Snippet From a Conversation ...

I'll be blogging later today about free will, as promised, but I wanted to share a snippet from a conversation I'm engaged in elsewhere, to respond to an inner-prompting:

I hear and experience the Spirit in what some folks are saying ...

I hear and experience the ego in what other folks are saying ...

Even though I know, because I know myself, that both Spirit and ego are present in each person.

It's interesting to observe who and what I am drawn to -- even as both teach me what I need to know -- what is spiritually real, and what is illusion based on ego. I say this as observation, and not with judgment, for we can each only be where we are - we cannot see what we've not experienced. It's not a contest, any more than a toddler is to be compared with a six year old ... all stages of development are crucial, and cannot be by-passed. We cannot despise the stages that have formed us, the stages that were stepping-stones to where we are, which is only a stepping stone for where we will next be, ad infinitim ...

The folly is to camp out on our current stepping stone, and defend it from behind our castle-wall, declaring that what we now see is "all truth". While the Spirit will continue to lead us into all truth, we are capable, for at least a while, of insisting that our blindness is seeing. But the Spirit will have His way ... for He will draw all men to Himself (draw = drag).

He knows how to meet us where we are, and turn those self-imposed walls into bridges that lead to the "much more" that Jesus has for us ... He knows how to enable us to bear it ... He knows how to dismantle our fears (as the Light absorbs the darkness), so that we no longer see His leadings as threats to what we think we know. We begin to see the folly of certaintude, and begin to believe that HE is more, much more ... that He is bigger and better than we ever dared to suspect ... that we can indeed jump of that abyss-cliff, finally trusting that He will either catch us or else teach us to fly.

We turn to God when our foundations are shaking, only to discover that it's God who is shaking them ...

And then we can truly live the Abundant Life, rather than pretending that the Christian Life was ever what Jesus had in mind ...

Just how I'm seeing it -- your mileage may vary.

Shalom, Dena