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Wisdom Quote
Away, then, with the fictions and workings of discursive reason, either for or against Christianity! They are only the wanton spirit of the mind, while ignorant of God and insensible of its own nature and condition. Death and life are the only things in question: life is God living and working in the soul; death is the soul living and working according to the sense and reason of bestial flesh and blood. Both this life and this death are of their own growth, growing from their own seed within us, not as busy reason talks and directs, but as the heart turns either to the one or to the other.
*William Law. In Aldoux Huxley. The Perennial Philosophy.
Comments
Much we have ascribed to God is the innate, spiritual law that reflects the Creator. We are embedded within, for part of, that law by being part of Nature.
God does not go around as cosmic judge condemning some to life and some to death, meting out universal justice, pronouncing sentence based on goodness or badness~at least not in an elementary, anthropomorphic way many still talk exclusively of the Divine. Indeed, this somewhat elementary personalization of God is one reason that likely many can no longer see the common sense in much church teaching.
God applies life and death, spiritually, in an anthropomorphic manner as little as deciding who will get a tan or not. The person with face toward the shadow does not get the tan; the person with face turned into the rays of the Sun gets the tan. The person who drinks sufficiently does not die of thirst; one who does not get sufficient fluids dies. If you stand uncovered in the rain, you get wet; if you hold an umbrella over you, you remain dry.
Then, as the tan is in the rays, the sustenance is in the fluid, and the wetness is in the rain, so with the Spirit. Death and life, as all subsidiary matters in the life of Spirit, pertain to only one matter, regardless of all the complexity of spiritual and religious systems. The one matter is the direction of the heart.
What do we mean by heart? Heart is not the emotional aspect. Heart is the inner substance of will. Our will determines the direction we tend toward. With will we face what is implied in the words life and death, God and Satan, heaven and hell, love and hate, truth and falsehood, authenticity and hypocrisy, ...
As Law taught, the seed of life and death are already within us. I speak of this as the potential residing already within us. The potential of all created dualities are within us; we choose which we will nurture.
A spiritual law is that two contraries cannot equally abide in the same space; indeed, an opposite reality will lessen the force of the contrary reality. Turn toward life, death begins receding; turn toward death, life begins to recede.
A ritual term applies to this: insufflation. Insufflation is the breathing on a thing as a symbolic gesture of the incoming inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The in-spiration is, then, the in-breathing of the Holy Spirit.
This is the Christian meaning of what I am saying, which does not exclude Divine Grace: The person is inspired according to the direction of his or her heart. Not even God can give the needed spiritual vitality to a person refusing to turn toward spiritual life.
Then, where is Grace? Grace is the self-communication of God in the person; this communication enables turning of the will to God, or life. The enabling continues as long as the person is receptive to the Divine impulse. United Methodists refer to this initiating Grace as prevenient grace, or preceding grace. The slightest desire to seek spiritual life arises from Life, or God, for the life we seek, seeing that it does not abide in us by created nature~that is, it does not abide in its pureness but at the aspect of spirit~must arise from One Vitality that is source and substance.
This applies to all virtue, or the positive qualities that over-all define our view of God as consummate Good. We receive in part that which is perfect in God, or whole in the Divine, and we receive this by the most subtle turn of will toward Life.
This spiritual law is so clear and so shared in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that I am amazed at how more crude and elementary forms of teaching and images of God still predominant in much of the church. We are creators with the Divine; the direction we turn the heart is determinative in the shape our creative potency takes. This is a stewardship God gives us by nature of being of God.
Let us turn, today, in prayer, meditation, remembrance of God, and by doing good in the name of Christ, to the insufflation of the Holy Spirit. As we turn toward the things of Life, Life will flow into us, for that is the nature of the Holy Spirit~to freely give and to the extent the will opens to receive.
Spiritual Exercise
1. Choose a friend who aspires to live daily in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Do the rite of insufflation for each other. After the breathing-on, each speaks over the other divine qualities: like, life, joy, peace, forgiveness, wisdom, ... The one being pronounced over continues in a receptive and reverential silence of Love.
2. Breath-Prayer
Breathing in: Holy Spirit
Breathing out: I receive
Brian will respond to requests pertaining to seeking a Spiritual Mentor. He offers retreats, workshops, and classes in such subjects as Contemplative Prayer (he trains in Visualized Praying, Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation, The Jesus Prayer, ...); Contemplative Living; A Spiritual Understanding of the Lord's Prayer; Philippians and Spiritual Community; Spiritual Growth From Matter to Spirit; Spiritual Use of the Scripture.
See any major on-line bookseller for his book An Ache for Union.
For replies and biographical information, and submission to "The Light Shines" daily devotionals ~ a ministry of Christ Community United Methodist Church, Punta Gorda, FL,see next page:
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