ADELE--AND GRACE

 Lynn and I watched the Adele concert aired from the beautiful Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles--beautiful sunset, night sky coming alive with the city lights around her and the stage lights behind her. It was an impressive concert. It was interspersed with segments of an interview with Adele and Oprah in which she spoke of some of the pain that fueled her forlorn music. Most recently [in the last few years] she had felt compelled to divorce her husband and father of her son, not because of any pathology on his part, but in order to “find [her]self”--to “find happiness”. Oprah asked her what it was like for her when her son asked her why she “didn’t love daddy any more.” She said that she told him “I do love him. But I’m not in love with him.” She confessed that she was dealing with some guilt at having “dismantled his life” and “hurt the two people I love the most in the world” in order to find this “self” and “happiness” she was seeking. {I think that guilt is healthy. But I pray it will be healed in her spiritual growth.} Oprah and her spoke of the importance of being able to “love yourself” before you can love others or, by implication, basically do any good in the world. I’m not criticizing Adele when I say this---she has suffered enough without my or anyone’s criticism—but it seems that Adele, [along with probably thousands of others] are chasing the feeling of being “in love” and the elusive butterfly of “happiness”---and hurting people in the process. Or else they are living, as the ladies also alluded to, in the dark, self-generated shadow of staying in an unhappy relationship because of obligation and the desire not to hurt their loved ones. They feel that they are “caving in”, so to speak, to a second-rate life to avoid hurting their loved ones. I’ve had some clients who are chasing this elusive butterfly of needing to be in the state of being “in love”, or who are unhappy and mistakenly believe it is because they married the wrong person—someone who is basically ok, not abusive or addicted to anything, is faithful, etc., but “just not the person who can make me happy”. More than one of my clients have said something like “if I knew then what I know now, I would never have divorced my first spouse.” What they had come to learn was that happiness is an inside job---that it is primarily the by-product of loving people with a deep and committed love; that the “in love” feeling is always time-limited and chasing it is similar to chasing the feelings provided by certain drugs, and that the love that ultimately generates happiness and self-love is sacrificial---the taking up of a cross, as Jesus said [and did!]. This is the Love that brings joy into life—rather than the sorrow so beautifully expressed in Adele’s songs. She looks great, has lost a hundred pounds, works out regularly. Her artistry seems darn near perfect. But she admits that she is not quite there yet as far as happiness is concerned, and she wept [reluctantly] when speaking of some of the sorrow she has generated in her pursuits. Oprah, with her typical keen insight, asked her, “Will you be able to write music when you are happy?” She seemed hopeful but uncertain that she would be able to. The high profile audience loved her performance. They drank deeply from the wine pressed in the crucible of her sorrows. There were numerous standing O’s. But I bet her son still wishes his mom and dad were together.

Is it possible that the pursuit of happiness and being “in love” can become an idol: an altar upon which we sacrifice marriages, covenants, families, childrens’ stability and security? To whatever extent it can, and to whatever extent it is indeed idolatrous, it will lead either to more unhappiness or to an awakening and a turning in a new direction that reveals that much of that sorrow, generated in the delusional state, was unnecessary. Hopefully this awakening, engendered by Christ, can occur without the generation of too much of that sorrow. At any rate, when that awakening happens, we see that all the suffering is miraculously redeemed. All of it. This is Grace. Amazing Grace.

Dreams

 

Dreams. I’ve been thinking about dreams. I like dreams. I rarely have a “bad” one. But when I do, it’s good to remember that it is just a dream---something you wake up from. I think that in some way we are God’s dream. {He/She can do anything!} And just as we can be dreaming and know that we are dreaming, I think God, since He/She knows everything, knows in some part of His/Her consciousness, that S/He is dreaming, but S/He allows this dream to continue. And in it, just as in ours, “good” and “bad” things can happen. But at some point S/He will wake up, and all of us who are in the dream will awaken also [even as we are now awakening]. And what we awaken to is that we are at one with the most benevolent, Loving, powerful and creative Personage imaginable---a Loving Consciousness that fills up the entire universe, capable of dreaming countless dreams throughout eternity from which we always awaken.

Quiet Time

 

I don’t know about you, but these days, in order to keep peace within my soul, I need a lot of quiet time; meditation and prayer; being still. A friend told me just today about having been invited to tour the floor at the N.Y. Stock Exchange building on Wall Street. When I asked him what was the primary out-take or impression he took away from the visit, he answered in one word: “Pain.” What was that pain, I asked him. “There was too much energy in that place.” A missionary who had spent years in a remote Alaskan town told of how, after returning to the Lower 48 and walking into a Walmart store, she felt so overwhelmed she had to walk out. We live with much stimulation—more than ever before perhaps in human history. We have the noise of this world swirling in our brains, even when we are still. But if we sit long enough in that stillness, getting down to the place where we touch the eternal “I Am”, we are reminded that all is well. The universe is in the hands of the omnipotent, all-wise Love Who has brought All into existence. We rest there with the calm realization that our part is simply to peacefully love all the people in our sphere of influence. Peacefully. Love. That is the very best we can do to bring about the good that we desire for the world. Without the deep stillness we can get lost in this noisy and busy world.

Meditation for Elderly

 

Here’s a meditation for some of my elderly brothers and sisters:

Get into a quiet place where you’re unplugged and isolated from anything that could distract you.

Take some comfortable breaths and settle into your body.

Take your time with this. Read each statement and pause to let the truth of it settle deeply into your consciousness.

“My body is getting weaker. I cannot do some of the things I used to do.

I accept this. Deeply. It is ok for me to be tired.

I rest in my tiredness. In this moment, I do not resist it.

As I go deeper, underneath the tiredness, I become aware that I am not my body. I am IN but not OF my body.

I, my soul, lives temporarily, in this body. My soul resides partially and temporarily in this body. My body has been a wonderful “temple”, and I am thankful for it; but it was destined from birth to return to the earth. I am perfectly ok with this.

In my spirit I hear Jesus say,”Do not allow that which is temporary [your body] to take precedence over that which is eternal [your soul].” I let His words sink into my deeper consciousness. I turn the light of my awareness away from my body and shine it upon my soul; finding there that I am a “Fountain of living water welling up into eternal Life”---a constantly renewed freshness. I realize that I am, in my essence, this Fountain and the Light of awareness that is shining upon it. I am this eternal awareness. I am the Logos, the pre-existent Living Word, that became flesh, dwelt with us as a human, entered into me through faith, and is perpetually awakening me to the fact of my atonement [at-one-ment] with Him and the Creator. I awaken to this Reality now---this “Truth that sets me free” from any worries about my declining body. I am experiencing, more and more, my soul arising up out of my body like new life arising out of a decaying seed. I am thankful and free, as I rest peacefully in this tired body.

Truth

 

We do not create Truth. And we cannot change it. Truth is the matrix in which we exist. It is the correct paradigm. It comprises the principles of life and death. It is the only Standard by which human success and failure can be measured. It can be obscured, avoided, hated or ignored; but its pulses, vibrations, openings, closings, and bulwarks never change, as Light, undaunted by darkness. It is what is left when the smoke and dust of human deception are cleared away. Those who ignore or avoid it accumulate and generate negative energy--”karma”--and fall behind in the psycho-spiritual evolutionary blossoming—the pilgrims’ joyful journey to “New Jerusalem.” Those who respond in reverence to Its perpetual, gracious invitation and submit to Its righteous and loving requirements find unfeigned Peace and Freedom. They wake up and find themselves at Home. John 14:6

Facing the Fear of Hurt

 

When we choose to believe in and hope for the best in people, [even those who have acted in darkness and through whom we have been hurt many times] we are not being naïve or going “out on a limb” of vulnerability, as long as our hearts and minds are guarded by the Love and Wisdom of Christ. He commands us not only to Love [of course!] but also to NOT “cast your pearls before the swine.” Jesus is by no means an “enabler” or anybody’s “whipping post”; but He is also not hiding in fear from the vulnerability that True Love [agape, as some describe it] takes us into. And in all environments, we are eternally and infinitely safe in His Love.

HURT

 

Some words about “Hurt”: the hurt that is felt by all who have lived very long in this world.

I wall myself away from the hurt. I want to get and stay as far away from it as possible. I turn quickly away from anything that reminds me of it, bringing up the dreadful pain that I have felt so many  times before. I don’t want to feel it again, but--- Here it comes! I scramble upward, away from it.

Jesus stands beneath it in infinite Power, Radiant Love, a Refuge, waiting for me to surrender faithfully into it where there is Rest for my Soul.

That surrender takes me downward in a vortex of heart-smothering, oppressive, fatal-feeling hurt that quickly launches out ward and upward like a volcanic eruption fueled by that Radiant Light that was waiting for me. I am surrounded by Love. Infused with the Power of that Love. My heart is now connected with forever, and in “Forever” everything and everything and everything is so much more than perfect. The Longing is fulfilled. The Hurt is embraced and becomes the important fuel for the fires of Love.

I turn and walk down the mountain, like the disciples after the Transfiguration.

There’s important peaceful work to do.