Month: August 2018

God has no religion, except that we do.

As we exist in a world of form, we come to understand reality within the context of that form. We impose meaning upon the form we have experienced. We formalize and institutionalize our interpretations, and we are often happy to buy into the interpretations that are passed to us, and to pass them along ourselves. In spiritual matters, we tend to attribute the very real internal experience of the divine to the forms themselves. But the forms- the ideas, the objects, the traditions- do not have fundamental existence. They are but shadows arising within the One, as are all forms. They are fragments, and not the Whole. No fragment can fully satisfy, because our true nature is not fragmented at all.

Beingness needs no name. Beingness transcends all names. Beingness can arise into the experience of limited perspective, and temporarily assign the power to the shadowy forms occurring within it, but such forms are not truly reflective of the perfect unity and limitlessness of What Truly Is.

The true path is Love! Love transcends all restrictions, all requirements, all definitions. Love cannot be contained within a given set of ideas or practices- it can operate through them all. Love can mean both structure, or lack of structure; beliefs, or lack of beliefs. The living power of love thrives both within and beyond all the form of our entire universe! May our human practices align with that living power! May our religion be the religion of compassion, kindness, humility, personal ownership, bravery, and selfless love- whether outside of named structure, or within whatever structure or form we genuinely feel called to express it.

Your body is an experience, not a fundamentally real object. Your body is a set of constraints that your consciousness is experiencing per a defined physical rule-set in consciousness space. There is not a fundamentally real piece of flesh that you are inhabiting. Rather, your body exists as an experience that is occurring within you!

You already existed before you engaged in the experience of a physical body, and you will exist after that bodily experience ends. Just as a movie screen exists before and after an image is projected upon it, your awareness exists before and after the experience of the body appears within it.

However, in our case, many of us do not remember existing before the body. That is because the veil of forgetfulness is tied to the acceptance of the bodily constraint-set. It feels to us like the body is all we have ever been, because that is the nature of such a highly specialized experience as being human.

Regardless of the veiling that occurred so that you could have the focused human experience and remember nothing beyond it, your true nature stands firm. Your true loving nature does not give way; its existence is sure and ever-present! It is only within that sure and ever-present true nature that the experience of the body with its limited perceptions and recollections exists.

We are One, and yet we are Individual. This is a great truth. From our local perspective, those two statements may seem like a paradox, but they are not. In other systems you are aware of your Oneness with All, and yet also your Individuality, which is precious and preserved.

You have likely forgotten that you are connected to everything else because you agreed to adopt that restriction (in appearance only) in order to have the human experience. Even though that is true, you are still what you are. You cannot ever be separate from All That Is! You can only agree to have an apparent experience of separation so that you can participate in experiential expansion!

When physical life ends, you become aware of all the ways you affected everyone else in your entire life. Near Death Experiencers often describe this “life review” process as being “first hand”: you experience exactly what you caused others to experience. You know because what you have done to another, you have done to yourself.

And this is why love is such an important theme: love is reflective of the unity that is native to our being. Love is reflective of what we really are! Love is the body of the One Being working in concert. Treat the other as yourself, for the other is yourself!