Losing the Fear ...

Fear ... it's an insidious thing ... creeping unawares into the crevices of our hearts, spreading into the folds of our brains, spreading like a cancer into every aspect of our lives.

It quite often likes to masquerade as "wisdom".

It prefers to hide behind thoughts like "should," "ought," "rules," "can't," "unsafe," "concerns," "warning."

Now, it's not that I'm against wisdom, prudence, discernment and choices ... it's just that I think more of us are motivated by fear, than are we trusting in love.

Notice that I said "us". I'm in the thick of this, too.

I recently shared about a healing/mind-renewal tool called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) ... and this morning, I received a question from a person who is interested, but is concerned that it could be venturing into dangerous (my word, not theirs) "new age" territory. They seemed to basically be asking, "is this thing to which I am drawn *safe*? Is it ok for me to do this? Will God be mad?" How WELL I understand that feeling!

They asked me for my opinion ... and I ended up sharing quite a bit. :) (I know, hard to believe!) As I was writing, it occurred to me to share it here, as well ... so here goes:

My journey has been a long one, step by step ... of being led by God to question all things ... wanting to know what's of man, and what's of God. I would never advise anyone to follow me, but I would encourage others to question the roots of their own beliefs, to see if they truly line up with the Mind of Christ ...

For myself, I came to see that all truth is God's truth -- that there is only one Source of all life and all truth ... and that it's entirely too vast, too big, too wonderful for any of us humans to grasp it, much less define it and limit it, to our currently finite understandings. Jesus spoke against this, to the religious rulers of His day. He also said that He had "much more" to show His followers, but that they could not bear it. I see that many of us, who follow Him now, in the religion of our day, also cannot bear to think of more than what has been handed down to us. And yet, I see that Jesus says that the Spirit will lead us into all truth (not the traditions of man, not the scriptures -- but the living relationship with the Spirit).

I had to ask myself (which was hard to do! fearful even!), what traditions of man am I clinging to, out of "safety", out of fear, that are keeping me from following the Spirit into the "much more" that God has for me?

I think the answer to that inquiry will be different for each one, and the journey for each one will look quite unique, even as the Source and the Goal are one and the same ... for in God we live and move and have our being.

I have discovered, as you say you have, that truth is "outside the camp" of the religion we are each familiar with. He is the "savior of all, especially those who believe" ... and He told us that He has "many outside this fold." I believe that God has lavishly spread God's truth, of God, of our relationship to God ("you are all God's offspring"), far and wide, in various languages, cultures, and images ... all of us, I believe, hold a mixture of truth and error, for we are both Spirit and ego (carnal) ... and we tend to think that our perspective is the ONLY perspective ... rather than trusting that it is indeed only the Spirit who can lead each of us into all truth, and that each of us will indeed shed a great many things which we sincerely *thought* was the "truth of God", but which actually turns out to be merely the "assumptions of the ego." And I notice that fear is often the force that keeps us within the confines of those assumptions ...

So, on this journey, I choose to live in, and demonstrate, grace to all the other groping humans on the planet ... to all the "bumbling beloved" who may indeed know/see things that are more true than the things I think I know to be true. I can learn from all, trusting the Spirit within to show me what's what (& that may change, as I find I can bear more tomorrow than I can bear today --- for God meets me where I am - how gracious and loving!).

I choose to love God with all my being, and to love all other humans as myself ... much harm is done when we think we know good from evil, when we think we are called up on to judge from our limited perspective ... when we think in terms of "us vs. them" as if we are the exclusively-enlightened-ones ...

As for the term "new age" ... I find that it's often used in Christian circles as a means of dismissing a new and frightening thought ... that which challenges status quo ... as if God had said, "thou shalt be right" ... as if He told us to defend "all truth" (when we don't even grasp it yet, and can't). Many things that the Church has declared to be "absolute truth" have been reversed ... thinking of geocentricity (earth the center of the universe - it was once a doctrine punishable by death) ... thinking of the many who have been called "heretics", only to have it reversed years later ... and I notice that every now-accepted truth was once declared to be a "blasphemy" by those who held the control of status quo (including the teachings of Jesus Himself).

I find myself wondering ... isn't the notion of a "new age" the very point of all of scripture? Didn't all of the prophets of the old testament foretell a new age to come..? Didn't Jesus say that the old age was soon to end, and a new age was being ushered in (also called the new covenant, which the prophets said was one and the same with the new heavens and new earth).

What if we misconstrued what He was speaking of ...? What if we have largely continued living the old covenant, while merely speaking about the new covenant? What if our traditions continue to nullify the truth of God?

What if perfect love is really meant to cast out all fear, including (especially!) the fear of God? I see that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but that we are not meant to live in fear ... we are meant to mature into responding in love. It seems to me that we don't trust love ... we think that fear is more "useful" for keeping folks in line ... but it really keeps us in enslavement.

Ahhh, I see that I have gone and sermonized on you! You merely asked a simple question ... but I find that the unpacking of this concept really can't be done with a simple "yes" or "no".

I guess, to sum it up, I have slowly lost my fear of the things that are unfamiliar to me, and are outside of the religious framework I'm comfortable with. But I no longer believe that God, or even Christ, are limited to Christianity. I see Christianity as largely manmade ... and that God can never be confined. My own sense is that the Spirit has led me to go forth and to truly trust that leading ... rather than being tethered to the dock in the shallows of safety. I find God in all things, mixed, of course, with the traditions of man. I don't fear those ... I find that love is more powerful than fear, and that I intuitively know what to swallow, and what to taste, and what to spit out.

I do not find that others worship "another god" ... for I find that there is no other God ... there is only one Source of all Life, though He may, and does, manifest in ways too innumerable to count -- including each of us. He is, after all, All in All. All things come from Him, through Him, and return to Him. Even if many journeys are circuitous ... as mine has been. I have found that even if I go "off the deep end", God is indeed out there...!

If you go with how you are being drawn, what you will find, if your experience is anything like mine, is that there will be a wide variety of people ... from different backgrounds ... but a welcoming attitude ... everyone respecting all others ... finding common ground, without anyone mandating what others "should" believe. This is about discovering how God has wired our bodies/minds/souls to work ... rather than being "victims" of circumstances, realizing that we really CAN "take every thought captive", and that we can participate fully in "renewing our minds" ... this is the explanation of one very practical tool, to enable us to do what we are instructed to do. Without blame, shame, and fault-finding ... just owning up to responsibility and recognizing the amazing choices we really do have in this adventure of life.

As for comfort ... I find that God isn't as interested in my comfort as I am, LOL! God is always and forever stretching me out of the limitations of my own comfort zone, into the wildness of all He has to show me (& even using the term "He" is a limitation - for how could All in All be only part of that All?).

It's always UNcomfortable at first, to entertain a new idea ... even frightening at times ... but I've decided that I no longer want the stagnancy of a comfortable life ... I want the full adventure of a life richly experienced ... the former is based on fear ... the latter is based on trust in the One who is ever-drawing me to All that God is ... asking me to let go of all I *think* I know, so that I can be shown, and I can experience, the wondrously mind-blowing "much more" that is meant to delight me to the core...!

Hope this helps, and hope it's neither too wordy, nor too intrusive ... I wrote from my heart, which contains both Spirit promptings, and egoic rantings, LOL! May God show you which is which (and God will)!

Shalom, Dena

Moving from Either/Or to Both/And

It seems to me that when we think in terms of having to choose One Right Conclusion, out of a myriad of possible options, we are unnecessarily limiting ourselves, in a way that I cannot any longer believe is initiated, nor mandated, by God. The God that I'm coming to know and experience cannot be defined in such a way to say "this is God, and that is not God." Of course, we continue to do that ... it's what humans, particularly humans who (knowingly or unknowingly) embrace dualism are wont to do.

Combine that with the threat of punishment for "getting it wrong," for "making the wrong choice," and, well ... that's a recipe for angst-ridden, paralyzed, fear- and shame-based adherents to Performance-ianity. "Get It Right Or Else" doesn't set folks free.

Contrast that perspective with this:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evening, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heat, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

In my case, I had to let go of "getting it right" so that I could fall in love ... and then everything was revealed to me to BE "right". It was never about attaining, it was always about becoming aware of what IS.

Let's look at how Richard Rohr puts it, in his chapter, "Don't Push the River."

- All we have to give away is our own journey. Our own story. The only authority we have in other people's lives is what we ourselves have walked and what we know to be true.

(I notice that what I know to be true today, may not be "ultimate truth"... truth can be that which fits and works for me today, where I currently am, but it can change and deepen over time. Of course I "know" some things ... but I recognize that I know them "for now" ... what is truth for me now, may not be truth for me as I mature, as I'm able to bear truth at a deeper level. For instance, my husband travels quite a bit ... when he does, he calls home each night to say good night to the kids (takes a while, LOL!). My youngest, Benji, age 2, has thought for a while (and I know this because he's profoundly verbal), that when Daddy travels, he shrinks and goes into the phone - physically. He said, at age 18 months, "Daddy - come out of da phone!" Now, for Benji, for now, the concept of Daddy shrinking and going into the phone is his perceived reality ... for now, at this stage of development, that's his "truth." I meet him where he is, and join him in this perception -- I see no need to shatter his perception with a concept that's too far beyond him. As he matures and grasp concepts that are yet-beyond him, he will come to see the folly of that perception. But I let it be ... finding it rather charming that he sees it this way, and knowing that with time and maturity and experience, he will "lose" that which works so well for him now. I see spiritual truth much the same way ... God meets us where we are, showing us truth that we can "bear" ... drawing/dragging us into stretching, so that we can bear more and more - unless we presume that we now, at this stage, know "all truth", and thus become entrenched and resistant to whatever else He's showing us ...)

- My generation is still reacting too much. Maybe the next generation will learn how to put it together.

(Rohr came of age in the 60's ... I did so in the 80's ... so I'm part of the "next generation". I see us, those of us wanting to make a difference here and now, as those who span the bridge between a former consciousness, and an emerging consciousness. Much like those who lived between the two covenants -- for those who don't know, or haven't considered it, the two covenants "overlapped" for a period of 40 years -- or an entire generation. Is something like that happening again? Is the 40-year span from the late 60's to now, another "transition generation"? Is it folly to think of ourselves that way? Does every generation inherently think this way, or is there something to this ... dunno. Just pondering ...)

- The final stage of wisdom of faith is what we might call be coming the Holy Fool. Ironically, the Holy fool is one who knows he doesn't know, but doesn't need to either. Paradoxically, that's the liberating kind of knowing. I'm not saying the Fool sits in some kid of dull ignorance. I am saying he is in a state of inner freedom into which true wisdom comes.

(My heart sings with the longing to be free of the oppression of certaintude, and to embrace the freedom of *not needing to know*...! Ironically, it's in that open-state that true experiential knowing COMES..! It's a way of knowing that's patient with also not knowing. Not being able to prove, just being able to be. And being, when being is experienced, is ENOUGH.)

- I believe we can see a convergence of the Eastern and Western ways of knowing in faith. The Eastern world appreciates what it calls "big mind." or Unitive Consciousness, or "the mind of Christ," a mind that knows and receives all things. It's a kind of panoramic awareness, a fundamental openness and clarity. We recognize that the whole world is connected and we feel a part of it. The West has tended, instead, to emphasize "small mind." Small mind is not necessarily bad. It is just a different perspective. Big mind sees the whole; small mind sees the individual and the parts. The Greco-Roman culture gave us these practical gifts. We can analyze, organize and fix almost anything. Small mind needs big mind for context and perspective, just as big mind needs small mind or it gets lost in mystique and abstraction. When we combine both we have mature faith. Perhaps it is more than accidental that Jesus came from the crossroads between East and West.

(I was fully entrenched and dominated by the West, by the "small mind." So, I currently find all things Eastern to be quite fascinating -- it draws me. We tend to seek that which we've been lacking, in order to find wholeness. However, I notice something -- it seems that when we first encounter the "other side of the equation" we can tend to swing to the opposite extreme, which is just as "unwhole" as where we first began. And yet, that pendulum swing may well be a necessary stage in the process of becoming-whole. Perhaps we need to experience the far extremes in order to see what balance looks like at all.)

- The Buddhists call the small mind the "clinging mind." It wants to attach itself to everything in order to figure out everything, in order to control everything, It doesn't have a high tolerance for mystery or even for ambiguity. Small mind is preoccupied with clarity and control. It deals with specifics and prefers problem-solving. It is pragmatic and goal-oriented. Though both the rational mind and the mystical mind are needed for wholeness, they are not easy partners.

(Out of the small mind has flourished the Western church ... it demands allegiance to doctrines declared by man, and will not believe that which cannot be proven. It doesn't suffer mystics gladly. At its best, it has produced great thinkers. At its worst it has squelched the Spirit.)

- A lot of what is happening in the New Age movement is an attempt to get back to big mind. That's why it is so intriguing. But you've probably met New Age people you'd like to bring down to earth and nail to the floor. They often describe God in shapeless words. They have no accountability system for what they believe, so ego can believe whatever it wants and needs. It can be too eclectic.

(I've had this concern, and yes, I've met folks who are entirely too spiritually minded to be of any earthly/humanly good ... and we ARE, here and now, having an earthly/humanly experience. Yes, the deeper reality is the spiritual reality. But, if that were the goal, why wouldn't we have stayed in the spiritual state it seems we began in? Why even *have* this current "earthly/illusional" experience if it doesn't *matter*..? Are we really meant to enter a spiritual reality and ignore/forsake the seen reality around us? Or were we meant to take what we learn in the spiritual realm, and bring it back to defragment the delusions of the system of blindness that operates in the seen world? It seems to me that any sort of enlightenment that allows us to see and experience the *deeper* spiritual reality, should make us better at living this human life. We should be enabled to better connect, better relate, better enjoy, this beautiful gift-of-seen-life - including all the other humans - for having engaged the deeper and experiential truth. If we turn instead into a disconnected isolationist who is now unable to relate to the rest of mankind, including speaking a language which they cannot comprehend, what good is it...? If we say we love God, but have no love for our brother, what's the point?)

- We need to recognize there is enough temperamental, theological, cultural difference in the world so that we have to be pluralistic to survive. WE need to know that there isn't only one way to look at or serve God. What we know about God is important, but what we do with what we know about God is even more important. Too often people think it is necessary that we all see God in the same way (which is impossible anyway), but what is really necessary is that we all follow God according to what God tells us. The fact that God has given us so many different faces and temperaments and emotions and histories shows us how God honors each unique journey and culture. God is not threatened by differences. It's we who are.

(It's so clear, isn't it? If we look, just really look, at the world and universe created all around us, we will *get* that God is not limited to our skewy perspective. We will get that we keep projecting our stuff, our fears, our misperceptions, our judgments, our pettiness onto God. We keep making a god in our own image.)

- If we can learn to trust God, the next movement of our soul is to trust ourselves. Apparently no one has told many Christians that they could trust themselves. What an unsafe and unexciting world we have created. Jesus tells us in the Gospels, "don't be afraid." He's saying it's radically okay. You can trust yourself because God trusts you, using your journey, your experience. Nothing will be wasted; all has been forgiven; nothing will be used against you. In fact, God will even use your sins to transform you! "Sin shall not be a shame to humans, but a glory - the mark of sin shall be turned to honor." (Julian of Norwich) If that's not good news, what else could it be? What else could be good except that kind of freedom, that kind of spaciousness, that kind of embrace from God that says your life matters? Your journey matters, and God's covenanted love toward you is always unconditionally and unilateral! If you accept this good news, the universe suddenly seems to be a very safe place.

(This message is radical. It's dangerous and threatening to those who have embraced and defend the human tradition that says we blew it, God is pissed, and someone has to pay, and even then God is still mad and has to be appeased, or ELSE! Having been taught to walk this tightrope of pleasing God-who-is-pissed-and-waiting-to-smite, and believing that it's all about doing the "right thing" or having the "right belief", and having come to tell themselves the story that "Hey, I'm doing a good job here - I'm one of the exclusively good ones," they are highly assaulted and offended at the notion of a scandalous grace-message that says, "you're all IN, no one is excluded, all is forgiven, and it always was." Those who rely upon achievement and merit [and make no mistake - having the "right belief", making the "right decision to accept Jesus as Savior" is a "work," coming back down to "what WE do" rather than what God has done!], are the very ones Jesus highlighted in his parables ... they resemble the prodigal's older brother, the ones who worked the vineyard all day, and the man who beat his breast saying, "thank God that *I* am not like that *other man* because *I* have done all things *right*. Grace is scandalously and offensively UNfair -- and it rankles our desire to *earn* favor to the core!)

- Jesus continuously received the story [the person] that was right in front of him and oriented it toward light and freedom. Jesus is the revelation of the heart of God - you do not need to be afraid. You need not fear; your life will be honored and used in your favor! "Sin is behovenly [it 'had to be'] but all shall be well." Nothing inside of us is as bad a our hatred and denial of the bad. Hating it and denying it only complicates our problems. "God comes to us disguised as our life." Everything belongs. God uses everything., There are no dead ends. There is no wasted energy. Everything is recycled. The people who know God well - the mystics, the hermits, and those who risk everything to find God - always meet a lover, not a dictator.

(Can you let yourself entertain the possibility of believing that? What would your life look like if you could? How would your relationships be, if you could? Does something in you want to embrace that, even while something else warns you that it's "too good to be true?" Which, do you believe, would be the Voice of the Spirit? Can you hold that tension inside of you, that tension of having conflicting responses, and allow God to show you what this means, without squelching it, ignoring it, denying it? Can you acknowledge both voices, and let God teach you by sorting it out, with and for you?)

- Could God's love really be that great and that universal? Is life just a school of love? I believe it is. Love is the lesson and God's love is so great that God will finally teach it to all of us. We'll finally surrender, and God will finally win. That will be God's "justice," which will swallow up our lesser versions.

(This is the meaning of "apokatastasis" -- the belief in the early church that everything came from, and would return to, God. Universal restoration -- they believed that the real meaning of the resurrection of Christ was that God's love was so perfect and so victorious that it would finally win out in every single person's life. Apokatastasis was never condemned as heretical in the history of the church -- and we may believe it if it strikes us as true in the intersection of spirit and Spirit.)

- We want to create a system inside of which we can succeed and win and in which forgiveness has no role. WE want to earn salvation and prove ourselves superior. But forgiveness reveals both God's nature and ours. [pause and think on that...] Forgiveness has nothing to do with logic; it is the final breakdown of it. It is a mystical recognition that human evil is something we are all trapped by, suffering from, and participating in. It calls forth weeping, humility, and healing much more than feverish attempts to root out the evil. The transformation happens through tears much more than through threats and punishments. If you look at your life, and I look at mine, we'll both see that we have taken delight in holding people in unforgiveness. There's something sickeningly sweet about holding on to that - it keeps us up and them down. it keeps us with the power and them without the power. It gives us a strange, perverse moral superiority. But that is exactly, I believe, what God does not do! When we go into God's Presence, we find someone not against us, but someone who is definitely for us! "Someone is holding me," "Someone is believing in me." "Someone is for me more than I am for myself." Someone is with me more than I am with myself." "God is closer to me than I am to myself." God is a lover. And all relationships are a school of communion.

(What more could I possibly add to that?!? Yes, I have indeed felt that sickeningly sweet sense of moral superiority ... yet another illusion-appearing-as-real. And yet, as I recognize that, I do not sense condemnation, I sense God saying, "good, you're seeing it - wonderful, I'm proud of you." As I see it, as I really see it, looking closely at it, with the aid of the Light, that dark thing becomes absorbed by the Light, and it's a nothing, a no-thing. It disappears ... and if it ever appears again, I can look at it again. Without the shame and blame game of the ego's dramatics...! Actually, even then, when I come to recognize that shame/blame game, I can *use* my ego as the revelational tool that it's meant to be ... not something to kill off, but something to use for transformation ... see? ALL things are ultimately good!)

Next time, I'll explore God's most dangerous disguise ... using sex as a metaphor for understanding/experiencing God ...! ;)

Shalom, Dena