Sunday, August 9, 2009

The Trouble with Transformation ~ Part III

I trust that you, like me, desire more than anything to follow the Spirit's lead into all Truth, as we can bear it. I trust that you, like me, desire to embody love, in all of it's pure expressions, even while acknowledging and honoring that we, in this human form, cannot help but do so imperfectly ... embracing the gift of that, in that we learn from our mistakes far more than we learn from our successes.

While we're enroute, it's far too easy to misunderstand each other ... far too easy to confuse egos (our own and those of others) with who a person really is -- their spirit. Our perspectives are just too limited, too based on our past-experiences-grid, too focused on what we *think* we know. I prefer to see through my limited perceptions, and discern the heart/spirit of the person behind the presentation. That, too, is a work in progress -- I am a mixture of Unlearning and RElearning and REmembering ... quite the wild and adventurous (and messy!) process, no? Perhaps that's why we're told to be so lavishly generous with our love for one another, while IN this process together ...

I do trust the Spirit to lead ... even despite our own human inclination to "miss the point". I believe God knows our inherent limitations far more than we do, knows FAR more our proclivity to be deceived (to self-deceive!), and works with even that, for our good. I trust the process, I trust the bigger-picture, because I trust God. We're just not a match for Him...! Woo-HOO!

I trust that we will know His Voice, and follow Him ... and that we will not follow the thief nor the stranger, even if it takes starting after either of those, for a season, and thus learning from that experience ... I see that we come to God, not because we get it "all right", but because of how He seeks after the lost one(s) 'til He finds them -- thus, we come to God even because of how we keep getting it "all wrong".

My spirit breathes a sigh of relief at this awareness ... I don't have to strive ... I don't have to attain or maintain the "right path." God, who is Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, is on my side. He's on your side. EVERYTHING, including (& especially!) our blunders, our mistakes, and our seeming tragedies, work to our good ...

We *can* trust Him, and thus live this, the Abundant Life, with optimism and unfettered JOY...!

Why not...?

Shalom, Dena

7 comments:

cwtpmom said...

Dena it sounds like you're having a tough time dealing with something that is weighing heavily on your heart. If you would like my perspective drop me an email. If not that's ok..

btw, I quoted you on my blog today. I absolutely love how you express certain things ---- spot on.

Have a really good day, and come visit me soon at http://cwtpmom.wordpress.com/

Dena said...

Just more of the same ... friends are moving out this week, so it's like a long, slow death is coming to the point of release. Relief mixed with gried, on so many levels. I wrote a tribute to them, in order to leave nothing unsaid from my heart ... sharing the good memories and gifts of this time together. Not sure if it was read ... perhaps in time. Perhaps I only did it for me. I felt release, and joy, and sorrow ... it was good and real. But, yes, it's weighing heavily on me... counting the cost of this transformation -- bittersweet ... pain mixed with joy, but the joy wins out.

Thanks for your encouragement, and the invitation to visit your blog..!

Shalom, Dena

Anonymous said...

Dena,
I love your openness and your willingness to jump out of the box.
Your eager, enthusiastic attitude is appealing and I enjoy following your trail of thought.

Sue said...

Awesome post, Dena.

It's funny you mention the "striving" thing. I used that word on Lifestream several months ago and the only response I got to what I wrote was people saying they did not like the word "striving". And I understand why, absolutely. And yet I think, what about striving to enter his rest? What about when you see what's up ahead for you, when you're getting out of your comfort zone and walking into new spaces. That does feel like striving to me, it's stretching myself out to where I feel unsafe, it's enlarging my own boundaries somehow.

But yes, for all of that, the word "striving" is a rather crappy one :)

I LOVE what you say here about generous love, thank you so much for writing this. I felt it seeping in, all liquid honey. A good thing for me to read this morning :)

Dena said...

GREAT question, Sue, about striving. We've been bantering that back around in our little group of four radical folks (everyone else has left). The question is, how much is about being, and how much about doing? I'm seeing that our doing needs to come out of our beingness -- but that traditional Christianity teaches it to us backwards ("if you do, do do, eventually it will sink down into your heart" - sigh ... exHAUSTing! though all that doing works well to keep the church-machine operating!).

I see that it's initially difficult (i.e., feels like "striving") to move from an egoic/carnal perspective, to God's Spiritual perspective ... the "awakening" that's spoken of in so many circles. It's really about letting the ego-crud get out of the way so that what's REAL (& has always been there) can emerge. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Our truest nature is Spirit.

"Strive to enter the rest" is, as I see it, a once-in-history situation, when the two covenants were "overlapping" (first century), and those born in the old covenant had to "strive" to enter the Rest (which was the new covenant, not "heaven"). It was hard because everything they saw, everything they'd ever known, lured them back into the "safety and security" of the old covenant/Jewish way of life ... but Jesus had warned that that way of life was coming to a cataclysmic end -- and indeed it did, in 70AD, during that generation, while "some of them standing there had not yet tasted death." There are SO many verses that were pertinent to them, then, and which no longer apply to us -- since then, we're the folks who were born already IN the new covenant (which was always meant for all mankind), already in the Rest -- the only deal is, we have to see it with spiritual eyes, for it doesn't come "by observation". We enter the Kingdom, which is (and always has been) at hand, spiritually. We awaken to what is, rather than being deluded by the illusions of the material world around us (as even quantum physics is showing is the case).

It only *feels* like striving, because of how we've all been caught up in the carnal/egoic thinking, rather than seeing the truer-reality of the Spiritual realm.

(likely FAR more of a response than you'd asked for, LOL!)

This whole "season" I'm spending on transformations is my attempt to show how it does feel hard, even though it's really just a "letting go" of what's not real.

It comes back to perception, no?

(I LOVE the seeping liquid-honey imagery -- yummy!)

Dena said...

Anonymous -

THANK you for your gracious encouragement! What a wonderful comment to read here!

I'm having a BLAST sharing my thoughts, and finding so very many like-spirited folks!

Shalom, Dena

Rich said...

Dena,

Scaffolding is a needed and necessary thing, but it is never a substitute for the reality behind it!

What He sees in us is real, His love calls it forth, it is rapturous and heady.