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10-10-06
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The Ground of Being that informs all life meets each of us where we are. What I think of as God is immutable and unchanging, the connect-ness and energy of everything. However, there is an infinity of inflections in which It is evinced and given expression. We are the Mind of God to the extent that we are awakened to the fact that we are Its component parts and willing to trust that intuition and acknowledge that this fact is true for us and for every other inflection of that Being – for all of Creation, in other words – and that each is equally valid and viable in its own right.
I have been set upon a particular path for over twenty years now, albeit falteringly and sometimes unwillingly. My chief obstacles to progress have been appetites and desires, fears and attachments that are disproportionate to my actual needs. These have bred resentment and self-destruction. They have also brought about a purging and humbling that is perhaps more immediate than it might be for some other people. To phrase it in the language common to the context I grew up with: God can command anything of me except that I accept His will. He can, however, allow me to have my own will to such an extent that acceptance of His will becomes the only viable, and comfortable, option. I become the author of my troubles. I am punished by my sins rather than for them; they are my own creation. I am the midwife of my destruction and regeneration through the agent of choice and free will.
The good news (yes, there’s more of that archaic language of my youth) is that the power to effect that regenerative process is available to me and requires little more than a small amount of willingness to effect its use. I simply have to let go and trust.
I did not experience a strict religious upbringing, but the power of those metaphors and the language of those rituals informed the world around me and became familiar. It was not until I was grown that those symbols and rituals slowly became more transparent so that I began to see past them to the power of the Mystery that lay beyond. Even that, however, was not sufficient to grant me freedom from those fears and attachments that held me in bondage most of the time. I had a good deal more to experience before the pain of holding on was greater than that of release and trust in the Process. My steps even now are halting at times. I am easily distracted, and the habits of years are warm and familiar friends to look back on as I tread into unknown territory.
The difference now, I suppose, is that I’ve been given something – Grace, for lack of a better term – that allows me enough Big Picture sense to give up whatever romance is left in the sordidness of my petty ideas of happiness. I no longer want to scrounge for crumbs under the banquet table. I know as well that it is actually a pot-luck, and I have much to bring that others might also be fed, and that abundantly. To negate that is to deny the reality of my own existence and experience and put the blinders back on and plunge into the creation of my own limited powers – to rule in hell so as not to serve in heaven. That limited view of service is the perception of a paradigm blinded by self-will that is not aware of how amplified I become by opening myself up honestly and willingly to what is available to me and through me daily.
Self-honesty is not penance. Service is not a chore. Willingness is the key to freedom from a prison of my own construction that held me in bondage to the tyranny of my impulses, fears and resentments – an animal existence and a living death.
“Resist not evil; keep yer eyes on Jesus.”
However, the Order and Organization of the Universe, that Author of the cycle of life and death, meets each of us where we are. For some people the road to enlightenment must be a chore and a penance, a discipline and hard work, and I suppose at times it can be that for all of us when our attachment to our own limited purpose blinds us to what is freely available. It’s simply a matter of temperament for some and a quirk of human nature for the rest. We all have kinks in our psyches that must be worked out in their own way.
I listened to people tonight share their experience with forgiveness and willingness. I saw how each person wrestles with their own fears and attachments, and how some let them fall away as they move toward something higher. Those impediments tend to fall away of their own weight in that rarified air, even though our feet must remain on the ground – we carry them between our ears, after all.
All this in hopes that I can write better porn.
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