Showing posts with label Heaven on earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heaven on earth. Show all posts

Saturday, April 28, 2018

How to create heaven on earth

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. UUs also covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. These two principles raise interesting questions of deep down what do we mean by the word "person" and where does one find this thing we are attempting to describe? The search for the person is not without but within. If one goes within what will one find?

It is a well established scientific fact that we project our thoughts, beliefs, past experiences, and emotional reactions onto current objects. We don't see what actually is there but what we think we perceive. As the slogan says, "Perception is reality." In this sense, we create our own reality.

If you believe you are a good person living in a good world, good things will happen to you. If on the other hand, you believe you are a bad person living in a malevolent world then bad things will happen to you.

This principle of projection is a fundamental law of the ego. This law is below the level of consciousness for most people. They do not realize that the "reality" they are creating, continually, isn't real.

On the one hand, projection is a product of our experience. The bumper sticker says, "Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement." However, we have the ability to be mindful. We have the ability, stronger in some than in others, to examine and reflect on our experience, and manage it. Rather than being reactive we become responsive.

Spiritual teachers tell us that living the good life entails meditation or some call it now days, mindfulness. I call it the "witness." To what extent does a person have the capacity, the skill, to just observe his/her own functioning?

This power of observation of one's own functioning is the key ingredient in the spiritual life which brings one to peace and joy and heaven on earth.


Monday, April 16, 2018

Heaven is born

Unitarian Universalists' seven principles help them navigate the path of the ego and the path of the spirit and yet they kind of miss the point.

The compass the principles attempt to provide sometimes leads people astray because the compass points to a path that takes them askew.

What is the function of a person on the spiritual path? It is to join with others in forgiveness and Love.

We can't do this half way. We can't do this for some and not for others. It is an all or nothing deal. Either we are one with the All or we are not. Either we see the Divine spark in all people or we don't.

On the path of the ego it is difficult sometimes to see the Divine spark in all people, and yet, our faith tells us it is there if we are on the path of the spirit.

The path of the spirit asks that we walk with Love. Jesus is very clear about this for He tells us that the way to the kingdom is to "Love as I have loved."

We hesitate, though, thinking that some people are deserving of love and forgiveness and other people aren't. Or some people are deserving under certain conditions but not under other conditions. We act as if we are prosecutor, judge, and jury.

In our judgment we have lost our way. We have forgotten that the bull shit on the path of the ego isn't real in the spiritual world. The bull shit is stuff we humans have made up and promulgated and performed.

As we enter onto the walk with Love on the spiritual path we laugh and say, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," and we extend our love and forgiveness to the Divine in everyone and heaven is born.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

The peace that is timeless on the Walk of Love

The Universalists have taught that God loves us unconditionally. Most people don't know this. This lack of awareness is a shame. However, sooner or later all of humankind will come to know what the Universalists already know. It's only a matter of time, awareness, and choosing.

Univeralists are called to preach the good news that human beings have a choice. They can choose now or later but ultimately we all have to choose whether we continue down the path of the ego or whether we embark on the path of the spirit.

We are all here to learn the walk of Love.

For some it takes a long time how to learn the walk of Love. For others the time is quicker. It is our destiny to learn the walk of Love. In ultimately fulfilling our destiny we have no choice. This is the basis of our faith. But we can choose when we want to learn it.

Some resist learning the walk of Love. There are other things which distract them. Many detours are taken. In arrogance and desire, idols are identified and worshiped. These false starts and mistakes create a hurt that leads to anguish and despair. The tolerance for pain by human beings can be very high.

However, when the pain becomes great enough, it starts to dawn on the person that there must be a better way. This dawning leads to a turning from the path of the ego for a search on the path of the spirit. This search creates a a teaching-learning situation in which the person simultaneously becomes both a teacher and a student for we learn what we teach and we teach what we want to learn.

This teaching-learning dynamic was created by the Divine at the moment of our separation and were it not to have occurred we could not, would not have survived in this life on earth. From the moment of our birth we began learning and with our cries began teaching others how to interact with us. The teaching-learning dynamic is a basic building block of life. We constantly teach, whether we are conscious of it or not, what we are to others and what others are to us.

On the path of the ego we "give to get" and behave based on the belief of "you or me," "us or them," which comes from fears instigated by our beliefs in scarcity.

After "the dawning," "the turning," and "the search," we come to realize there is a better way and we enter into the "walk of love" where we learn that "giving is receiving" and "one for all and all for one." The walk of love brings peace and bliss that is timeless.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Knockin on heaven's door

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote seven principles the fourth of which is the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Where will "the search" take us? Where should we look? Where is true truth and meaning to be found?

Life's main existential question is very simple: do we want to live in hell or heaven?

Identifying with body and the path of the ego will be hell. Identifying with the spirit and the path of the spirit will be heaven.

The "miracle", the shift from ego to spirit, is based on forgiveness. Forgiveness not in the usual sense, but forgiveness for ourselves and others that we ever separated ourselves from God, the path of the spirit to begin with.

Our separation from the divine began with our worship of idols whom we thought and were taught by our society would make us happy. It can take years, if not decades, to become aware that this is not true.

This growing awareness born out of depression, anxiety, frustration, discouragement and anguish is called "the dawning." We become aware that there is a better way to live our lives here on earth and we begin to turn from the world to the divine within. Jesus told us that the kingdom of God is within us.

With this turn within, called "the turning," we begin to realize that we are not our bodies but part of the transcendent oneness. Our spirit is part of an oceanic pool of spirit-hood which we share with everyone. We become aware that we are not separate, but joined.

If "the turning" is brought about by forgiveness what does forgiveness take? Merely a decision to turn our separate wills over to the Will Of The Universe. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, "Let go, and let God", or simply, "Let go."

Ask the Holy Spirit, Jesus, God, your Higher Power, the muse to help you. Jesus says, "Ask and you shall receive. Knock and the door will be opened for you."

 

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Flesh or spirit: that is the question

It is written bluntly in A Course In Miracles, "You see flesh or recognize spirit. There is no compromise between the two."

So which is it for you? Do you see a body with a spirit or a spirit with a body?

God lets us decide how we want to view our experience. God lets us decide if we want to live in hell or in heaven.

Unitarian Universalists, when they are being cute, like to say, "We aren't interested in getting people into heaven. We are interested in getting heaven into people." What UUs aren't clear about is how they intend to do that, get heaven into people. Bottom line is, they can't. It's up to the individual whether (s)he wants recognize the heaven within them. They have to make the choice.

The choice means changing routes. The choice means getting off the path of the ego to the path of the spirit. Not everyone is ready. Not everyone is willing.

Giving up the ways of the world is scary. We are leaving the familiar ruts for unfamiliar territory and that feels risky. It's better, some people say, to dance with the devil you know than the devil you don't know.

Supposing, though, on the path of the spirit there is no devil at all, only divine bliss?

The buddhas that travel among us tell us that the path of the spirit brings peace, bliss, Love. The buddhas tell us to overcome our fears of setting aside the flesh and bask in the joy of the spirit.

The metamorphosis can be scary for the caterpillar to leave its cocoon and be born again as a butterfly, for the acorn to burst out of its shell and become a mighty oak tree, for any seed to crack its brittle shell and germinate into the being of its true potential.

The things that metamorphize in the natural world have no choice, but we humans, with our consciousness, must decide. Instead of God's will being done, God says, "your will be done." We alone have to decide whether we want to recognize the birth of heaven within us.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Heaven on earth

Unitarian Universalists gently laugh when they say they are not interested in getting people into heaven, but heaven into people. And it is in the third principle of Unitarian Universalism that covenant together to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations ( and it should be added, "and in the world.")

It is taught in A Course In Miracles that in our ego mind we have just made our lives up. It is written, "Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son Of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them both a way, and understand that time cannot intrude upon eternity. It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time." T-27.VIII.6:2-5 And it is this "tiny mad idea," that is the separation which has caused all the drama, all the problems, all the wars, all the pain and suffering, all the anguish, and grief, and sorrow. In short, it is this "tiny mad idea" that has caused hell on earth.

There is a saying, "Religion is for people afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there." Those of us who have chosen the path of the spirit and have left the path of the ego understand the consequences of the "tiny mad idea" that we are separate from Godliness and separate from our brothers and sisters.

Forgiving our mistake thinking that the path of the ego is real and turning our attention and intention to the Love of Godliness we create for ourselves and others a heaven on earth.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Heaven on earth

It has been said that Unitarian Universalists don't believe in people getting into heaven, UUs believe in getting heaven into people. Heaven is not "up there." Heaven, as Jesus told us 2,000 years ago is within you and among you. It is interesting that while Unitarian Universalism is no longer considered a "Christian" religion, it's principles more closely embody the teachings of Jesus than the churches of "cultural Christianity" do.

We all deserve to be happy. We all deserve to have a high quality life. If this does not seem to be so, something has gone wrong. What has gone wrong is not external to you, but internal to you intrinsic to who you understand yourself and your brothers and sisters to be.

When you truly believe that you and your brothers and sisters are extensions of the creator, all part of the Oneness, the light fills up your life which involves a feeling of bliss. Bliss is not pleasure, not happiness, not joy. Bliss is the feeling of flow, the melting away of the ego and consciousness of the cosmic.

The alarm bells should sound a loud warning when you begin to think of yourself or feel yourself to be a victim. No extension of God is a victim. Such a thing is impossible. Victimization is the work of the ego and blames others as persecutors. This is the great game, what Holden Caufield in Catch In The Rye called "the Big Lie."

No human being is inherently a victim but a being with inherent worth and dignity. It is this worth and dignity with which we need to be in touch and appreciate as precious.

Salvation, the At-One-Ment, heaven on earth is when everybody loves everybody all the time. When we know that we extensions of the divine and join with others to magnify this awareness, we hasten the time of creating heaven on earth.
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