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grounded in a mystical, interfaith-Christianity inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
The sages are largely consistent with the assertion that we are love itself and so is God. Indeed, they describe how a separation between the love that we are and the love that God is doesn’t exist, although we may often feel or believe this way. Our tendency to get invested in our sense of having a limited form, a limited story, a limited way of thinking and observing of “outside things” keeps us from seeing this truth. The thing that sees these seeming limitations is not itself limited, and how do we know it is not a shared “field of consciousness”? We are one in God – this is also the truth we hear from Jesus Christ. And yet, even knowing this, when we hear the famous Christian Biblical quote of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” we interpret it from a place of division, believing that the “only Son” that we are to believe in is elsewhere and not already within us, as the love at our core.
Find Rebirth in What You Already Are
Many of the awakened sages speak of coming into a naturalness of life as they uncover the Divinity at their core. They say that their behaviour starts being dictated by their greater self, the Universe, God, and no longer by the earthly reactions to pressure and conditioning that their old self, their ego, used to exhibit. This coming into the naturalness of life is often expressed as coming into the love that we truly are, coming to know that our very consciousness or awareness makes us all one as the very “light” of God (as Christ called us). Many sages speak of this and some even go as far as to call it “being born again.”
Resist Inner Resistance?
Often, we pile resistance on top of our pain, which just multiplies the issue. Many tough things happen that are beyond our power to change, but we can’t seem to help to rail against them anyway (again and again). In fact, it’s not just pain and tough circumstances, we resist just about everything down to every single second. Yes, we tend to have a habit of fighting against the present moment, yearning for a future that will fulfill our sense of lack. Coming to know that Divinity itself dwells in the now, beneath our fears and our over-thinking minds, helps us to see that we’ve been missing life itself by getting so caught up in the wilderness of our thinking.
We Are One with the Word of God
God is with us and empowering us all the time, whatever we call God. God is, in fact, beyond description. Words only point to Divinity, just as words only point to anything else in reality – they are not the reality that they describe. Now, a “word” is a reality unto itself, but the word “tree” is not a tree, only the tree itself is the truth of that tree – words only point to this truth. In this vein, the truth of something is only the reality of it. Which makes it interesting that the scriptures say, “the Word was with God and the Word was God.” This reading then goes on to indicate that not only is “the Word” one with God, but all life and all humanity is one with that Word as well - let’s explore this a bit further.
See the Unity Within and Find Joy
There’s something about the holidays that speaks “joy.” Whatever we celebrate and for whatever reason, when it’s with family and friends (with treats and music) we can’t help but find some level of joy – at least, most of the time! In fact, it’s when we find a sense of oneness, setting aside our personal issues, as well as our political differences, historical arguments, and reactive judgments, that we often find the most joy during the holidays. For good reason! In a way, when we do this, we are setting aside our deep sense of personality (our ego) for our family and friends, or, in other words, we find the greatest joy and love when we “lay down our lives for our friends.”
Notice the Heart of the Present Moment is Peace-Filled Love
We each have different ideas about love. I think about loved ones, like my wife, when I think about love. I think about friends and my family. In these thoughts there’s a sense of unity with these other beings which I think is indistinguishable from love itself. This is perhaps why we can treat those we love not always so lovingly, because we treat ourselves not quite so lovingly. Why is that? Some sages tell us that the same reason we don’t treat every living being as a loved one is the same reason we often beat ourselves up, marinating in fear and suffering of some kind or another: we believe and fear that we are separate, isolated beings, defined by our passing minds and bodies, at risk of losing our very light of love when we die. The life of Christ (as with others) serves to remind us that we are not separate from God or each other, that we are one in the body of Divinity and only experience the sense of separation to the extent we believe in it, forgetting the heart of love that we all share and are.
Hope to Uncover Your Infinite Light
When I think of hope I think of my big white dog, Ghost. Always hopeful that we’re about to go outside. Hopeful for food, a good rub, and sometimes for play. She’s always hoping for greater joy, what some sages call peace in action, which she gets from the things that she loves with the beings she loves. She’s not concerned (at all) about differences in opinion, or a multitude of other concerns that plague us “more advanced” humans. And yet, it seems pretty clear that hope is there. Hope is natural because as living creatures we are all seeking happiness and joy within and embodied around us in some way. And whatever we call God, be it Christ, Allah, or Krishna, God’s further advent into our lives often starts with hope for just that.