Living Within Spirit

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

7 - LIVING WITHIN SPIRIT

Regardless of our spiritual faith and religious beliefs, “being spiritual” ultimately requires us to live spiritually.  Regardless of how we conceptualize “God,” or “the Universe,” living spiritually ultimately requires us to think, speak, and act from a perspective greater than just our self.  Greater than the individual.  Greater than the normal human experience.  Letting go of being the all-important center of everything.

 

But how do we transform “living spiritually” from just words, an ideal, a goal, into an everyday way of truly being?  A being such that living spiritually does not just happen in special moments set aside for that purpose (e.g. weekly church or temple), but infuses in some manner everything we think/say/do.  Such that the line of separation between secular life and spiritual life blurs to become virtually indistinguishable, without separation.

 

It is not about continually screaming our spirituality at the top of our lungs for all within earshot to hear.  It is the opposite: a secure quietness that knows one’s spirituality in one’s own heart; there is no need for speech-making.  It is in the doing itself; there is no need for recognition and approbation for that doing.

 

Living spiritually means knowing and accepting many things.  It means “God” – whether “Spirit, Universe, Allah, Nature, Tao” or any other of the many names we may use or forms we may envision – is a constant and interactive presence in our life.

 

It means understanding that we are here in human form and existence to fulfill a mutual understanding we have with God for this life.  That we will live our life within the framework of God’s thinking and expectations.  That though we have “free will” to make our own choices about our actions, we always choose to make our thoughts and actions consistent with God’s thoughts and actions.

 

It means acknowledging that the outcome of our life is not solely the result of our own singular activity, but the collective actions of many brought to bear on our life.  That all that comes into our life reflects both the actions of others fulfilling their own life’s agreement with God, as well as God’s use of them for our greater benefit.  That remaining humble towards the limitations of our accomplishments is as important as celebrating the achievement of our accomplishments.

 

It means God, and Life, can be trusted, so we do not live intimidated by fear.  That God will provide what we need, which may or may not be what we perceive is needed; when we need it, which may or may not fit our timeline; in the form we truly need, which may or may not be the form we desire.  That we therefore give God time and space to contribute God’s part of what happens to us.

 

It means we have faith that all that happens to us carries a benefit inside of it, even if that benefit is not always obvious or disclosed at the time.  That we trust that – IF we are living within God –  regardless of the short-term effect, all things will be right for our highest good in the long-term.

 

It means when we are truly connected with God, then what we are doing now is exactly what we are supposed to be doing in this moment.

 

It means God honors us as we honor God.  That God and I are spiritually One.  Living spiritually means living as that One.

 

©  2015   Randy Bell                www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

God And I Are One

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

6 - GOD AND I ARE ONE

Have you ever watched a devoted couple speak such that either can complementarily complete the sentences of the other?  Where one can seemingly read the thoughts of the other?  Have you ever worked for a boss so closely, in such lockstep, on such a shared wavelength of goals and purpose, that other employees or customers readily accept your word as though coming directly from your boss (“my right-hand assistant”)?  Have you ever been part of a group, working on a shared endeavor, in which everyone worked in perfect synchronicity, each knowing what needed to be done and effortlessly moving together toward perfect completion – “the team” transcending the individual?

In each of these scenarios, each person is operating at a level far different from his/her normal functioning.  In tune.  Connected.  Multiple individuals extending and merging into one greater whole.  As all of the thousands of individual parts come together to create the single thing we call an automobile.  The many both separate and distinct now unified into one greater whole.

So it is with God.  Jesus famously said, “I and the Father are One.”  (John 10:30)  For many in the Christian faith, these words led to the idea of the Trinity: an attempt to clarify the relationship among God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Three distinct entities, three separate roles, each equal to the other, all combined into – yet individual manifestations of – One.  This Trinitarian belief became central to the early Catholic faith, adopted as official Church dogma in the 4^th Century CE.  A belief that later became a key litmus test of religious fidelity (and a basis for declaring one a heretic and invoking the persecution thereof).

Continuing into some later Protestant religions, “the Trinity” to this day gives explanation and comfort to many, anchoring their religious faith and understanding.  For non-Christian religions, some non-Trinitarian Christian denominations, and for some individuals, it brings more confusion than understanding, a discomfort with the concept and where its implications lead.  For these, is there an alternative way that Jesus’ words might be understood?

Perhaps by recognizing that the human being Jesus was One with God in a spiritual unification.  One in the melding of thinking, feeling, words and actions.  One in the understanding of the Universe and its higher workings and unique forms.  One whose vision was universal, seeing the big picture of Life and Humanity.  One who knows no separation from other beings, or from life that exists in any other forms.  One who knows their human Self, but is willing – and desirous – to lose that Self in spiritual union with God.  And so “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.”  (John 10:38)

As Jesus was in God, God was in Jesus.  A partnership going both ways, not in Being, but in Spirit.  A non-Trinitarian Jesus shows us that such a union with God is not reserved only to god-forms, but to human beings themselves.  Such union is available to each of us if we so desire it, if that desire is willing to sacrifice our ego of separation to our spirit of unification.  It is a desire we all have within us, but a desire to which few are willing to fully open and commit themselves.

And so my personal daily mantra: “God and I are One.  In all that I Think.  In all that I Say.  In all that I Do.”  Said over and over again, I remind myself of my true spiritual being, my true spiritual path.  These moments of divine sharing give peace and quiet confidence to life.  All in One.  God and I Are One.  Not God, but As God.  In perfect, unified Spirit.

©  2015   Randy Bell                            www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

Surender Unto God

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

5 - SURRENDER UNTO GOD

“Surrender Unto God.”  Giving ourselves over to God, and God’s Will for us, is an oft-repeated call in the Jewish and Christian heritages.  It is a core tenet of Islam (“surrender unto God” being the literal translation of “Islam”).  A central concept of Buddhism is to extinguish our sense of being a “separate, independent self” and to instead devolve into “no-self” – an interconnected and interdependent being with all things in the Universe.  And the Taoists remind us that there is a larger life force (the Tao) that drives through all of Life and Nature.  Our job is to surrender to, and align ourselves with, the direction and pacing of this force.

Our Spiritual Self is attracted to the beauty of this idea, the giving over of our Self to the unifying Oneness of God and the Universal Reality.  The Human Self – especially in its Western orientation – recoils at this prospect.  We protest, “What about my individuality, my uniqueness, my separate Being?  What about living my own life as I choose?  Isn’t that what my Free Will is all about?”

All things start with Creation.  And all Creation comes with Purpose.  We see this truth every time we focus on any object, and see that object in its fullest meaning.  Every thing is formed, evolves and changes, and then expires.  Within that cycle, every thing has a function, a role to play, a point to accomplish, interconnected with other things.  The food chain; the workings of animal and human societies; the village that feeds, clothes, and raises a child.  This Purpose, these functions, are inherently in the very being of our existence.  Our Purpose from God from the act of our Creation.

It is to this Purpose of God that we are called to surrender.  It is not an option; we committed to it when we agreed to our birth.  Our ability to choose, our Free Will, is in the HOW through which we fulfill our Purpose, not the Whether.  God works at the Purpose and Outcomes level; we work at the detail, mechanics level.  Our Free Will is in how we realize (or not) our agreement with our Creation.  We have the human ability to go pretty far afield, to wander down paths that take us far away from Purpose.  Take us deeply into Self and into temporary gratifications and the pursuit of human success, forgetting the Spiritual Person that we also are.  Forgetting that our Free Will bumps up against the Free Will of others, all of whom also work within God’s Universal Truths.  And so when we finally discover that our human Victories won for our Self are in fact fleeting and hollow, and ultimately un-nourishing, then we finally turn to Surrender.  Surrender of Human Self to our greater Spiritual Self.  Surrender of our blinding ego to the clear vision of our Spirit.  Surrender of our lonely separated Self into the awaiting fullness and connection of all of Life.  In surrendering the small things of our ego, we realize the truer large victory of our Soul.

We surrender our singularity to the Universal plurality.  We surrender our fear into love.  We surrender our lost-ness to the compass of our Spirit.  Surrendering in this way does not diminish us, it expands us.  It does not lessen us, it fulfills us.  This is the true basis of the Free Will we have – to choose a life of fear and aloneness, or a life of confidence and connection.  We have the choice of going our own way in a false sense of our “independence.”  Or we can freely choose to assert our will to live connected with that greater whole that is God and the Universe.  To surrender into spiritual victory.

©  2015   Randy Bell                www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

Free Will

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

4 - FREE WILL

Free Will.  It is one of the fundamental components of being human.  The ability to make our own choices about our actions, the directions we will pursue, the life we will lead.  It is one of those key elements that allows us to define who we will be in this existence, to differentiate our Self from all others.

It is also one of the biggest challenges to being human.  Our days are filled with decision-making, one after another.  Small decisions needed to get us through the daily functions of our life.  What will I eat for breakfast?  What will I wear today?  What route will I take to work?  It can all become exhausting, sometimes leading us to wish that someone would just swoop in and make all the decisions for us so as to give us some relief.  But not really.

Then there are the larger decisions which weigh more heavily upon us.  For example decisions about Authority – how will I respond to one who has some measure of control over me?  How will I exercise the authority I have over others?  Decisions about Ethics – how will I respond to someone or some situation pushing me into unethical conduct?  But what are my standards of ethics anyway?  Decisions about career and life role – what will I do with my life?  What talents do I have and wish to explore?  What is my Life Purpose?  Decisions about my Spiritual Self – what do I believe about God and the Universe?  How will I demonstrate and actualize those beliefs?  Who shall I associate with (or not) in following that spiritual path?

Even so, the hardest part about our Free Will is not all the decisions we have to make.  It is taking personal ownership of these decisions, and responsibility for their outcomes and consequences.  We enjoy (for the most part) having the right of Free Will for the decisions that affect us, and not having our life dictated to by others.  But the outcomes of our Free Will are not always so enjoyable.  The desired goal falls short; “unintended consequences” arise that we did not foresee; expected allies become unexpected enemies.  Sometimes we may accept some of that responsibility.  But often we are prone to deflect responsibility for negative outcomes on to others.  It was their fault; they did not understand; they did not do their expected part.  Yet in fact we all have some role in the negative consequences that affect us.  Acknowledging and taking ownership of our part is not only our ethical responsibility.  It is also the first step in the complicated and difficult process of Forgiveness and Reconciliation.

Free Will is the ultimate plaything of the ego.  Which makes it so difficult to give it away even in those times when it needs to be given away.  When we are part of a team.  When no decision is actually needed from us at all.  When we need to respect other people’s exercise of their own Free Will.  When we need to mind our own business.  When the Universe exercises its own will.

Free Will also allows us to decide not to exercise our Free Will .  To suspend our ego, and give ourselves over to something larger, more important.  To the Cause.  To the Higher Good – of our Self, of others.  To God.  To give up our Free Will, to align our Self with God’s Will for us, with God’s ideal Perfection, does not diminish the essence of our Self.  It does not negate the independence of our Self.  Rather, it guides us into selecting the best of our choices in the free, un-coerced judgment of our own perfected Free Will.

©  2015   Randy Bell                www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com 

In His Own Image

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

3 - IN HIS OWN IMAGE

Genesis 1:26-27: “And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.  And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”  (Torah)

Thusly provides one explanation for the Creation of human beings.  And possibly also an explanation of the physical form of human beings – “in our image, after our likeness.”  For many people, this leads to the belief that we look like God, and thereby God looks like us.  Hence God represented as the grandfatherly human being in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.  Yes, there are three billion individual versions of human beings on this planet, so the detail can vary considerably.  But the essence of “human form” is common between us and God.  Or is it?

An “image” can also be a conceptualization in one’s mind.  In one’s “imagination.”  A visual artist imagines a painting; a musician creates a song; an architect designs a building.  Not as a “likeness” but as a realization of an image conceived in thought.  There is an intention, an intuitive mental fragment, which gives way to something real and substantial.  It moves from the hidden obscurity of the creator’s mind into a substance interpretable by one or more of our senses.

And so it may be that God’s image for us was not a reproduction of form, but an actualization of God’s imagination (image) for what we would be.  In that image was some physical form, but also Purpose, Context, and Setting for our humanness.  And part of that human context is imagination itself.  The capacity for imagination is its own gift passed on from God as part of the creation of us, our own ability to be “a creator” just as God is “the Creator.”

Why is this question of “image” even important?  Unless and until we come to see God “face-to-face,” the question is truly unanswerable  in our human lifetime.  Yet the question of whether God is of human form, a circulating electronic energy field, or is no definable form at all, can influence our expectations of, and relationship to, God.

Envisioning God as Michelangelo’s grandfatherly presence – a human God – risks seeing and understanding God as limited to the constraints of human capabilities, yet God is surely beyond the scope of human capabilities.  Conversely, God in human form can suggest that we are equivalent to God, exalting us far beyond what is warranted when it is humility that is always expected of us.  God is in each of us, and each of us is in God.  But we are not God.  We simply strive “to be as God.”

Yet if we accept the unknowable ambiguity of God’s form, and any resemblance of us to it, then that void of mystery keeps us open to, and accepting of, the infinite reality that God truly is.  “God” is a transcendent scope far beyond our imagination, part of a Universe our human minds cannot begin to understand, existing in a reality so different from the human world that we can never fully comprehend it in our human lifetime.  And so an “imageless God” keeps us always searching, never complacent, ever humble, always expansive in our search for the Truth that is God.  In Truth, we are more likely to find God when we accept God’s vast ambiguity than when we seek God’s specificity.

The early Hebrews had it right.  The God beyond naming (Yahweh) is the God beyond knowing.  It is all right if God is beyond our imagination to visualize.  It is sufficient that we are within God’s imagination of us.  And that God created us as the realized image from that imagination.

©  2015   Randy Bell                www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

The Spiritual Parent

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

2 - THE SPIRTUAL PARENT

Parenting is hard work.  That statement is certainly no surprise to someone who is, or has been, an active, connected parent.  Or has been an engaged member of the collective community with some partial responsibility for the raising of a child.

It is hard because every child is a unique human being, and therefore requires a teaching approach that corresponds to that uniqueness.  Even if certain common outcomes across such diversity are deemed desirable by society.

It is hard because parent and child, teacher and student, are both moving targets.  The child is continually growing, changing, maturing, moving through new experiences – all of which require continually modified interactions.  But the parent, in spite of the appearance of being the knowing and experienced one, is also continually growing, changing, maturing, moving through new experiences –  requiring decisions to be continually made from an ever-changing knowledge base.  Both parent and child are seeing life anew every day.  So the parent must constantly adapt from being a changing teacher to also being a changing student.  Lessons are re-formed each day.  Yesterday’s Lesson is not today’s Lesson.

It is hard because the quantity and content of interaction between parent and child diminishes over the lifetimes of each.  Starting from total, all-consuming interaction with an infant, each year that interplay is reduced as the child becomes more independent and self-sufficient.  The words from the parent become more muted as the child finds its own voice.  The responsibility for that gradual disengagement lies with the parent, both in quantity and the content chosen for discussion.  The pacing of disengagement is crucial, yet the measurement of a parent’s effectiveness in this can only be determined well after the fact.

It is hard because the child needs guidance from the parent.  But simply telling the child to “do this” is not guidance; that only creates a rote human being unable to think and decide on its own.  It is hard because the child needs honest assessment, but constant judgment and criticism neuters the child’s sense of worth and self-assuredness.  How easily good intentions can get lost in the forest of a parent’s many thoughts and actions.

It is hard because we are tempted by reflex to think and act from our own belief system and our own vision for the child’s eventual outcomes.  Yet our true parental Charge is to help the child discover its own belief system and reach his/her own outcomes, regardless of how much or little it may parallel our life.  We are entrusted to assist a brand new standalone life, not to have a second chance at reliving our own life.

It is hard because it requires infinite patience and unshakable love, regardless of the child’s outcomes.  Yet it also requires unclouded objectivity to see those outcomes clearly and unadorned through unblinded lenses.  “Support” and “concurrence” remain two distinctly different interactions between parent and child.

This is the parent we ideally seek to model.  But it is the parent God already is.  Not the parent of our bodies teaching us life survival skills; that is the job of our human parents.  God is the parent of our spirit, that true essence of our genuine and transcendent Self.  To that Self, God brings tailored teachings as we transition to different phases of our life; gradually withdraws engagement with us as we grow, though never fully leaving us; continually guides us and does not dictate to us, while expecting us to draw our own conclusions and then to test and act upon those.  God does so for each of us individually in our lifetime; for us as a collective, maturing humanity of civilization over centuries.  God does all of this with unbreakable love and patience, while being always available and alongside of us.  It is a spiritual relationship, a union, such that as we each exist independently, so we also exist interdependently.  The line that separates us with God and among each other is infinitesimally minute.

The relationship between God and the spiritual child never ends.  It is a relationship that we are obligated to continually explore, perfect, nurture and draw upon.  For our life, our very existence, are inseparable from God.  To fulfill that relationship obligates both God and us to perform our respective roles in that mutual connection.  For in the end, it is this relationship that transcends all of our daily human endeavors.  It is this relationship that matters most of all.

© 2015   Randy Bell                 www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com

Being Connected

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD:

 

1 - BEING CONNECTED

Have you ever had that moment, that experience, when all that surrounds you feels like it simply envelops you?  When you disappear into your surroundings and all becomes one and the same?  Not each thing a separate part, a separate existence, but everything – including you – are one larger whole.  Perhaps for just a split second; perhaps longer.  It may even be hard to know, because in such instances time seems almost forgotten, irrelevant.

I had that experience often in my younger days as a musician.  Mind, body, fingers, keyboard and piano would seemingly dissolve and feel instead as one musical instrument.  The music would seem to play itself, I just an observer watching.  Such were moments to be treasured.

Such also can be the experience of the fisherman sitting alone in the quiet of the boat; rod, water, sky and fish all becoming one still-life portrait.  Or the artist, whose block of stone or canvas comes alive through one’s fingertips.  The moment when a computer techie’s program goes “live”; the hiker’s walk through the dense, majestic forest; the cyclist or runner pushing down the track at top speed; the actor and the role melding into an indistinguishable one.

It is when the liturgy moves beyond just words and becomes mind, body and heart.  When both persons in a conversation seem to – for the first time really – speak as one voice, one thought.  Each truly understand the other in a deeper, more complete way than before.  It is the moment on the mountain when the expansive view of the mountains and neighboring valley all become simply one true landscape.  It is the moment when the sense of one family, one team, transcends the sense of Self.

The spiritual seeker knows such an experience.  Those flashes when the surroundings meld into the person.  It is “connection.”  A moment of no separation, in contrast to the separateness we normally feel in our daily interactions with life.  A separateness we often think we want as a way to define and highlight our individuality and uniqueness.  But that individuality comes at the price of separation, of being spiritually alone in the world, oblivious to the larger story within which we actually live.  It is only when we finally burn out in our quest to stand apart from all else that the desire for connection begins to grow.  A small seed, then a crack in our hard shell, followed by a gradual broadening of our “logical” mind, until finally a brilliant flowering of thought and heart.

So we begin to seek a personal connection beyond just the physical environment that we can see and feel, but to that which is beyond our vision and touch.  A connection to what we may call the Universe, Spirit, Creator, God, or any of a hundred different names.  They are the moments when we simply know what the Universe is, know what being a part of God means, know what our life and priorities are truly about.  We no longer just seek to know; we simply do know.  As the 14^th -century mystic described, it is through the veiled cloud of unknowing that knowing occurs.  Without any needed explanation.  We are simply there.  Not separated.  Connected.

"When we try to take out one thing, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."  (John Muir, American Conservationist)

© 2015   Randy Bell               www.OurSpiritualWay.blogspot.com