Science and Spirit

Devorah was blessed with visions of the future. In one she foresaw the Holocaust and in another, the restored Jerusalem of today. In the following vision she is a PH.D. student in a neuroscience lecture. Science as we understand it was unknown in Devorah’s time and she marvels at its ability to explain much of what she knew of how God worked.

 “Do you know the difference between being conscious and being consciously aware,” the lecturer asked? “The human brain has a unique capacity – reflection – conscious awareness, the ability to observe and understand its own inner workings - consciousness. A neurological transformation occurs when we reflect causing the brain to grow stronger connections between its different parts. We are able to see patterns and habits and discern the fundamental differences between everyday consciousness and consciousness itself.

“We are able to connect the oldest most primitive part of our brains – the amygdala – the fear center, source of the flight or fight response, with the newest parts – the insula and anterior cingulate, source of compassion, hope, joy and creativity. With the practice of self reflection” - what I think of as going within first, prayer and mindfulness, Devorah realized – “we can actually shrink the size of the amygdala, alter the thalamus and thus change our perception of reality. We can even expand frontal lobe consciousness and with it our ability to think with concepts and abstractions and enhance intuition, compassion, creativity, and decision making skills.”

Devorah smiled. So, she thought, this is the scientific explanation of the at-one-ment, of my connection to God and spirit and my birthright as a spiritual being having an earthly experience! This is the reason our daily prayers and rituals work!

“Set aside ten to twenty minutes a day for watching but not judging the thoughts and feelings that endlessly flow through your everyday consciousness and you will become calmer, sharper and more compassionate. Stay completely relaxed and centered while doing this and insights with the power to reshape your entire life will soon erupt. That’s the difference between being conscious and being consciously aware.”

 

Miracles

“It will take a miracle for us to defeat the Canaanites,” Barak said to Devorah. “They have iron weapons, we have only copper ones. They outnumber us 5 to 1. They have 400 chariots, we have none.”

“All true my general,” Devorah said. “But if we have just a little willingness and allow spirit to shift our thinking we will have all the power we need.” Barak shook his head doubtfully. “We can’t know how the Canaanite defeat and our victory will occur, Barak. We can only know that with God all things are possible.

“We on earth have no conception of limitlessness for the world we think we live in is a world of limits. The miracle brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle itself is but a witness that we have the power of God in us. Of course, the Canaanites also have the power to witness. But if they do not believe as you and I and our people must believe, then It will not work for them. It is only as strong as our belief in It. If we believe a little, It will manifest a little. If we believe a lot, It will manifest a lot.

“Those who remember always that of themselves they can do nothing and know nothing, and who have become willing to do what is necessary and learn everything, will learn it. That is the way of miracles. Whenever we trust ourselves, ourSelves can not teach us and we will not learn. Thinking we have learned and already know destroys our motivation to learn. Whenever we think we know, even of Spirit’s love and miracles, we have abandoned the Teacher of peace. Remember, it is the ego that plans, fears and must know. Whenever we realize we know not and don’t care or worry that we know not, peace and knowing will return. Miracles come when we let go and let God.”

Forgive

“Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished,” Devorah said to the multitude. “Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. At-one-ment with spirit, everyone and everything becomes real and visible to those who use it. This is your only function within the ego’s illusory nightmare. You will feel isolated, alienated and guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes – fear, hate, blame, disease – guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in spirit’s mind and in your own.

“Decide that spirit is right and you are wrong about yourself. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Fail not yourSelf. For the little appreciation you offer It, It will give you all of Itself. Learn how to go within, seek the at-one-ment and decide with God. Give up these frantic and insane attempts at decision making that cheat you of the joy of living as yourSelf. Leave all decisions for the inner voice that speaks for spirit. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard.

“Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not without you. You who have tried to throw yourSelf away and valued your at-one-ment with spirit so little, remember that communication with spirit is life. Nothing without it is at all.”

 

Make No Decisions Alone

“Every decision you undertake alone, without going within and asking the still small voice’s counsel, signifies you would define what salvation is, and what you would be saved from.”

“But we have the Ten Commandments and all God’s other laws. Surely all we need do is follow them?” Malachizer protested.

“Those are good guidance, Malachizer, but not enough. Each of us is a center of divine wisdom, living in times Moses could not have conceived of. Be quiet in your faith in the spirit that only loves, blesses and condemns not, that sees through the illusions and insanities of the ego’s nightmare world. Madness may be your choice, but it is not your reality. All of spirit’s love is always and ever available to us, free and clear, without rules, commandments, rituals or dispensations and in spite of our imagined sins.

“Go within first, seek and heed spirit’s guidance. It always knows and is always willing to love, support and guide. Why struggle so frantically to anticipate all you cannot know, when all knowledge lies behind every decision you allow the still small voice to make for you?  How gracious it is to decide all things through the one power that loves all things equally and alike. It includes everyone and everything, judges not and excludes no one and no thing.

“In everything be led by It, and do not reconsider. Trust It to answer quickly, surely and with love for everyone and everything that will be touched in any way by the decision you are facing. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone and everything? Could you even know this? Unlearn isolation through spirit’s loving guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.”

The Exchange

“The journey that we undertake together, beloveds,” Devorah said to the multitude. “Is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding, of hate, blame and fear for love, joy, compassion and creativity. Nothing that you understand aright, as a spiritual being having an earthly experience, is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening and shrink away from it into deeper darkness. Only the hidden can terrify, not for what it is, but for its hiddenness.

“The obscure is frightening because you do not understand it. If you did, it would be clear and you would no longer be in the dark. Nothing can have hidden value for what is hidden cannot be shared, so its value in unknown. The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, so it must be feared.

“The quiet light within in which you dwell and which is yourSelf, is perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. Attack will always, always, yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power.

“Why when all the love, blessings, creativity, miracles, compassion, peace and joy there is await your attention, would you turn from it, deny it and indulge in fear mongering, hate, exclusion, constriction, blame and punishment instead? Stop! Just stop and turn from darkness to light.”

Moore, OK: Punishment or Opportunity?

Malachizer, the High Priest, was a man of traditional beliefs who saw God as a rule bound judge, meeting out justice – rewards and punishment - to the humans below Him. Devorah saw God differently as a benign and loving power. Malachizer would see the devastation at Moore, OK, as God’s will, as some kind of punishment for humankind’s original sin.

“Never ask what you have done to make yourself worthy of God’s gift of life, Malachizer, or what you must do to find favor in His eyes and avoid His wrath. God is but love and life and knows you are worthy of everything. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving, God knows you are.”

Malachizer frowned. “Would you deny the truth of God’s decision and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself and humanity in place of Its calm and unswerving love?” Devorah asked. “Nothing can shake spirit’s conviction of the perfect purity of everything that It created. Do not decide against It. Peace abides in every mind that quietly goes within and accepts the at-one-ment that is its birthright. Go within first, Malachizer. Only go within! You know not of salvation, for your limited ego-bound self can not comprehend it. Make no decisions about Justice, Compassion and Peace on your own with ego, but ask the still small voice within, and leave all decisions to its gentle counsel.”

In Memorium: Moore, OK

As I watched the pictures of the devastation at Moore, OK, and thought of what my brothers and sisters were enduring there my heart broke open and I almost cried. I felt anger too, because this need not have been so fierce, that what happened in Moore, OK, was something we did and are still doing to ourselves, something that we can stop doing, but won’t. How sad!

Yes tornados and hurricanes will come, but their intensity and frequency, the destructiveness and duration we’ve seen in recent years are very likely the result of global climate change. Yet like so many other things – poverty, child and spouse abuse, drone strikes and joblessness – we deny responsibility for what is happening. Perhaps you and I as individuals are not directly responsible, but collectively we are.

Churchill said people get the government they deserve. How sad and how true! Lately what is being done and left undone in our name as Americans makes me ashamed. We do indeed seem to have the best government money can buy. Not so much at the local level, but at the state and federal levels that’s shamefully obvious. Yet we allow it. What goes on is a reflection of our beliefs. It is done unto us as we believe.

The challenge is to help one another release the beliefs and kinds of thinking that have created our present situation. We don’t want to cling to the old rugged cross, we don’t want to do more of the same - blaming, fearing and hating one another. All that’s of the ego. We’ve got to let that kind of feeling, thinking and behaving go. We’ve got to, or it will only get worse! The handwriting’s on the wall, will we heed it?

The enemy’s not out there in the form of the Chinese or al-Qaida, it’s in here, inside us. We have met the enemy and they is us, Pogo said 40 years ago. We don’t need more tanks and aircraft carriers to defend us, we need education, creativity and innovation. Global climate change can be managed. Lives and property can be saved. The billions we spend on defense can, if we have the insight, inner faith, vision and courage, be re-programmed to solve our real challenges, to defend us from what we really need to be defended against – poverty, child and spouse abuse, drone strikes and joblessness, blaming, fearing and hating one another.

The destruction of Moore, OK, can be an opportunity, not for the martyrs who died and suffered there for their and our ‘sins’, but for the rest of us. Let’s do what we can to have fewer Moores, Sandy Hooks and Katrinas. There’s lot’s we can do. Let’s stop doing what we always do - thinking, feeling and behaving with the ego’s pride and hubris, thinking we can build a sand castle that will hold back the tide. Instead, let’s do what we really haven’t given a chance, go within seek the Kingdom first – its compassion, inclusion, love and creativity and go from there. After all, if we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got – Moore 1999, Moore 2013 and Moore…?