God Is An Ocean

It is about the journey of the soul

Archive for the category “Mysticism”

Peace Comes From The Balance Of Mind And Soul

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We have been given the gift and the curse of the use and enjoyment of our minds and our hearts. From the moment that we rose above the other animals to become co-creators of our universe, we were given the heart to love, and appreciate the world. We were given the mind to classify, and the ability to blend the two for the creation of solutions to our problems, ensure our survival, and to develop the wisdom that comes from the balance of the two.
How far have we come in the evolution of these gifts? Not as far as we believe we have. The mind has been developed to the point that without the heart it cannot go any further. Scientifically, we have traveled to the point where we are now dealing with a quantum reality that requires creativity, imagination, and even a bit of faith to explore.

Still, the heart is well behind in its development. To kill in cold blood, or really, to kill at all, requires functioning without the heart. Hate is a cold product of the mind. Yes, it does become impassioned, but passion is not a quality of the heart. Passion is a remnant of our primitive ancestry — the energy that drives animals to pursue food, pursue a mate, and scare intruders from its territory. It is an energy, which is directed by a healthy ego or it directs an unhealthy one. The ego, which separates us from the other creatures on our planet, coordinates the use of mind and/or heart. The ego is the decision maker; it is the mediator. It is the health of the ego that determines which we use.

The heart and mind are in balance in a healthy ego. Working together they choose when, how much, where, and if the fuel of passion should be utilized. The decisions, guided by creativity and wisdom, are born out of the combination of heart, and mind. Hate is an instinct based by-product of an unbalanced ego. It is instinctual fear harnessed by the mind without consideration of the heart. Hate is the absence of love. Love is the only ingredient that the heart has to contribute. Even a balanced ego may become unbalanced for a moment when it considers the stresses of life on earth and the different ingredients it has to balance.

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Anger, however intensely it is experienced at the moment, is soon extinguished by the warmth of the heart. It doesn’t turn to hate. Not if the ego is balanced and the heart is strong. Where hate has a place, the heart energy is not developed, either because there is too much reasoning mind, too much primitive instinct, too much fear, or too much of them all. Whatever it is, there is no room for the heart to grow.

Mankind was given, or we took — when we bit the apple — this enormous Pandora’s box of mind, heart, passion, and fear. How we mix them would determine whether we survived outside of the garden or not. And so we struggle with this mixture of cold reasoning mind, hunger for more, and divine love. And it is my belief that as part of the Divine Plan, the souls that incarnated at a particular time, are balanced in a way that will bring all souls, the lessons they have evolved to learn. There are no new lessons, the lessons we face today are the lessons that have been faced by mythic and historical figures, and mythic and historic lands, only the setting is changed.

Ultimately it all comes down to this, can we face the enemy without becoming the enemy? Or can we, as a species, be the hero who faces the enemy and allows the enemy to become one with us? Acknowledge, after thousands of years, that the battle waged out in our world must be won within our own egos, so that, as a species, our progress can be seen in the world around us. As long as we seek the enemy outside of our own beings, we will diminish our chance of winning with each outside enemy that we kill.

We fight the same war, century, after century, without finding peace, until it is found within our own hearts. There is no good or evil; there are no boundaries, no pure white hats, or pure black hats. There are only human beings torn within their egos between spiritual or material. It is a battle that the unbalanced ego does not want to face, because that battle requires letting go of those big shiny idols which the little mind finds such pleasure. It means embracing the small eternal flame, which the heart longs for. And so, we enter the battlefield like Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, with God as our charioteer, patiently telling us that these bodies are not real, only symbols used by the soul for the true battle within. And this war, whether it is fought on the battlefield, in the playground or in the living room, is a battle of duality, one that continues for as long as we cling to our belief that first the other is bad, and second, that there is any other at all.

We battle those we label evil because we believe they seek to destroy us. They fight us for the same reason. No one marches into battle with a picture of Satan on their flag. We all go off to fight evil, to fight the devil we imagine we are facing. As we all wear both labels at the same time, saying to the enemy, “I am evil”, to myself, “I am good.” We fight to protect our lives because we do not really believe in the eternal soul. We fight to revenge the deaths of those we love, because as Krishna told Arjuna when he was questioning the battle that he was about to fight,

“One man believes he is the slayer, another believes he is the slain. Both are ignorant; there is neither slayer nor slain. You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies. Realizing that which is indestructible, eternal, unborn, and unchanging, how can you slay or cause another to be slain?

As a man abandons his worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within. The Self cannot be pierced with weapons or burned with fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundation of eternity. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this, you should not grieve.”
( Bhagavad-Gita 2.19-25)

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When we are able to see that the entire world is a symbolic battlefield for the individual soul and the larger groups of souls to play out their eternal battles, we will be able to deal with that apple, understand that the dark and the light are two sides of one coin that each exists because of the other. One cannot exist without the other because both exist within each of us. Only when we have a balanced mind and heart, can we be released from war and suffering.

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The Power of The Word

“Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?” – Sai Baba

Jesus said, “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all.” I sought the truth and I was disturbed because the Truth conflicted with my own beliefs. Yet when I was disturbed I became awed by the power of the Truth and so I did marvel. And when I marveled, I accepted, and when I accepted, I attained power over my life.

In the beginning man observed nature, and communicated meaning through the qualities of the animals. So transformation might be represented by a butterfly which transformed from a caterpillar, or a frog which is transformed from a tad pole.

Then came letters with each letter having a meaning and in expanding and combining the different letters based not on their sounds but on their meanings, words were put together. In the Semitic languages there is a spiritual meaning for each letter and so in the combining of letters you have not a single word, but a symbol which represents a meaning that must be understood in its context. This is the reason why the Torah, or the Old Testament is studied on a daily basis, the belief being that like creation which is ongoing, so too does the torah grow in meaning as we read it.

In Aramaic, the word Alaha (Allah) can be translated to mean, sacred unity, oneness, the All, the ultimate power, or the one that is many. Spirit, is translated in the bible from a word that means, breath, wind or air. Worship is translated from a word that means surrender. Truth in the bible is translated from a word that means, that which liberates, that which opens, that which acts in keeping with Universal harmony. And Forgive is translated from a word that means, to let go, to set free, and to omit. In Aramaic, the word used for blood is also used for wine, sap, juice and essence it comes from the same root word as Adam. The word for fruit also means offspring and the word for vine also means blood lineage.

The phrase translated to “Son of Man” in Aramaic means, human being, so for Jesus to refer to himself as the Son of Man is merely referring to himself as a human being, it was a common substitute for “I”. In the Beautitudes where it is said, “They shall be called the children of God”, another translation of the same words would be, “They shall be called channels for Unity”. Most importantly, the word that Jesus used in Aramaic for “sin”, implies a correctable error, something temporarily lost. So a better translation of someone who was the forgiver of sins, was someone who helped those who cling to their errors, find the way to freedom in Unity.

In the beginning of the twentieth century, Science entered into the realm of the metaphysical, or the realm of spirit. Physical means that which can be observed by our senses. Metaphysical is that which cannot. Science has now, with Quantum Physics, entered into the metaphysical world. The physical world according to the new science is the manifestation of the metaphysical world, what many mystics have been saying since the beginning of time. The metaphysical world, the quantum world is a world that appears to be chaotic; the first problem was that light seemed to be at once particles and then at other times waves. In the physical world nothing can be a particle and a wave. Then when they began to measure particles, they found that they could not measure both the distance and speed travelled because they seemed to arrived at whatever the destination at the moment that they departed, or to be at two places in the same moment. This quantum world is also so sensitive, that whatever we do to measure it affects the outcome of the measurement. So we are not observers of the experiments, we are part of the experiments. As strange as it is, the real world, the world that is no more than potential and probabilities manifests a world of humans, trees, skies, oceans, rivers, streams, mountains, buildings, sidewalks and all that we see, hear, feel, taste, and touch.

God spoke the world into being:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,

We do not live in the world; we live in the Words that describe the world. God spoke the world into being; existence is a word that only has meaning in contrast to the word nonexistence. The world does not exist in itself; it exists to us because we have a name for it and so a description of what it is supposed to be. The words existence and nonexistence in themselves impart no meaning. The metaphysical world, the spiritual world – does not exist in words, it exists in meanings. All things come into being through the Word, without the Word nothing exists. The Word is the manifestation of the Universe. The Word is considered masculine, and so it would be because it is action. God has no name, God has no image. This is because God is without beginning and without end and without description. A name has a beginning, an end and a description. A name defines a thing – it tells us what it is, or who it is. God is without definition or limitation. We are each the Word made flesh. We have a name, which has a number and that number has a vibration. Nothing exists outside of the Word. Nothing exists without a word. The first thing that God instructed Adam to do was to do was to name everything in the world. What did he do? He spoke everything into manifestation. Whatever has no words to describe it cannot exist for us. There is nothing more important in our universe than the Word. And each word has a number and that is what the universe sees. We each have a name and a number and it’s vibration is written in God’s book.

Ancient Priests used words to heal understanding that the sounds of certain words had an effect on certain parts of the body. The Magicians and Sorcerers of ancient times used words to manifest. Prayer, and Mantras are words used to evoke whatever outcome is being sought. Rulers and Politicians have historically used words to win over the populace. Advertising is based on the use of catchy words and phrases. The US President today uses these catchy words in his war campaign. “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, for example. Words can make people, even whole nations act in ways that they normally would not. Words can convince, enchant, heal and destroy.

If we can believe that the power of the mind can manifest things or experiences in the outer world, imagine what that power, given sound and released could accomplish. There is no greater tool known to man than the word.

The physical body is a vehicle for the self. “I”, that which I know as myself can neither be seen, nor touched. Anything that can damage my body cannot damage my spirit. Yet, that which can damage my spirit can destroy my life. Words, are the weapons or the salve that reaches into what cannot be seen, reaches into our hearts and souls.

When I was a small child I was deeply aware of the impact of words. Hurtful words seemed to enter into my solar plexus like a knife twisting and spreading throughout my being long before they seemed to enter my mind. It was as if by the time I heard the words – the damage was already done. In my home, words were the weapon of choice. I watched as each family member was stabbed and brutalized by words spoken in anger by another. What astonished me the most, was after the anger came the apologies, or the, “I didn’t really mean it”. The person who spoke the words actually believed that they could be retrieved. A bullet can be retrieved, a knife can be retrieved, a spoken or written word can never be retrieved, and its damage can never be undone. No amount of apologies or forgiveness can ever undo the poison of a word misspoken. There is no antidote. Can you find the organ of self-worth and heal it? Can you find the organ of self-confidence and heal it? Parents should use each word spoken to or in the presence of children with the utmost care. Whatever you call your child he will call himself for the rest of his life.

Children are suggestible; they work within the description of themselves that they take from their environments. The words that we mean and words that we don’t have no discernable difference to a child. The subconscious mind cannot differentiate between what was meant as truth and what was meant to make a point, or to hurt. To an adult who has been raised with a less than positive description of himself or herself all negative words have meaning. I remember as a child hearing a neighbor compliment a drawing that I had made. I remember my mother responding, “Yes, she has talent, but…”. I don’t remember what came after the “but“, all I remember is that I expect the “but” every time I do something well and it is noticed. I expect to be exposed as a fraud.

We all have different reactions to the words that we hear as a child. Some children who hear that they will never amount to anything or that they are not good enough to succeed react to these words as a challenge – or a means to receive the needed approval or love and so they reach amazing heights. Some react by never trying to be more than is expected of them based upon the things that they heard. Many grow up to become leaders; they go on to inspire generations that follow. These people reach higher and higher, they amass more and more searching for that achievement that will fill the whole left by those words spoken years before. Nothing built from the material world, or gained in the material world can ever heal a spiritual wound, a wound caused by words. It is only through finding the spiritual meaning that we can extract the poison. As in the Bible story of Joseph, we must reach to understand God’s reason for words spoken by others. Emotional pain and suffering are not human constructs. They are built into our egos for the purpose of moving us to achieve the goals that we have set in each incarnation. Pain bores like a drill deep into our center and the path that is drilled deepens the meaning of the lessons as we learn them. Those who have hurt us with careless words have been ignorant of the power within those words. They only understand pain as being caused by a physical act. It is for us to understand that the people who hurt us with their words are the ones chosen to deliver that which we must learn from, and often – that which we must use to teach or lead others.

Most relationships are not destroyed by the actions of those involved, but by the words of those involved. When two people enter into a relationship they are placing their hearts, their hopes and their trust in one who has entered into their lives holding a mirror through which they see themselves in their most beautiful and flawless state. The “other” holds up a mirror in which they see themselves through love. Only once before were they so vulnerable and that was when they came into the world. As soon as they begin to disagree, they feel threatened. Each fearing that the other, who carried the mirror of their goodness, and their beauty, will take it away. Feeling threatened they lash out with words that are spoken in anger, meant to intimidate, threaten or hurt the other into staying in the same place, not changing, not growing and, not putting down the mirror. The words start flying, the mirror starts cracking, the trust begins to wither, and although there are apologies, and despite attempts to retrieve the words spoken – the bond is weakened. The words cannot be retracted. And if they continue, the bond, worn away by the acidic action of the words, becomes permanently destroyed. The word is mightier than the sword.

So often a person dies of an illness that could have been overcome, had the doctor not declared an approaching death. A researcher noticed that people who were mentally challenged had a much lower mortality rate from a certain type of Cancer than did others. Surprisingly, what they found was that it had nothing to do with genetics, there was no special anti-body attributed to the mentally challenged. It was as simple as the fact that they did not recognize, or understand Cancer as a death sentence. Because the word “Cancer” was meaningless to them, and could not be explained, the emotional contribution, which is obviously great, to the deterioration of the body was not there. It had no more impact on their spiritual, or emotional bodies than if someone had sad that they had a large do-di-da. If we take responsibility for nothing else in our lives, we must take responsibility for the words that we place in the hearts, minds and bodies of others. We must fill them with loving truth. Use them wisely. Seek their meaning. Words are the greatest power given to us.

The Enemy is Not the Fanatic, it is Not Religion Itself – The Enemy is the hypocrite

Matthew 13:24-43 (King James Version)

24Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:  25But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.  26But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.  27So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?  28He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?  29But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.  30Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

An open mind is an amazing thing.  One day I realized that if I needed an answer to a question, and I could not find it, I just had to leave my mind open – eventually the answer would come.  I extended this to my religious reading and an understanding of the parables of the New Testament and the Books of the Old Testament.  So, in reading the above parable of the Sower and the weeds I could not understand how it was that the Sower thought that the good crop would be picked up with the weeds.  All of the stories are told in terms of the reality that we know so that we could draw a parallel.  However, I easily remove weeds from my garden upon the first appearance because they do not appear alike.  Suddenly, during the Presidential election I saw the true meaning of weeds.  I saw people who said that they believed in God, were “good” Christians and Jews turn into hateful bigoted people.

So what is the Harvest?  Many like to think of it as the “end of days”, when in fact there is no one end of days.  There are many fields in God’s world and many have seen an end of days.  Surely there was an end of days in Germany for six million Jews.  There seems to be an end of days in Darfur.  There was an end of days in Bosnia, Rwanda, and certainly parts of Iraq.  There certainly was an end of days for the thousands killed and still dying due to the World Trade Center attack, and Hurricane Katrina.  No, the Harvest is not connected with the end of days, it is a time when we are ripe and bear fruit.  That time is not the same for everyone – It is how we each answer when we are called to show ourselves.  When Obama ran for President I saw so many people grasp at straws to find a politically correct reason to fear his being elected, but their desperation exposed their truth.  They had been living as hypocrites, going to their Churches and Temples lying to the God that demands that we love each other as ourselves, perhaps even lying to themselves.  The Harvest came to the Germans.  Those who risked their own lives to save the Jews were the good crop, and those who turned on them were the tares.

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The same holds true in Rwanda, there are so many stories of people who risked their lives to protect those whose lives were threatened, and those who did nothing – harvest.  Today, as millions of people lose their jobs and their homes – while others still spend tens of thousands of dollars on accessories rather than coming to their brother’s aid are showing the fruit – or lack of fruit that they truly bear.  It is not about tithing, it is not about giving of what is extra or comfortable – it is about giving what is needed – even when it requires a sacrifice, because to sacrifice is to make sacred.

Whether our hatred surfaces, our greed, or our indifference to all other life on earth, all is coming to the surface during these testing times.  The real enemy is never the one standing in your face holding a gun – no, the real enemy is the one standing at your back holding a gun on you while he tells you that he is your friend.  There is no greater enemy to man, to the world, or to God than the hypocrite.  The Harvest is when there is no choice but to act in accordance with who we are.  It is when the circumstances are so dire as to force a response that is true to the self – and when no response is equal to a response.

I once firmly believed that the enemy was Religion.  Clearly, at a time of readily available weapons of mass destruction Religion, being divisive, and the cause of so much death and destruction over the past two thousand years had to be our greatest enemy.  This was a disheartening belief, because we cannot do anything about religion.  Then one day I was reading about what it means to be a Jew.  I read:

“How could anyone who believes in the God of the Bible treat his fellow human beings, all of whom are created in God’s image, with less than compassion?”  “To Jews, compassion is the keystone of being a mensch, and so basic a requirement of being human that the Talmud’s Rabbis were willing, at least in theory, to read an unkind person out of the Jewish Community….  From Judaism’s perspective, an unkind person is presumably a non-believer”.


All of this would be intensified for Christianity because it is upon the rock of brotherly love and compassion that Jesus built His Church.  With or without religion, even with belief in One God and One Way – there will still be hypocrites because there is a universal belief in One God, and that God demands that we love and that we understand that we are our brother’s keepers.  Yet, there are still those hypocrites who place themselves above and apart from God by choosing to pretend to live in the image of God while living in the image of the deceiver.  We can only worship and honor God, the noun, by living God, the verb.  So, for many different reasons, the Harvest is coming to, perhaps more fields at once than ever before.  In a sense, it is a time of Revelation, as it was originally depicted – a time when all that has been hidden is being revealed – a time when however hard we try to disguise ourselves – we can no longer hide.  We are in a time when there are only two paths on which to walk – the path for those who are God-ing and choose to serve all as needed, as brothers and sisters under God, and the other path, the one for those who cannot bear to serve any except themselves and those they consider their own.

The road is forked and we must walk that path of who we are.  I never really grasped the big deal made of hypocrites in the Bible before now.  Now, I realize that a hypocrite is a promised vote that cannot be counted on, a promised service that cannot be depended on, a promised hand that cannot be trusted to be there, a promised fire that will cause one to freeze, a promised meal that will cause one to starve, and a promised ally that will cause one’s defeat.  The hypocrite is the one you trust to be there and because of whom you look no further.  The enemy that you know can make you strong; the one that you don’t know will destroy you.  We don’t need to eliminate religion – we need religion to eliminate hypocrites.  In the days to come religion too, will be revealed, it will be known by its members.  A whole is the sum of its parts.  It is perhaps the decade of harvest, and what will be separated out will be the hypocrites.  What are the “Meek” who will inherit the earth?  Perhaps meek means simple – clear – transparent.  Perhaps it is the true, the transparent who will inherit the earth.

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