It knows no bounds. It doesn?t love one person more than another, nor differently. There are no conditions on its presence. How a person acts doesn?t change the love. It has no limits and is steadfast. It never changes nor can it be lost. Love from God is the very fabric of life. It is the raw material from which all else flows. We can block God?s Love from our awareness of it, but we cannot change or destroy it. Can we love each other with the love of God? Yes! We certainly can, and in fact, that is what we are created for.
All things the world has to offer are temporary at best and are always dual in nature, there being a good side and a bad side. All things in the world lead to loss. The most beautiful sunset ends. The lushest forest dies away or is destroyed. Even while it exists in all its beautiful magnificence, it contains the potential for loss and so the pleasure one feels at its beauty is tinged with the certain knowledge that it will end.
In our creation we had total peace, complete joy and love such as we can no longer even imagine. We traded it for dreams of elusive and uncertain pleasures. We could have the peace of God, and instead we choose our little dramas. We could have absolute joy, and instead we choose illness, pain and fear. We could have unlimited and unchanging love, and instead we choose a pale imitation. And we call this life and revel in the next emotional high, all the while waiting in dread for the inevitable plunge into darkness. This is not life. This is death by degrees.
All we need to break free of this vicious cycle is a little willingness. We don?t even need complete willingness, just a little willingness. We can say, ?God, I am willing to entertain the thought that I want your gifts, instead of what I have given myself. I am willing to consider that there might be a better way; that life doesn?t have to so closely resemble hell. When I have done this, I have opened the door of my mind just a crack. I have peeked through that crack and invited God in. He will take full advantage of even that small bit of willingness on my part. His radiant Light will begin to flow in through that small opening, lightening the dark places in my mind. His angels will slip through to support my every small effort with their strength. His Voice will become more distinct in my mind. The change in my life that results from this small effort on my part will motivate me to open that door wider.
Once I have decided to turn my back on the world with its pathetic offerings, and have decided to place my faith in God?s gifts, it is only a matter of staying vigilant for God. The world will continue to tempt me, offering unlimited distractions to regain my attention and my allegiance. Jesus experienced this, too, in His forty days of temptations. The world and all its ?glories? were laid at his feet, and all he had to do was accept them. Jesus saw them for the pale imitations they were, and turned his back on them.
And so must we, if we seek a spiritual awakening. God did not leave us alone to find our way home. We have the Holy Spirit to turn to when we are unsure how to respond to anything the world offers. Some of its gifts seem good and some of them seem bad, but they are all the same if they do not come from our Father. If what you are being offered does not bring love and joy and peace into your life, the Holy Spirit will judge it to be unworthy of a child of God.
We live in the world and so we need things, but there is a way of having them that will not hurt us. A course I took put it like this: ?When we ask for things of the world on our own, we are asking for hell whether we realize it or not. When we let the Holy Spirit guide the prayer of our heart we are returned to our natural place in Heaven.?
It is not hard to learn to bring all thoughts to the Holy Spirit for his interpretation. It only requires practice, and life provides plenty of practice opportunities. I had a chance to practice this quite recently. My daughter, Sheryl had surgery that became infected and she had to go in for more surgery. During this ordeal, the world offered me great drama. I could feel perfectly justified in spending my days and nights in fear. After all, who wouldn?t under the circumstances, considering the pain my daughter was suffering, and the potential danger.
I could tell the story of my fear for my daughter as I worried and fretted. People would express their concern and try to console me. I could spend my time busily doing unnecessary tasks, looking worried and fearful, and so reassuring myself that I am a good and caring mom. I could experience the temporary highs when things seemed to be going well- and then the awful fear and dread when events seemed uncertain. I could tell myself that these roller coaster emotions mean that I live. This drama is a gift of the world.
In fact, that is exactly what I chose, at least at first. I recognized from my loss of peace that I had chosen against God. I gave myself some quiet time, and I brought all of this stuff to the Holy Spirit. I told Him how hard it is to put my fears aside, but that I was willing to do so. I told Him that it was hard for me to imagine feeling any differently in the circumstances, but I was willing to see this in another way. I gave the Holy Spirit what willingness I had, and asked Him to heal my unwillingness. It seemed, at first, that it was just too hard to release my fears to God, but that is the miracle. I only need to be willing to do so. I don?t have to heal my thoughts. That is the Holy Spirit?s job. He heals my mind and gives me another way to see.
The Holy Spirit gave me a new vision. He showed me the whole and perfect child of God behind the weak and vulnerable person I had been seeing. He reminded me that I have a purpose and that purpose is to keep God?s Vision of Sheryl. What we focus on grows and becomes stronger. The longer I held God?s Vision of Sheryl, the more real it became for me. Soon, the fear and anxiety began to melt away as their cause faded from my mind. I began to have dreams of healing rather than dreams of death.
I contacted friends and asked them to hold this vision with me, and also to see me as strong in my purpose. As we join in God?s work, we become stronger. Remember what Jesus said about when two or more are gathered in His name. And so, in His name I gathered strength.
When my eyes were drawn to the picture the world was offering me, I returned my thoughts to the Holy Spirit and asked Him to renew God?s Vision for me. When I thought, ?But what if she gets really sick?? the Holy Spirit reminded me that no matter what seems to happen in the world, Sheryl rests in God. God is her strength and her safety.
As I chose God over the world, all the fears and anxieties continued to dissolve, and were replaced with certainty, and love, and peace. Each time I was tempted to look at what the world seemed to offer, I repeated the process. Each time I accepted God?s gifts instead of the worlds, I became stronger in my commitment, and it became easier to do.
Probably we have all experienced turmoil and chaos in our lives. Some of us have experienced grief. There may have been moments when you have felt abandoned and wondered where God had gone. Well, know this: God has not gone anywhere and neither have you. You are in God where He placed you, and nothing can change that. You need only awaken to His love and His care to bring this awareness back into your life.
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