It's AllGood!
“Mature and disciplined feelings have as much right to evaluate the worth of a religion as the intellect, since they reflect upon an aspect of reality which is hidden from pure thought–a fact almost incomprehensible to the overdeveloped intellectualism of Western philosophy.”
Alan Watts
God is the most obvious thing in the world. He is absolutely self-evident–the simplest, clearest, and closest reality of life and consciousness. We are only unaware of him because we are too complicated, for our vision is darkened by the complexity of pride. We seek him beyond the horizon with our noses lifted high in the air, and fail to see that he lies at our very feet. We flatter ourselves in premeditating the long, long journey we are going to take in order to find him, the giddy heights of spiritual progress we are going to scale, and all the time are unaware of the truth that “God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.” We are like birds flying in quest of the air, or men with lighted candles searching through the darkness for fire.
Alan Watts- Behold the Spirit
Forgiveness friends, is the miracle worker, it is the mountain mover, setting in motion all that is true for you to see clearly. Jesus didn’t speak very much, or not at all, about many of the issues we battle for today. He did speak of forgiveness…in his final hour what did he say? “Forgive them father”…and of course our creator did. I don’t believe Jesus spoke those words so God would forgive those who brought him to the point of the cross, that was already done and Jesus knew that. He made that statement so that we could see more clearly the true face (nature) of God.
Brad Elliott
(This little passage can be seen as a conversation between friends, brothers or sisters, husbands to wives, whatever fits for you.)
He said to his friend “I’m sorry for what I have done to you, please forgive me.”
Reply by friend “I don’t need to forgive you my brother.”
“What do you mean? I have hurt you greatly by what I have done, I must know that you forgive me, or the sadness of what I have done will linger with me forever.”
“There is no need for forgiveness if I have not been hurt…and you have not hurt me.”
“I must have, there is no way that my actions against you have not hurt you!”
“I tell you again, my friend. You have not hurt me, you owe me no apology, and I owe you no forgiveness. I see a simple error. Errors are not personal, they are not directed at anyone, they are just an error. There is no greater or worse error in my eyes, just a simple mistake that you will be able to correct within yourself, when there is no weight of guilt placed upon you by me. I place no weight on you my brother, nor on myself, there is no hurt felt by me and in turn none can be passed to you, no guilt.”
“I don’t understand…what is this?”
“This is Heaven”
B. Elliott
I have only in my heart
The knowing of what is not whole, and that it should be so
My angst is that I cannot speak it with clarity
I must find peace in that knowing
-B. Elliott
These words came to me as I was attempting to describe my struggle with the views and theologies of much of western Christianity today, and in truth, the view of western Christianity for hundreds of years now. It troubles me that we have not embraced the all loving grace of our Creator for his whole creation, and that because of this error our world remains unhealed. I see how we have actually created a God that is really a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and I find it sad. I would ask you to ponder it from time to time. We present God to ourselves, our children, and the unchurched initially as an “all loving Father” figure. Yet, we also hold to the belief that if you don’t follow all the rules, which are of course different for every denomination, he will invoke his wrath and pass a judgement of eternal torment upon you. Friends, God is either all loving or he is not. There is no in between, there is not two sides to God, he is one. So be honest with yourself about that, and sit with it for a while. It troubles me even more that our religious institutions have been at the core of this distortion of what “God” is all about. We have turned the simple love of God into something only the human ego could make so complex.
“Complexity is not of God. How could it be, when all He knows is One? He knows one creation, one reality, one truth, and but one Son. Nothing conflicts with oneness. How, then, could there be complexity in Him? What is there to decide? For it is conflict that makes choice [complex]. The truth is simple- it is one, without opposite. And how could strife enter in its simple presence and bring complexity where oneness is? The truth makes no decisions, for there is nothing to decide between. And only if there were could choosing be a necessary step in the advance toward oneness. What is everything leaves room for nothing else.”
-A Course in Miracles
So what then does this “oneness” mean? From the outset it means that there is not two (or three, or four, etc.), in the Kingdom. It would then follow that because there is not two, then there can be no winner or loser, no either/or, and ultimately there is no separation in the eyes of Being. These are attributes of creation and God we have added, the results of which are easy to see in our world today.
“What God calls one will be forever one, not separate. His kingdom is united-thus it was created, and thus will it ever be”
-A Course in Miracles
In the beginning was only Being; One without a second. Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos and entered into everything in it. There is nothing that does not come from him. Of everything he is the inmost Self.
—Chandogya Upanishad, Chapter 6, 2:2-3
You see, when we embrace the fact that all of creation is one, we realize that things like attack on another is an attack on our ourselves, and ultimately an attack on our gracious loving Creator. We realize that as one we are all winners, all given the same gift from God, which was the gift of himself. I don’t believe you can find true peace and healing until you embrace the “oneness” of God. Until that time you will always find yourself in battle and conflict, unsettled with creation. Our purpose here is really quite simple in its essence. We are here to know we are all one with God and to share that same truth to all of our brothers and sisters. What follows is the Kingdom.
“In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you”
John 14:20