LSP12: Not Your Usual Valentine Song: Why We're Here on Planet Earth

Okay.  o if God is so loving and we, as souls, are so loving, and everything in the universe is so galldarned loving, then why the heck are any of us here?

Why not just jump to the good part -- Heaven, that is -- and skip all this crazy, frustrating, painful, human stuff?

Every major world religion (past and present) has tried to answer this question. In fact, there wouldn't be any religions without this question. Faith* asks the question with an open heart. Religion's job has always been not to answer the question but to control the answer, to control the theory which decides what other people can observe.

This is not to say that religious people don't have faith or can't have faith. Many have great faith in a loving God. But many more have no faith in themselves or each other because they've been taught by their religious leaders to believe in their own inherent sinfulness or karmic imperfection. (Take your pick -- both boil down to a belief in Materialist laws of cause and effect.)

What if all these religions are wrong? What if there is no inherent sinfulness and no karmic imperfection? What if the goal is not to escape our sinfulness through grace or to escape the cycle of rebirth through sheer willpower? What if the goal for human beings has nothing whatsoever to do with saving ourselves so we can get to Heaven or to a state of Nirvana?**

What if we're here on Planet Earth for an entirely different reason? A simple reason. A loving reason. Say . . . so we can experience a number of complicated things about God's Heart that some of us just can't seem to understand without "walking a mile in God's shoes."

Maybe we're here as human beings because, as souls, we're so determined and so loving and so trusting and so courageous that nothing -- not even the sure knowledge of our temporary suffering and anguish and loneliness -- can stop us from wanting (as souls) to know more about who God the Mother and God the Father really are as people.

This clock, made of ivory, gilded copper, brass, and enamel, is called "The Twelve States of the Soul," and was made by German clockmaker  Johan Georg Gusderman of Kaemten in about 1680. It's part of the Kenneth Thomson collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

From what I've just said, you'd have to conclude that if we want to know (as souls) what it feels like to walk a mile in suffering and anguish and loneliness, then this must mean . . . hmmm, now here's a thought you won't be hearing in church anytime soon . . . this must mean that once upon a time (long, long ago and far, far away) there was no Divine Love and existence was a real bitch until God the Mother and God the Father found redemption in each other.

As the song says, it takes two.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.


*(I define faith as a relationship with God that endures in the absence of sacred texts.)

**(Please bear in mind that I'm simplifying on purpose.)


For Further Reflection:

People love to know about their human ancestry. For reasons we can't describe, we're endlessly fascinated by our family trees and family histories. These days, it's popular to add a DNA analysis to the confusing piles of unnamed photos and undated letters we find in old trunks in the basement. Sharing historical information has recently become a way of bringing people closer, but it hasn't always been this way.

It used to be, in centuries past, that families lived in the same small region for many generations, so you didn't have to go much further than the local graveyard or the local parish register to learn more about your ancestors. You could also go to the pub or the sewing circle, where you could hear every nasty rumour about everybody's ancestors right back to the time of Adam. Heaven help you if you came from the clan or caste despised by your community for some ancient crime. There was no escaping the power of genealogy to build lives and also ruin them, depending on who your ancestors were. Forgiveness for bloodlines was almost unheard of.

Human culture has taught us to think about family history in some pretty strange ways that have nothing to do with learning how to love your God or yourself or your neighbour. We don't like to acknowledge it, but, over time, all of our most dysfunctional beliefs about families and family history have mutated into religious doctrines. We do this -- we drag our flawed theories about family into the history of our relationship with God -- because so many of us like the idea of having power over the people closest to us.

In order to get the family power we want, we take our understanding of God the Mother and God the Father and we beat the crap out of it. We take God's image and cut out all the parts that might interfere with our own authority. We then take the parts that are left (such as God's immeasurably vast talents) and rearrange them into a new portrait of the Divine that "proves" such religious theories as the human right to be right; human exceptionalism; human hierarchies of salvation; and monism (the quest to dissolve all humans into a single soup of Oneness).

We then use these theories to justify our treatment of God, our families, our communities, and our planet.

Your angels, however, are having none of it.

The story you've been told about God is in all likelihood one of the many cut-and-paste jobs that exist in today's religious and spiritual circles. (In some circles, God's image has been cut into such tiny pieces that nothing meaningful is left.) It's up to you, then, (with the help of your angels) to find the courage to open your eyes and ears and heart to God so you can rebuild a healthy, mature, loving image of your Divine Parents.

Deep within your core self, in the places of yearning you so rarely listen to except when your dreams overtake you, you're absolutely desperate to know more about your angelic history and more about your Mother and Father's personal journey of redemption, hope, healing, and faith.

Don't be surprised if your journey forward on the Spiral Path sometimes feels like a journey backwards.

There's an important angelic reason for this.

LSP11: Some Great Films about Humbleness

If Family Feud asked, "What's the hardest thing you've ever done?" what do you think the answers would be?

From the friends and family you know, you'd get answers such as these: "Finished school."  "Said no to my cheating boyfriend."  "Admitted I have a drinking problem."  "Lost 77 pounds."  "Beat cancer."

From the angels you know (but can't see), you'd get these answers: "Struggled to know who he really is. Kept trying to learn how to trust herself. Learned how to recognize his strengths and also his absences-of-strength. Admitted she made a mistake."

Show me . . . Learned about Humbleness!

The humbleness of the soul is something very, very different from the religious humility taught over the centuries by sages and saints. Humbleness is the sweet spot that major world religions don't teach you to find because humbleness is a very dangerous thing. Humbleness is one of the tumblers on the lock that allows you to be in full relationship with God as a human being. Unlock the mystery of humbleness and your journey on the spiral path speeds up from a slow crawl to a brisk walk.

Humbleness is a difficult concept to convey because it's not a single "value" or "emotion." It's more like a rich tapestry. It's about knowing yourself. It's about liking yourself. It's about knowing your neighbour. It's about liking your neighbour. It's about acceptance. And courage. And honesty -- lots and lots of honesty. It's about doing the right thing even when it's harder to do the right thing than the wrong thing. And it's about heart. There's no humbleness without the heart.

Since it's hard to put into words, I've compiled a list of some films that do a great job of showing you what I mean by humbleness. This isn't a complete list, by any means. But these are some films that strike me as being especially honest about what it means to know yourself -- what it means to be earnestly you!

First, some films based on characters who already know themselves, who already know their strengths and absences-of-strengths and use their knowledge of themselves to help others (even though they aren't perfect and don't know everything):

• Legally Blonde
• Babe
• Crocodile Dundee
• High Noon
• Blindness
• Shrek
• Heaven Can Wait/Down to Earth
• The Sound of Music
• The Miracle Worker (the Anne Sullivan character)
• Blast from the Past

Next, a list of films where the characters don't know themselves at the beginning, and have to struggle against confusion, fear, and loneliness to find humbleness and redemption (that is, they have to open up their hearts to acceptance and honesty about themselves and others):

• The Wizard of Oz
• A Christmas Carol
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• The Miracle Worker (the Helen Keller character)
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Count of Monte Cristo (the 2002 version)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the 1966 animated version)
• Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (the stop-motion animated version)
• Groundhog Day (my all-time favourite)

Great works of science fiction and fantasy have a way of getting under the skin of the brain-soul nexus. I'm sure you can think of many examples of speculative fiction that examine the theme of redemption in compelling ways. Pictured here is "Regina 2049," digital print by Jamie MacDonald.

Most of the people I know can relate a lot better to the second set of films than the first. My own journey felt a helluva lot like Groundhog Day at first. And I've known quite a few people who've trapped themselves in the starring role of Ebenezer Scrooge and don't know how to get themselves out of a lifetime of selfishness.

The trick is to trust that you can get out as long as you have the right help.

Learning about Humbleness isn't something you can do on your own. You need feedback from other people, and you need to have the chance to offer others feedback, too.

Instead of a Family Feud, it's a family partnership where we lift each other up instead of beating each other down. Doesn't that sound like a family you'd like to be part of?


For Further Reflection:

If the theories you have about God, Creation, the soul, and the afterlife can be said to be the roots of the spiritual tree you're growing, then Humbleness is the sturdy trunk.

As you would expect, Humbleness starts out small in your life, like the trunk of a new seedling. But if you protect the vulnerable roots and the distinctive leaves struggling to open themselves to the light of Peace, the trunk will continue to grow stronger each year.

In the analogy of the spiritual tree, most people would guess that the trunk of the tree is made of Divine Love. This isn't a bad guess, because, after all, everyone draws nourishment and strength from Divine Love. But in this analogy, Divine Love is the mysterious underground energy that originates in the two hub trees -- the Tree of Life and the Tree of Moral Knowledge -- and that flows back and forth among the trees of spiritual growth to sustain them.

Humbleness, on the other hand, is a complex tapestry of emotions that allows you to use your soul talents wisely and for the benefit of others.

What are soul talents? They're the aspects of yourself that allow you to not only think with your Mind and feel with your Heart as a soul, but allow you to act in Creation with free will. Your talent aspects are kind of like your soul hands and your soul feet and your soul voice. They allow you to make things and move things and speak things. Your talent aspects allow you to take ideas and feelings and turn them into beautiful, lasting creations.

Every soul -- including you -- has a unique combination of soul talents. When you incarnate as a human being, you bring some of these soul talents with you. (They're hardwired into your DNA.) Your soul talents start to manifest quite early in life, but if you fail to develop your Humbleness (that is, your emotional maturity) in tandem with your talents, you'll grow up to be a boastful, envious, narcissistic, selfish adult who has lots of talent but no awareness at all of how to use these talents wisely.

In other words, you'll grow up in state of metaphorical blindness -- blindness to the true potential of your talents, blindness to the talents of others, and blindness to the talents of God.

There's a reason that Jesus son of Joseph spoke so often of the need to open your eyes and your ears and your heart (e.g. Mark 8: 14-21). He was talking about Humbleness, about learning to know God through seeing and hearing and feeling God's creations without being envious of God's many talents.

You'd be surprised how many people are envious of God's many talents and how many people try to steal from God because they don't want to go through the trouble of learning to use their own talents with maturity.

Your angels know what your soul talents are and what your soul talents aren't.

And you don't get to pick, no matter how badly you want to be a famous superstar.

LSP10: The Importance of Being (Earnestly) You: Throwing Humility Out the Window

In Dr. Alexander's book, one of the key themes is the importance of feeling you're wanted -- wanted by God and also wanted by your family. Dr. A. is very frank about an episode of depression and heavy drinking he fell into after he learned the birth parents he'd been searching for didn't want to make contact with him. (They'd given him up for adoption as an infant.) He understood at a logical level that those who loved him couldn't help him unless he participated in his own recovery (page 56-58), but at the same time he couldn't shake the despair of the heart that came from his belief that neither his birth parents nor God wanted him.

There's a deeply important truth embedded in this part of Dr. Alexander's story. It's the truth that you are important as yourself. As a soul and as a soul-in-human-form, it matters that you are you. Your job as a human being is not to empty yourself of your true self (a religious process most often called "humility") but to fully embrace the knowledge of who you are as a unique child of God.

I want to be very clear here on a couple of points. First, I want to emphasize that what I'm saying here is the very opposite of the doctrines -- the tree roots -- that underlie most major world religions. It's almost universally taught that if you want to get closer to God, you have to get farther away from your own defective "youness", your own corrupt ego, your own grasping illusory self. In other words, you have a religious duty to not be you.

Second, I want to emphasize I'm not in any way endorsing the idea that you can be whoever you want to be or the idea that nothing you do as a human being is wrong. This is the extreme opposite of pure religious humility. It's a belief system that's widely touted within New Age circles (as in the books of Neale Donald Walsch and Marianne Williamson). To be clear, the tree that grows from New Thought roots is a tree that insists that God is not just a bit stupid, but is also incredibly selfish and narcissistic as well as stupid. Just so you know . . .

Somewhere in the middle of this jungle of depressing religious beliefs about "who you are" is a fairly simple tree that fits with all our best ideas about healing and peace and relationship. It's the tree that grows from the belief (in my view, the truth) that you are a child of God. Not a defective child. Not an inferior child. Not a lost child. Just a child who is very brave (because you chose to incarnate) and a child who is deeply loved and trusted by your divine parents.

Note that I'm NOT saying you're a small piece of God, or a small spark of God who's trying to return to God, or a small drop of water in the great ocean of Absolute Reality, or a pure mind trapped in a corrupt human body who's trying to return to Ultimate Truth. (These, by the way, are all theories that have been put forward and endorsed by major world religions over the centuries. If you want to read more about this, you can check out my Master's Research Paper.)  What I'm saying is that you're exactly who you appear to be -- a unique child who needs to feel loved by his/her own family. What I'm saying is that it's normal and healthy for you to need to know you belong, that you belong in your human family (and also in your divine family) BECAUSE you are you.

Don't try to follow the example of asceticism practised by such traditional Christian Church Fathers as St. Jerome. Ascetic practices, which spring from the roots of religious humility, damage the brain networks you need in order to know yourself and feel God's presence in your life. In God's view, your biological body is a gift to you and should be treated with the utmost gratitude and respect. When you punish and subjugate your body with ascetic and obsessive-compulsive practices, you're saying to Mother Father God that you don't trust them. If, instead, you're moderate in all things related to your biological body, the spiritual path will flow more easily for you. This 18th century terracotta sculpture of St. Jerome, by Angelo Gabriello Pio, is on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

One of the most important things you can take away from Dr. Alexander's book is the fact that he's describing a journey about one person, one unique child of God. When he makes his journey, he doesn't see a big cloud of oneness. What he sees is unique individuals who choose to be together in a community of love. The love he feels is like a single force that unites everyone. But the love doesn't erase the boundaries between individual people. Each person, no matter how divine, is a unique individual. A different person. A different soul.

What makes divine love such a powerful force is the intense respect and trust shown by such very different people towards each other. They're all different people who are coming together as a community with a common cause. They don't all have to be the same. They don't all have to be the same size or the same colour or the same gender. They don't all come prepackaged with the same interests or abilities. But they do all share one thing, one very important thing that unites them as a family:

They're all using their powerful free will to choose to love and trust others, to respect others for their uniqueness.

So when Dr. Alexander says he came back from his journey with three major insights (page 41) -- "You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever; you have nothing to fear; and there is nothing you can do wrong" --  he's referring to the truth about our relationship with God as souls, as children of God. He's saying that when you're choosing to be your true self as a loving child of God, you can do amazing things in the universe, no matter where you happen to be incarnated.

It's an incredibly simple idea, really. It's also an idea that has huge implications for our ability to feel the love that comes from belonging to such a breathtakingly beautiful divine family. But first you have to be willing to believe in the idea that a loving God would not -- and could not -- bring into being any souls who were not already perfect in their own sweet way before they chose to incarnate as human beings on Planet Earth.

It's okay for you to believe you're wanted by God. This isn't pride. All children want and need to know they're loved by their parents for who they really are. Religion tells you this is the one thing you're not allowed to believe. I'm telling you, and Dr. Alexander is telling you, that this is the Number One thing you should be allowed to believe.

You are, indeed, loved, cherished, trusted, and respected, and it's okay for you to trust this truth.

The world would be a much happier place if people were allowed to trust in the brilliant love of their awe-inspiring divine parents and their divine brothers and sisters.


For Further Reflection:

A lot of spiritual people these days have some ideas about Divine Love that really don't pan out when you stop to think about it.

If you insist, as so many seem to be insisting, that humans are working to achieve an evolution towards greater love and harmony and unity in the universe, then we can assume you believe the universe is defective. We can assume you believe that after 13.8 billion years, Divine Love hasn't yet reached a state of "maximum penetration."

Why would you believe that? Why would you believe in a defective universe when you have the option to believe in a universe so strongly grounded in Divine Love and Divine Forgiveness that God is willing to let you incarnate on Planet Earth so you can learn more about who you really are and how the universe came to be?

Spiritual leaders have been talking about Divine Love as if it isn't already here, as if it isn't already surrounding you every moment of every day, as if its role as a fundamental field underlying all of quantum theory is still in need of some work.

Some spiritual leaders have even been talking about God the Mother and God the Father as if they don't already know who they really are.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Do you honestly believe the vast, multi-layered, infinitely complex universe we live in could possibly stay glued together if God was existing in some sort of psychodynamic fugue state? Do you honestly believe that God, who is already holding together all the underlying quantum fields and particles of the universe through the conscious application of free will, would suddenly decide they need a hefty dose of forgetfulness as a human being?

It's an incredible blessing to be able to trust that God is actually God, not an adolescent narcissist in need of self-actualization.

Despite what you may have been told, the universe is doing just fine, thank you very much. All the I's have been dotted and all the T's have been crossed in the great big Divine history of Love and Forgiveness. We'll continue to explore this history together, and we'll continue to find new ways to express our infinite gratitude to our wondrous Mother and Father for all that they do and all that they are. But the only reason you're here as a human being is because God, Master and Mistress of the science of Creation, know that it's safe for you as a child of God to temporarily incarnate.

You're just here for the history lesson.

LSP7: God, Science, and Miracles

I'm pretty tired of reading in my theology texts that nobody can possibly know God so there's no point trying.

What these theologians and philosophers really mean is that nobody they know has successfully met with God by following the spiritual steps dictated by theologians of the past. They assume two things here: (1) the spiritual steps themselves are correct and (2) God can't be known directly by us no matter how hard we try. Too bad, so sad.

From the viewpoint of the scientific method, this approach (this methodology, if you will) falls well short of tenable. If the steps aren't working, then challenge them! Don't just stand there like a blubbering idiot and say you've followed all the steps but they're not working because you're flawed and full of sin. Challenge the steps themselves! Go back and examine the whole procedure with the keen, objective eye of a scientist whose experiment has failed again and again because he's overlooked a flaw in his starting assumptions. Don't assume your starting assumptions are right!

"Astronomy" by Luca Giordano, painted in the mid or late 17th century, not long after Galileo Galilei clashed with the Roman Catholic church about how we should understand the solar system. Galileo, building on the research of earlier scientists, dared to challenge the church's starting assumptions and paid a price for trusting that God is smarter about the laws of physics than any human being. This painting is on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

I can say this now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, but I still remember how hard it was to challenge lifelong assumptions. I have great empathy for anyone trying to do this. I know how painful it can be!  Nonetheless, it has to be done whether you're taking the "hard way" or the "easy way" on the Spiral Path that slowly wends its way towards full relationship with God. Your wanting to challenge old assumptions is a necessary beginning.

Being in relationship with God isn't as difficult as you've been led to believe. Basically, it's the same as being in a full, healthy, mature relationship with anybody who's important to you--your parents, your children, your best friends (though NOT your lover). To have a mature relationship with anyone (a relationship founded on mutual understanding, love, respect, and trust) you first have to be willing to know who the other person is. Who the other person really is. Not the myth of the other person. Or the lies told about him/her. Just the honest truth about who the other person is--his/her talents, strengths, absences of strength, sense of purpose, sense of humour, past history, sources of grief, and sources of infinite joy.

To truly know another person--including God the Mother and God the Father (who are two different people)--you can't simply make stuff up. You can't invent myths and lies about them to suit yourself. You have to listen to them. You have to quietly and respectfully listen to who they really are, to what they're saying directly to you.

Western Christian orthodoxy has tried to co-opt this idea by reverently talking about God's continuing self-revelation, but they've insisted on putting a huge wall around God, and have allowed through only a tiny trickle of truth about who God really is.

One thing I can tell you about God the Mother and God the Father is that both of them love science.  Just love it. They're both big-time science geeks.

Now, I'm not saying they only "do science" and nothing else, because this wouldn't be true. (They're both polymaths, in fact, with talents in every field you can imagine). But if you really want to get to know our blessed, beloved Mother and Father, you have to allow science and faith to be on the same page at the same time. You can't reject science as a valid path to knowing God.

This means you also can't reject the validity of non-Materialism, which is the study of science as it really is, not the study of science as you've been taught.

This is a complicated way of saying that you can be a highly educated person who loves science and still have a scientific basis to believe in miracles.

Really.


For Further Reflection:

How do you get to know someone you've never seen with your own eyes or heard with your own ears? Our first reaction is to say it's impossible. We can't do it. We shouldn't even waste our time trying.

But one of the best parts of being human is our constant need to reach out to know more about people we've never met but whose lives have shaped our own.

We do this every time we pick up a book. Chances are we've never met the author, never seen the author with our own eyes, never heard the author's actual voice. Yet, by the time we finish the book, we have a strong sense of who the author is as a person: his or her interests, talents, quirks, assumptions, prejudices, burning passions, and so on.

We do this every time we walk through a museum or an art gallery or a building with historical roots. We experience the creations of people we've never met, and through their creations we come to know something about their hearts and minds.

We do this every time we softly rock our newborn infants to sleep with gentle cooing and sweet lullabies. We feel the deep power of love, and for the first time we understand something unexpected about our own parents, and their parents before them. We realize that all the words we used before this perfect moment fell short because love isn't words. It's relationships.

Everything around you--everything you learn as a human being on Planet Earth--holds within it multiple layers of observation and communication and memory about who God is and how the universe unfolded. The more you pay attention to the world around you--the more you open your Heart to the feelings that move in earth and sky and water--the more you'll come to know the authors and artists and scientists and parents who are our extraordinary Mother and Father.

LSP6: Why God?

Why God? Why a personal God instead of a transcendent cloud of Oneness from which all of us come and to which all of us return? 

Quite simply, knowing God makes you a better person.

We human beings are funny creatures. When we sit down long enough to notice what we're really thinking and feeling, all sorts of strange emotions bubble up inside us. We want more than anything to feel we belong and to feel we have a purpose in life. We want to feel safe--emotionally and physically safe--and when we're not, we feel frightened and anxious. We long to be surrounded by beauty and peace and kindness and honesty, and when we're forced to deal with selfishness and betrayal and corruption, we're devastated.We want to know others and we want to be known--really, really known and accepted for who we are deep inside. We desperately crave love and trust. We desperately need other people.

Is it wrong for us to feel this way? Are we to blame for our own suffering because we're too attached to certain people and ideals and creature comforts? Are we suffering because of the weight of our emotions and attachments? Or is it possible we're suffering because we haven't been paying enough attention to what we really want and need?

God's love is Beauty. Don't reject it. Rejoice in it! Photo credit JAT 2018.

For a long time now, human beings in all places and in all religious traditions have been trying to answer the problem of suffering by following one of two major paths. (Yes, more paths!) The first major path is the path of spiritual ascent that leads to holiness and perfection (in technical terms, "anagogism"). The second major path is the path of self-dissolution and blurring of boundaries for the purpose of rejoining the cloud of Oneness (called "apophasis"). Both of these paths are paths of abandonment--abandonment of yourself and abandonment of God. Neither path (not even when they're combined, as they often are, in a one-two punch) will help you become a better person--the person you want to be deep in your Heart.

What helps you become a better person is your faith and trust in the "rightness" of needing powerful emotions such as love and safety and deep acceptance in all your relationships. Families (and communities) that embrace the "rightness" of love and safety and deep acceptance are families that are healthy and happy (within the limits of our temporary human lives). Families that focus on achieving holiness and perfection (anagogism), or on beating all emotional needs out of you because emotions aren't "logical" (apophasis) are . . . well, I think you know where I'm going with this.

Knowing God the Mother and God the Father as the people they are means you have a constant source of inspiration in your life for how to be the person you want to be. A person who is patient. And kind. And grounded. And forgiving. And full of empathy for all life (not just caring about the people you know). And courageous. And balanced. And willing to do the right thing. In short, you become once again a person who's in full relationship with all of life, including all the reaches of Creation you'll never see for yourself with your own human eyes.

It all boils down to relationships. Everything that really matters in our lives depends on relationships.  We're hardwired this way. We want and need Divine Love because Divine Love is the ultimate expression of two or more consciousnesses building a relationship of beauty and truth and learning together.

There's no force I've encountered that's anything like the feeling of unconditional love flooding into your heart and mind and bones and gut. This love--which begins within the Hearts of God the Mother and God the Father and within the infinite love they share for each other--this love . . . it's gravity. It's sanity. It's safety. It's trust. It's truth--but not one single truth. It's the truth of everything. It's the truth of you and the truth of me and the truth of all of us. Countless truths, all equally valid, all founded in the reality that we are not One Truth but instead are One Big Family.

All that we most cherish, all that we view as the best expression of ourselves and our communities, depends on our having the courage to love and trust. Forgiveness and transformation and emotional healing all depend on the love and the trust. Once you allow your own heart to be open to these wondrous emotions, you won't be able to stop yourself from letting the rest of it pour in, too.

You won't be able to stop yourself from feeling the gravity of God's love.


For Further Reflection:

Have you ever paid attention to how you feel--how you really feel--when you're treated by your human family if you're just a robot who performs needed tasks? Or a person who's valued for the status you can bring to your family but not for the unique emotions that make you you? Or an invisible slave who's only important in so far as you worship and obey your hierarchical leaders? Do you enjoy being treated in these ways? Do you like being told repeatedly you're unworthy of love? Or does it feel wrong to you in every way?

Being loved by your family is a deep, rich, ongoing set of observations and conversations and memories between people who aren't carbon copies of each other yet who value each other despite their differences. This applies as much to your relationship with God as to your human family.

To seek the path of holiness and perfection is to make the claim that God is only willing to love those who meet a strict and narrow standard of what it means to be beautiful in God's eyes. Such a claim has nothing to do with the way God loves you.

To seek the path of Oneness, where all beings are said to merge into a single Intelligence or Source, is to make the claim that God isn't capable of seeing you and loving you as a unique individual. Furthermore, claims for apophatic Oneness implicitly suggest that you're somehow already a spark of God -- not a child of God, but an actual piece of God's core essence. Have you given any thought to the narcissism involved in such a claim? Have you thought about how it feels from God's perspective when you work your ass off on spiritual practices that claim to give you a godhood that was never yours to begin with?

The human Mind is easily tricked into assuming that God only sees beauty in things that are perfectly perfect.

Fortunately, the Heart that's able to love the imperfectly perfect is a Heart that knows God.

A God who loves you despite the fact that you're very normal and very human and very not God is so much easier to trust.