December 14, 2010

We are so ready and willing to go through hell in this life as we make our journey.  And we really work at it.  We put out the effort, we work hard to do what we think we need to do, and many times it feels like hell.  We’re really looking for heaven.  We’re looking for our purpose.  We’re looking for the road that is ours and that will lead us home.  But something’s off, something’s not right.  We seem to have missed something along the way.

Whether we know it or not, we are looking for our divinity.  We’re looking for our connection to God, the holy, and what is real in the highest sense of reality.  But we are working too hard.  We’re looking in all the wrong places.  We’re taking the journey that circles round and round, making the journey a journey.  What we have forgotten is that what we are looking for is already with us.  It’s deep within our true being.  It is the reality of who we are.  And we’ve been looking so hard for it everywhere outside of us where it is not.

Just for a moment, stop.  Spirit is waiting for us to just open up the door a little.  The realm of heaven on earth is right there within us. Our Divinity is there within the depths of our own being.  It’s shining brightly, beckoning us to let Spirit show us, speak to us, and shine through us.  It is our task to relax and let what is within us come out; let our true Oneness shine on all around us.  This is the path to the awareness of who we really are.  The journey need not be difficult, foe we have the wings of Spirit to carry us and we have the arms of God to hold us.  This is the Justice of God returned to Love.  And as we return to Love, we are in the Peace of God where we are home.

December 7, 2010

In this world we have a certain idea of what justice is.  We often say “justice has been served” when a wrong has been paid for, the perpetrator of the wrong has been punished, and the accused found guilty.  This is what the world generally calls justice.  Sometimes we also say justice has been served when a wrong has been made right.  Though we load this statement with a lot of baggage based of the previous thoughts, this concept is closer to the Course idea of justice.

The Course asks for no punishment, no guilt, and no payment for any wrong or mistake.  It only asks us to forgive, to change our perception and see more correctly.  It asks us to be wiling to see differently.  In many ways the Course’s idea of justice is closer to our world’s idea of Social Justice.  In most cases, social justice is the effort to raise the less fortunate close to some level of equality, whether it is access to housing, food on the table, fair employment, or equal rights in our society.

As we move through our lives, are we willing to forgive?  Are we willing to see each one we come into relationship with as God created them?  Are we willing to even see ourselves as God created us, as God sees us now?  Everything that has ever come into our lives is a place to start.  The Holy Spirit uses whatever we have where we are right now to help us make the shift to the awareness of who we really are and who all others we encounter really are.  Simply allowing ourselves to see with the eyes, hear with the ears, and think with the mind of Spirit is our step to understanding God’s justice and return to the awareness of Love deep within us and all around us.

We need not make this shift ourselves.  We are so attached to our habitual way of thinking and the ideas we have believed all our lives that to make this shift alone is nearly impossible.  Yet we are already there and don’t see it.  This is the paradox.  Spirit asks us only to be a little willing to allow Spirit to show us.  Spirit asks only a little faith, just enough to be a little open to its guidance.  Each time we allow that little bit of enlightenment, we shift into the holy instant and experience the fullness of who we really are.  And step by step we begin to see God’s justice, the return to the awareness where there is never a lack of love and no one must lose anything to have the full abundant love of God flowing from deep within each soul.  As the awareness of justice comes to us, we return to Love.