Fear

FEAR

Fear has two sides: the up side and the down side. You can live under fear or you can live on top of it. The Truth moves you from the underside to the upperside. But there's fear in facing the Truth. If you haven't experienced fear in the pursuit of Truth, I don't think you've ever really pursued it. It's possible to be lost in this world and not even know you are lost. That's a terrible lostness. It's like a man working hard, really hard, to get somewhere and then discovering that it wasn't what he wanted when he got there. So he starts working really hard to get out of that place and on to another place that won't be any more satisfying than the place he left. That's one description of the many ways a person can be lost and not even know that he is lost. But you can also be lost and know that you're lost, or suspect that you might be. A little fear [or a lot of it] kicks in at that point. And that's a very good thing. It's good to be afraid if you don't know what you're doing or where you're going and what's gonna be there when you get there. It's good to have some fear in that situation. John Newton in the magnificent hymn “Amazing Grace” wrote, “Twas Grace that taught my heart to fear.” Think about that for a minute. He was glad he came to a place of fear. But if we face the fear of the Truth—if we don't let that fear stop us from pressing on deeper and deeper and deeper into the pursuit of ultimate Truth—we get to the place where that fear is relieved: “And Grace my fears relieved”. We begin to see that we are at one with the universe that we did not create, thinking with minds that we did not generate, moving around in bodies that are magnificent beyond our ability to understand, in a living world where all life is interdependent and things are in an amazing state of delicate and yet durable balance that makes all life possible, and that this situation does not seem to be at all common in the small portion of the universe that we can glimpse into; like a beetle walking up to the edge of the Grand Canyon. We begin to see that the trait that we esteem most highly in ourselves is what all this is about: Love. And we see something warring against it in our own personalities. And we know this warring faction [let's call it evil, since it works against Love] is important because if it weren’t here we would not be free; and we recognize freedom to be something very good, like Love; and in the same order of things as Love. And so we begin to see that even evil is here because of the Love that has brought all things into existence—the Love that sets creatures free. And even though we see that this evil force is powerful and something to be seriously reckoned with, we need not fear it because it is under the domain of the greater Force of Love—the creative Force from which all has come and in Whose domain we live, move and have our being. We begin to see that this Love is like light, and the evil dark. And light has precedence over dark. And that's when we move to the upperside of fear. That's when we recognize that we don't need the fear to motivate us any more because now we have Love to motivate us—because that's what we have chosen with the freedom that was given to us. And something major shifts and quakes [the angels in heaven rejoice] when we make that decision; and when we decide that we will always and forevermore be continuing to make that decision, because when we decided it, we felt like we'd come home: and indeed we had.

This is how Jesus said these things

“If you continue in my way you will know the Truth, and it will make you free.”

“You are my friends if you do what I command you. This is what I command you: that you love one another, as I have loved you and given my life for you.”

The Bible says that “God is Love.” And that “there is no fear in Love”, but that “perfect Love casts out fear.”

Jesus said [brace yourself!] “I am the Truth.” And He also said to those who believe in Him, “I am in you, and you are in me, and I am in the Father.” The “Father” is the conscious, beyond-all-comprehension, creative core and transcendent sustainer of this universe. In Jesus, we are at one with Him. And there is no fear that does not evaporate in that Light.

The Self

A neuro scientist has described the mind as “an orchestra without a conductor.” If you pay attention to your thoughts you will see a random kaleidoscope of topics; one leading on to another. An example: It's thundering. Axel [my dog] is cowering under the bed. Did I feed him? Yes. He's about out of food. When I go to the grocery I'll get some more. I ran into Ms. Jones at the grocery last time. I need to call her and see how she's doing. I'm bad about keeping up with my people. I don't even call Mom as frequently as I should.” Etc. Out of this random flow comes something that we call “I” or “me”. Did we decide to like country [vs. classical] music, colorful [vs. subdued] clothing, tennis [vs. jogging], blond [vs. brunette], social settings [vs. solitude], or did it just randomly happen? Did we choose the person that we define as our self, or did the “self” emerge out of all the random flow of our thoughts and experiences, perhaps unconsciously “selected” by certain genetic tendencies?

It's an interesting question.
However we emerged as a self, when we become aware of our awareness, we can begin to become a “conductor”. We can create a base, a foundation of who or what we want to be, and practice coming back to it from all the random rabbit trails that our mind spontaneously runs down. As in meditation one returns the mind to his breath or mantra; we can bring ourselves peacefully and consistently back from distractions to the person we choose to be: compassionate, peaceful, graceful, kind, faithful, thankful, joyful, etc. From the Christian standpoint this is what it means to “abide in Christ.” Christ [His Way] is our home base—our anchor that prevents us from drifting too long on the random seas of our arbitrary thoughts and moods. In this manner, His Spirit is shaping our personalities [like a conductor leading an orchestra]; rather than the random experiences of life combined with our natural tendency to select certain types of experiences [negative, positive, fun, exciting, fearful, etc.] to define our personality.

Mother and Son

[This is written to be spoken in earlier African American dialect, but can be translated in any preferred dialect.]

[Narrator] A mother tries to get her son to understand.

[Mom, M] [lovingly] They's more to life than just havin a head full o knowledge, impressing folks, puffin y'self up, or makin a lot o money.

[Narrator, from aside]“You are special”, she thought to herself, “but that ain't the way to live.”

[M] There's so much more.

[Son, S] Like what?

[M. struggling to find the right words] Like deep feelings!

[S] Whadya mean feelings?

[M] Feelings like hugging somebody, or feeling like doin a lil jig, or feeling like rollin in the grass with the puppies, or takin some baked beans over to Aunt Sally while she's getting thru her grief.

[S] I've done some o those things.

[M] I know ya have; but you ain't felt it deep. None of us has—not all the way to the bottom of what's there for us.

[S.] So how d'ya get these “deep feelings”?

[M] First you gotta know that you ain't got to where you need to git yet. Then you gotta understand, in a deep way, that they's something more for you—something better'n anything you ever imagined. In fact, when you find it, you beg God to never let you lose it or get too far from it. It scares you to think that you could ever drift back in to that world where you was dead and only thought you was alive.

You gotta know, or else at least believe, that they is such a “place”, cause I can tell ye, they is!

[S] I know, Momma. How come you always so happy?

[M] Not happy, son: Joyful! It's deeper than happy, and not so easily stirred up.

It's cause of what I'm talkin bout; what I'm tryin to give you!

[S] Well I guess I need some of it. Things been on the down side for me here lately.

[M, slow and deliberate]Take that need, son, and put it in a washtub, as big as you need to hold all of it. Now, set it down right here by the ocean of God's supply, and watch a big wave roll over it, and wash all of it, along with the washtub, and ever thing you could ever worry or complain about, ever thing you could ever dread, ever thing you ever felt sorry for doin: out, way on out, into the mighty ocean of His infinite Love and Grace and Goodness, washin it all out of you, til you don't feel nothing but clean as pure mountain air, and freer than a bird.

If you can feel that, son, then you gettin' close to the Kingdom of God, where you belong.

[S] You mean you can feel that way all the time?

[M] Well, when you get to heaven you can-- and a lot more. But right now you can feel more of it.

If you just remember the Truth—if you hold on to it. It'll keep settin you free.

[S] What is that “truth” that I'm s'posed to be hangin on to?

[M] [Thoughtfully] It's hard to say it in some way that don't make it sound silly and simple—or like something you thought you already knew about; cause you did know about it a little; but you thought you knew all about it. And that stopped you. Now I'm tryin to gitch you to come on in to the big wide world of really knowin' it. So I ain't even gonna answer that. I jus want you to remember your question: “What is the Truth?” and remember your roots. And don't ever give up on answering it. If you remember those things, you'll gitchyur answer.

[Drawing her son very close; slowly, with deep conviction]

But remember Son, don't ever forget, that it's the most important thing—to find the Truth. If you don't find it, nothing else is gonna matter, cause you'll never know, that it ALL matters. It ALL matters! But you won't ever know it if you don't find the Truth. So please, son, find the answer to yer question.

Mark Graham 11/1/2014

Waking Up

Waking Up

Imagine you started waking up....from making money, paying bills, entertainment, sex, eating and drinking, vacations, and everything that made up your daily routine. You started waking up from it and wondering “What's this all about?”

The question's so big it might make you go right back into your shell—back into Plato's Cave—back into the shadows. But maybe you're big enough to keep pressing against that big question: What's this all about? What is the Truth? [If there is a Truth.]

So you get your head up out of all that stuff of daily living for a little while and look around. What do you see? If you're not careful all that noisy stuff you just came up out of will pull you right back down into it. It might be a few years before you get your head out of it again. Maybe you never will. Maybe you'll just stay busy, always trying to get caught up, dealing with the next thing coming up on the horizon, until you die. I believe some people do just that.

Or maybe you'll be strong enough to resist that gravity and keep your head up—like a little infant, trying to hold his head up and look around.

What do you see, if you're still, right there, long enough to let all that noise fade farther, farther and farther away, until there's just you, alone, looking for the Truth?

Maybe you start with your own body. Look at it. Feel it. Feel all the awesome wonder of it. It carries you through life; let's you know when you need food, converts it to energy in an awesome process we call the “Krebs Cycle”; eliminates the waste, takes in oxygen and supplies it to every one of the trillions of microscopic cells that make it up; expels carbon dioxide, keeps you warm in the cold and cool in the heat; fights off harmful bacteria and hosts helpful bacteria—all without you ever thinking much about it. Where'd you get that body? Who thought that up? Nobody? The cosmos accidentally give that to you? [You better thank the cosmos.]

You could spend a lot of time being amazed at your body. And maybe later you can come back to doing that—in fact you probably ought to a little of that every day. But just now, let's look around some more. There're people with bodies different from yours—alike, yet different. Opposite gender. There's some more amazement for you in this quest for Truth. Male and female. And how they can come together, and from the two of them, one new one starts out as a single microscopic cell that has within it the “knowledge” to make/create/produce every cell of every part of every organ, all the subsystems and systems that fit together perfectly to make a whole new person with a beating heart and seeing eyes; like the parents, but also unique among all its kind. [No one has the ghost of an idea how this happens by the way.] Now we could sure camp out right here in some amazement too! But we haven't gotten to the Truth yet have we? Is there a Truth that transcends the truth of our existence? How did we get here? We didn't do it, did we? I didn't make myself or my children. They were gifts to me! Who's the Giver? The lifeless, unconscious cosmos? I'd like to thank it but it'd be like thanking a rock. “Thank you rocks and gasses. Thank you stars. Thank you universe. Can you hear me? Do you know me? Do you care...cosmos?” Does the cosmos know that I'm gonna die? Does it care? Am I going back into the nothingness of unconsciousness—like the unknowing cosmos? Is this all there is? Was I given the unspeakable gift of this amazing, priceless, awesome life for this brief time, with the capacity for creativity, laughter, love and beauty, only to dissolve into nothingness; all the while knowing that's where I'm going? Maybe this quest for Truth is not so good. Maybe I should go back into the cave and pay my bills, with no other thoughts than what I'll do tomorrow.

Or....is there some other Truth out there? Maybe I'll seek some more...ask around...keep an open mind.

Some folks say there is one in history who said “I am the Truth.” Whoa! Pretty bodacious. Was he in a psych ward? No. In fact he had a major impact on the world. All of history is demarcated by his life on the earth. Everything that has happened in history—all the wars, risings and fallings of civilizations, catastrophic events, wonderful discoveries—all demarcated by his life: A.D. [anno Domini, in the year of our Lord] or B.C. [before Christ].

Christ? The one who said “I am the Truth.” So a lot of people apparently fell under his spell, and are still being pulled into his....Kingdom. That's what he called it: a “Kingdom”. The “Kingdom of God”.

God? He said there is a God?

Yeah. Some folks pull out right there and go back into the cave: Death = nothingness. No one to be thankful to. Random accident. All this life just fell together over billions and billions and billions of years of inorganic cosmos [that has always been here] bumping and mixing it up together. After all we can see the cosmos. We can't see God. Can't put him under a microscope or observe him through a telescope. And what one cannot see does not exist. [Like love? A thought? Peace? Beauty? Try breaking those down into their various observable components.]

“Hey, God, make something happen and I'll believe. There, you see? Nothing happened. No God.”

[Meanwhile, our scientists are trying to figure out what a thought [the mind] is. How does the brain generate the mind? What's an electron? Light? Gravity? We don't know for sure what these are; but we're convinced there is no God. And you're living in the superstitious dark ages if you think otherwise.]

But I digress. Back to this Truth-guy. What'd he say? What'd he do? Well, the people who lived with him, ate with him, followed him around, they wrote about him. And the impact he had was so powerful that those people and those who came after them were very careful to get it right. They considered his words “holy”; and you don't mess around with “holy”. Some of them suffered a lot and even died at the hands of those who believed his words were heretical and dangerous. His way threatened kingdoms and shifted power away from tyrants into the hands of the people. As you might imagine some powerful people didn't like that. [In fact, to this day, wherever tyranny reigns, the word of the Truth-guy is suppressed.] So those in his day pulled out all the stops to put the brakes on it. Threatened his followers with imprisonment or death. But they just kept on telling people what they'd seen and heard the Truth- man say and do.

Now you'd think if they were making that stuff up, when it came time to be fed to the lions or burned or crucified, they’d come clean and admit it was all a good-hearted effort to keep his words alive. After all his words were better than any that had ever been spoken. Why wouldn't his followers try to keep 'em alive and circulating around the world? But no; when they came right up to the brink of death and torture, they walked right on into it, still claiming that he said what he said and did what he did. Now I'm saying this to say that the information we've got about this Truth-guy is pretty reliable. In fact, a lot of smart folks have set out to disprove him; and no one's ever been able to. And a lot of 'em became his followers. Imagine that!

So we still ain't got to what he said and did have we? Well here's the gist of it: He said there is indeed a Giver—a Giver of all things, all the universe and all life, including us. In fact we're made somewhat like the Giver—in His “image”. That's why we're superior in many ways to all other life on the planet. Made in the Giver's image. And these amazing bodies and this amazing earth with all its intricate interdependent complicated life; the ocean and sounds and smell of it, the night sky the warm sun flowers, butterflies, fireflies, laughter, beauty—I could go on for a while—the Truth-guy said that's all here because of Love. That the Giver is Love, and loves us with the love we feel for our children times infinity. Sorta makes sense cause you know we didn't choose to have that love. I didn't wake up one morning in an inspired mood and say, “I think I'll create a really good feeling inside me; a feeling I get when I look at my little son smiling at me and reaching out to me to get me to pick him up and hold him. Yep, I think I'll call it 'love'. That's a good name for this feeling I'm gonna create inside me.”

It didn't happen that way at all!

This feeling that I have that's more than a feeling that causes me to do hard things for no reward for a little life that depends on me totally for survival: I didn't choose it. However I got here, it was already in me. So, if there's a Giver, He gave it to me. And that radical feeling-that's-more-than-a-feeling is the thing in me that I consider to be the best that's in me. I can't think of anything higher to be motivated by than that. So, If I'm created in the Giver's image, like the Truth-guy says, it makes sense that the best that's in me is who he is: LOVE.

So the Truth-guy seems to have some credibility; both from his followers and from the way his words resonate inside those truth seekers who take the time to get their heads up out of the mundane and look deeply into them.

There seems to be some resistance to that process. And the Truth-guy spoke about that also. He said that though light has come into the world, “men love darkness more than light.” He also said that there's an evil spirit, a powerful one, that works against the Truth and the pursuit of it. Now that would explain what happened to the Truth-guy. He was accused of heresy, tortured, mocked and crucified. Now that seems really strange considering what he taught. He told us to love each other the way he loves us which is the way the Giver loves us. Now why would anyone want to torture and kill someone for that? Unless what he said about that evil spirit is true too. He said that all the bad stuff we keep doing to each other is because our minds and hearts have been invaded by this evil spirit. And he said he came to deliver us from that evil; and to provide forgiveness for the bad stuff we did while we were under its spell, as well as all the bad stuff we would ever do in our whole lives because of our weakness and ignorance. He said the Giver didn't want to punish us for that stuff, so he, the Truth-guy, came to take that punishment for us—sort of pay off our debt to the Giver—the debt we obligated ourselves to by not living according to His Love. The Truth-guy was another wonderful manifestation of the Giver's Love.

But He got killed, right? Well here's the most amazing part: Since the Truth-guy came from the Giver, and the Giver can do anything [I mean, just look around!], He raised the Truth-guy from the dead to demonstrate to the whole world that He really is the Truth, just like He said. Because we all know that nobody can raise himself from the dead—that would be a miracle. But that's just what all His followers [and some who weren't His followers] said happened. And they went to their death saying it.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the Truth-guy said He would leave His Spirit—the “Holy Spirit”--on this earth; or that He would ask the Giver to send His Spirit so that anyone who believed what He said and who He is would have that Spirit inside them. He said that He had overcome the evil spirit and that His Spirit inside us would help us overcome the evil spirit also. He said that without His Spirit we didn't have a chance against the evil spirit because we are blind to the Truth and don't even know that we are blind. [That's scary! To be blind and not even know that you are blind!] He said that His Truth sets you free if you continue in it. He said some would hear and understand and be “saved” from the dark evil of this world; and others would not, which is really sad for them. But to those who heard His voice and recognized it to be the Truth, He promised abundant life, peace, joy, and [get this] eternal life! He said that that love for life in us that does not want to go into nothingness is there because the Giver put it in us. And He put it in us so that it could be fulfilled—just like the desire for food, comfort, intimacy and purpose was put in us to be fulfilled—not to be withheld, like a false promise. And if we put our faith in the Truth-guy, we'd find the Truth. And it would be so good that we'd never stop being thankful.

And that's exactly what happened to me. And that's why I'm writing this. Because He said we should share His message with other Truth-seekers like a Light in the darkness. And now you've heard. And you can go back into the darkness of unknowing, or you can continue in His Way and see if it does indeed set you free like He said.

I'm praying for the latter.

Mark Graham [Truth-seeker]