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Easter Season 2009
Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, the writer hopes persons of other faiths find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps you trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches you. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily.
Blessings,
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox, MDiv, MFT, PhD
Ecumenical Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, Chaplain
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
God looked at what he had done. All of it was very good! Evening came and then morning - that was the sixth day.
*Genesis 1.31 (CEV)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
Last evening I called a friend. She spoke of how she loved the red rose I gave her earlier in the week. She said, "But it was gone too soon." I could hear the disappointment in her voice. I said, "Yes, they don't last long."
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Genesis shows, in story form, an insight into the nature of the Divine - The Divine is creative. God is Artist. Presence is replicating Formlessness in Form. Movement from Formlessness to Form is of Love to express in a shape. God God-s; God is God-ing. Form is Incarnation pointing to, in degrees of clarity and intensity, the Sacred. In a rose, fleeting as it is, is Love untouched by time, arising out of Eternity.
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Ken Wilber, in the Foreword to Alex Grey, The Mission of Art, writes:
When an artist is alive to the spiritual domains, he or she can depict and convey those domains in artistic rendering, which wrestles Spirit into matter and attempts to speak through that medium. When great artists do so, the artwork reminds us of our own higher possibilities, our own deepest nature, our own most profound ground, which we all are invited to rediscover. The purpose of all truly transcendent art is to express something you are not yet, but that you can become...."
It calls us beyond ourselves, it takes us beyond ourselves, to a transpersonal [not impersonal] land where Spirit is real, where God is alive, where Buddha smiles and the Tao sings, where our own original faces shine with a glory that time forgot and space cannot recall. We are confronted with the best we can be, the deepest we can feel, the highest we can see, and so we go away ... a little better than we were the minute before.
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The Spirit is the Artist, and Reality, all of It living through matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit, is the Artwork. And each of our lives and all creatures, together, as well as the world we live in, is invitation to transformation into be-ing in the Be-ing of God.
So, the artistry of Incarnation summons us to live more deeply and attentively to ordinary life and ordinary persons, like you and me. In the ordinariness is Heaven, here and now, always.
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What keeps us from seeing the Spirit in form? What keeps us moving from moment to moment, without living deeply and with appreciation?
We seek to capture Life. When something passes that brought us pleasure, we try to replicate it. We stay in thought, which is always the past. We are so shaped by the past, in thought, we do not see the freshness of the present experience. We fail to hear the Voice of God now, so many voices creep or barge into this present.
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Then, how do I see? How do I do this - meaning I know the depth of experience, and I do not try to capture it and make it an idol for repetition - a frozen past in a present unheard, unseen, unfelt? I must relinquish thought - meaning, I must go beneath - to a higher Reality - than thought. Otherwise, I project onto the present the past. I do not experience the present or see a thing except from the past. And, based on this, I may fully miss a wonderful gift right before me.
This is where contemplation and life intersect. Here is where not-knowing is vital to experience freshly, to see clearly. Here is a taste of freedom from conditioning - the collective past:
I really don't know. ... When I say, "I don't know", which doesn't mean I am expecting to know, when I say I really don't know - what happens? I climb down the ladder. I become, the mind becomes, completely humble.
Does this mean that I walk around with a bland stare, unable to function, for I am a contemplative? No.
Now, that state of "not knowing" is intelligence. Then it can operate in the field of the known and be free to work somewhere else if it wants to.
*J. Krishnamurti. "The Role of the Teacher." In The Awakening of Intelligence.
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So, there you have it. We run after the repetition of pleasure, even in our spiritual practice. We, then, miss not-knowing. Not-knowing is a vibrant, lively knowledge.
Is it okay for you to meditate, being bored and restless? If you say it is okay, you can experience that as a wonderfully fresh experience. Boredom is as luminous as consolation, for that sensation is a manifestation of Spirit. Enter that with the mind of a child, a beginner. Feel what it feels like, as for the first time. For the present boredom is the first boredom. You have never had this boredom before. Then, why cannot boredom be an adventure, a work of art to feel into and to see clearly - without running to a thought of pleasure - some sweet sensation of the past?
You do not need that. You just think you do - see, there is your thought again. You need faith, hope, and love. And these are as present apart from sweet feelings as with such. Let your attachment to consolations go and accept desolation as a gift - a natural manifestation of Spirit calling you to a deeper realization of your be-ing in God. God is not all sweet.
So, a word of practical advice about devotion and desolation - and feeling into the moment. You feel desolate, arid, so you say, or think, - likely, for you have been taught to do so (another case of bad religion), "What is wrong? What sin has caused this separation from God?" No. What you receive in the moment is what you receive. Why project judgments like that on it? Sure, if you have caused desolation, deal with it. But, otherwise, accept it and do not murmur about it. The sooner you learn not to murmur about it, the sooner you will be able to see the Light in the darkness.
See, again, you want to know - thought, thought, more thought. You want to think up, "Why the feeling of this desolation? Depression? Sadness?" You think, "It should not be this way." But it is. Can you feel into, sense into, it - not demanding to know? Can you pray that way?
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Krishnamurti is correct - not-knowing is humbling. This is not the pride that demands pleasures and conveniences. This is the Love that says, "Thank You."
We must move more into this humbleness. I see too much of this chasing after pleasure even in public worship among Christians. We seek to tantalize the senses in worship, we seek to please everyone. We seek to provide a buffet of spiritual delights. Where is the humbleness in all that?
Then, in some traditions, persons seek to become enlightened to have heavenly pleasure, to be liberated from life.
Why is this moment not good enough? Why is what Life gives us not satisfying us? For we are not yet humble enough. If we were, we would see God everywhere.
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And the Christian sees the fleshly body of Jesus as signifying the Christ that becomes, as Word “descending” into the world, the material expression of our own deepest possibilities and the fullness of our own undiscovered potentials. In this moment we can see this.
Jesus Christ, human and spirit integrated, immanence and transcendence one, is a God-summons to do more than worship or follow after Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Living Portrait of the Artist, a Portrait that pulls us onward to become all we can become.
Thus, we do not only look back to Christ, we feel the pull of the Christ toward an End Point, an Omega attraction inherent in every beginning, every birth, every life, and every demise, as one Energy of Grace.
Love-the-Artist is expressive, calling us, confronting us, consoling us, moving us, and echoing our True Selves through the feelings of heart and thoughts of mind.
To be present to God, to be “in Christ,” is to be transformed into Aliveness to a Reality - a Movement. And to be awakened means that progressively, habitually one lives awe-fully before a Creation that sings gleefully “I Was, I Am, I Am Coming!”
And, now, right now, even as you read these words, this whole drama of Divine Display, “descending” and “ascending” in perfect Harmony, made more beautiful by Its giving of Itself with and through the diversity in which It expresses and offers Itself freely, is being lived in you, with you, and for you, and your heart is awakened to the Beauty of the OneLife!
All of this you can know, in this moment. But you cannot know it by the mind, by thought. You can become one with This, when you relinquish thought. This is not thought-less; rather, this is descending to the underlying Energy-Field that births thought.
Therefore, ironically, within thought, as a form of Incarnation, is the waiting Presence of God. The Fullness of the present is within and underlying the energy of thought.
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The rose I gave my friend did pass quickly. Yet, within that rose was Spirit manifesting. Within it was potential to touch Eternity, to sense into Heaven, to drop thought and appreciate Love.
QUIETLY RESPONDING
1) How is liturgy, personal or communal, a act of art? How does it call us to deeper domains of Spirit?
2) Sit quietly. Practice letting go of thought, feeling into the Energy underlying thought. If you get bored, and you will, let that be a form you feel into, to sense Formlessness. Let yourself "see" with clarity boredom. So, let boredom open to freshness that is an adventure in appreciation and contentment.
3) Consciously enter your times of devotion without a feeling of entitlement to consolation. Rather, enter humbly, knowing that by releasing your expectations, you can sense into deeper domains of Spirit.
4) Practice using different and new names for God in prayer and meditation. This can help release the hold of the past, and our keeping our "image" of God defined by the past.
Blessings!
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox
Sunday the Second, Easter Season
April 26, 2009
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. Brian is an ecumenical spiritual leader, open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union at major book dealers.
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