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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, I pray persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
Blessings,
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox, MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Brian encourages support of the 4-Star Christian organization Compassion, which supports children worldwide; see www.compassion.com .
Opening Affirmation
Go into a brief time of silence, affirming the following: feel the truth of the affirmation:
I and God are One.
Opening Prayer
Breathe in me
Move through me
Holy Spirit I come
Light the Fire in me
Breathe in Me
*From song "Breathe in Me," by Michael Robert.
Sacred Scriptures
By detachment from appearances, abide in Real Truth.
So I tell you, Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world,
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, a dream.
*Diamond Sutra. Buddhism.
See "World Scripture", www.unification.net .
The Father and I are One.
*John 10.30. Christianity.
Sacred Teaching
The following account is from a legend about Meister Eckhart (b. c. 1260) - a German mystic - entitled, "Good Morning."
"A king must have a kingdom. What is your domain, brother?" a man asked Eckhart. "In my soul." The man inquired, "In what way, brother?" "When I have closed the doors of my five senses and desire God with all my heart, I find God in my soul, as radiant and joyous as He is eternal life?" The man said, "You must be a saint. Who made you one, brother?" Eckhart clarified, ""Sitting still and raising my thoughts aloft and uniting with God - that has drawn me up to heaven, for I could find no rest in anything that was less than God. Now that I have found Him, I have rest and joy in Him eternally, and that surpasses all temporal kingdoms."
God's seed is in us. If it were tended by a good, wise and industrious laborer, it would then flourish all the better, and would grow up to God, whose seed it is, and its fruits would be like God's own nature. The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, the seed of a nut tree grows to be a nut tree, the seed of God grow to be God. But if it happens that the good seed has a foolish and evil laborer, then weeds grow up and overgrow and smother the good seed, so that it cannot grow up to the light and to its full size. Yet, Origen [Christian mystic, b. c. 185), a great teacher, says: "Because God himself has sowed and planted and given life to this seed, even though it may be overgrown and hidden, it will never be destroyed or extinguished completely; it will glow and shine, gleam and burn, and it will never cease to turn toward God."
*Meister Eckhart. Essential Sermons. Trans. Colledge and McGinn.
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According to Eckhart, as with other Christian mystics, persons' greatest need that their soul - the immaterial aspect - be one with the Divine.
Eckhart felt this knowing of God demanded a knowledge of God and the Divine's relation to the world, a knowledge of the soul, and how to work with the soul wisely.
He did not doubt such knowledge is in the traditional faith of the Church. Yet, he believed such was not sufficient for one who is longing for union. Each person must attain to it with his or her own understanding. Eckhart accordingly does not rely on church tradition after the manner of many Christian mystics.
Eckhart teaches us the last and highest object of thinking is the Deity. The Deity is absolute being without differentiation of place or manner. No descriptive is applicable to the Deity; but this is not mere negation or emptiness. The Divine is negation of negation; that is, Deity is boundless, undefined Fullness of Being. Therefore, taking what the Buddhists refer to as the Middle Way, Eckhart can say both that God is not a being and is absolute being.
Where are the essential elements of creatures? Eckhart says that all this is in God in an exalted degree and in a way no person can fathom.
*Adaptation and expansion of "Meister Eckhart," in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. See www.iep.utm.edu.
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However, though we are in God, and our soul is one with God, and will survive the demise of our physical properties, we can be a "foolish" steward of the God-seed within us. Or, we can be a wise tender of the Inner Seed.
Christian mysticism says we must go inward and beyond the senses, to lift the soul to "heaven." Of course, this is not a place, but a state of consciousness, a vibration of energy, a manner of be-ing in and with God.
When we do this, we enter awareness of an Essence we share with and as God. We forget this Essence through the running here and there of the senses. Mysticism is a remembering, a recollecting.
The process is simple. Nature teaches us. We tend the soul and its properties, of and as God, the same way a gardener tends a seed or a plant.
We need to recognize the nature of the soul. Then, we need to apply the tending that is in sync with the soul - like for like. This requires discipline, but such work need not be one of continual suffering.
The work may at times be difficult, but the rewards are immense. The whole being is being reborn into God, practically, and we grow more to relax into heaven and rest from fleshly toils and cares.
Quietly Responding
What is the nature of your soul? How are you tending the soul daily and periodically? Do you need to give more attention to tending the soul? Are there untried ways you could experiment with in tending the soul? Can you say with Jesus, "The Father and I are One"? If so, what does that mean to you? If not, explain.
Blessings! In Love! And Peace to All!
Brian Kenneth Wilcox
July 11, 2009
barukhattah@embarqmail.com
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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-interspiritual 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 . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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