|
'The Way to Sanctuary'
While we cannot love anyone or everyone with the mind, the heart can. What is this heart? The heart is God-within-us. Persons say, "I love you with all my heart." The heart does not belong to us to love with. We belong to the heart for Life to love. For so created, our destiny is to be servants of God-within-us, which is to say, to cherish love for everyone. The self is not the Source of love; yet, the self can rejoice to know Love loving through it. The self can observe and feel loving happening. Yet, no one can claim the loving, for he or she is not the Giver or Receiver. So, to say, "I love you," means, from the person's perspective, "I have chosen to serve the One that He, She, It loves you through me." From the perspective of the heart, this "I" saying "I love" is the one "I," the soul of all sentient beings, seen and unseen.
God's door
always remains open
a Voice says
"Welcome! come on in!
everyone becomes the Friend
when entering Here
* * *
I have had a beautiful, handcrafted statue from Indonesia for the last 20 years. I purchased it at a fair trade store when a pastor in Gainesville, Florida. Once, the wooden figure rested on the centerpiece of my stereo system. A 'Christian' woman visited my home. Seeing the figure, she said in an angry voice, "Why don't you take that thing and throw it out?!" To her, this work of art was a 'thing,' to use her word - and an evil thing, at that.
One matter of import is this dear woman seemed not to recognize that her image of Jesus Christ is an image, as much an image as a Buddha figure. An inner image or outer image is a mental image - like photographs, which are never what they represent. If one sees an image of Jesus, for example, say a picture, that is a projection of a collective mental image. If one disagrees with Sacred images, one must disagree, to be consistent, with all such internal sacred images, whatever their appearance. Why? Again, a form internal is as much a form as one external, and the form is never equivalent to the Truth. It seems, then, this woman clinging to her internal image of Christ, which is not Christ, found the external one of Buddha, which is not Buddha, reprehensible.
* * *
For me to have thrown out the Buddha figure, that would have been a denial of Truth, a refusal to love my neighbor - everyone - as myself and, so, disobedience of Christ Jesus - whom as a Christian pastor, I claimed to follow. I would have been denying a Christlike witness to the universality of truth expressed through the Word, Jesus Christ. If I had followed the woman's advice, I would have betrayed the inner call to help the world become a place of compassion through mutual understanding - more, through love.
What was this woman really saying? She was saying, "Whittle your God down to the size of the god I hold in my head." She was saying, "Comply with the vision of a Christianity antithetical to the compassion, love, and peace the One calls us to embody in a world so much in need of unity, kindness, and mutual-understanding." She was saying, "Forfeit your prophetic call and just be a churchman, submitting to the power of the opinions of our religion." How pathetic this woman's question? Yet, others taught her to live in a small world. I, too, was trained to live in such a world, and I did for many years, but the heart will not live in a little universe. - I recall being taught, when a youth, that an image of Buddha would invite demons into our family home. - The heart is boundless, for the heart is the extension of God into time and space.
* * *
A difference between the irate woman and this writer was not the Buddha or Christ but our hearts. She lived in an ideology. We must live a heartology. Only in the heart shall we gravitate toward the Unity of the One. All else belongs to the debris of a dying and dead past. For those with hearts to see, see, and, so, know now - a new world is born, a resurrection of Life. Christ!
* * *
Yet, that many remain under the hypnosis of prejudicial ideologies does not mean they are all wrong or non-lovers - Love lives even in the darkness of thought; the Light shines there, as everywhere. Many persons who do not welcome the Unity but fear it much are sincere in love - still, the tyranny of the mind limits the expression of love. Most persons are not aware of how much they believe is nothing but what others have trained them to think - we are all subject to this collective trance. Few persons seem prepared to dare to ask, "What is the truth, really?" Still, here, there is no room to be judgmental of anyone in this regard; yet, we must speak to this prejudicial thought opposing the Unity, the Resurrection. However, again, the mind cannot confine the heart. The heart makes the mind its servant. As more and more persons see through the heart, the power of the energetic-movement of love will draw more and more persons into a new vision-field for humanity - and Earth. This resurrection is a step-at-a-time, with potential leap-moments along the Way. We are, in consent to the Light, co-creators of a global community of Love-energy, not only on Earth, but extending into the skies - bringing healing, for Love heals.
* * *
We have, in my country, seen four years of a constant aggrandizement of darkness in our federal government. Where there is the reign of anger, deceit, self-glorification, and the promotion of division, rather than the call to unity, Love's rays are blocked from fuller effulgence. Yet, we have seen, through the election of a new president and vice-president, one of those leaps I referred to above. We cannot be Light-bearers and descend into the slough of hatefulness and lust of wealth and power, including suppression of the natural God-given rights of our brothers and sisters. We cannot cage children, separating them from their parents as a deterrent to immigrants seeking a better life in a country. We cannot pull out of legitimate alliances with other countries, when only we together can become peace together, not acting separately. We cannot delay addressing the anguish of Earth for healing, either. We cannot ignore and silence how science, as a means of Grace, can help us in addressing an epidemic. We cannot prioritize the economy above the dignity of human life. Yet, let us remember, politics is not the answer, at best a means. The heart, God-within-us, is the solution to our societal, global, economic, and environmental challenges. God-within-us is the Unity. That woman's angry voice in my home was the dying demand of a fading world, as have been many voices from our White House these last years.
Now, we welcome from there, and everywhere, a kinder world, where we can honor God-in-everyone and seek the One in the many ways the Sacred shines within, among, and, so, upon us. Blessed be the Name! May the Light shine ever-brighter among us all, as nations of one, holy communion. May leaders embody peace and be blessed with wisdom and courage, and many more leaders of peace arise among us. This is our Heart-Prayer.
* * *
Let us welcome Grace to open our hearts beyond the borders of our faiths, nations, politics, and opinions to a fellowship that is Love itself. May we recognize different persons and traditions will pass through various means to see and welcome God's embrace. Let us not speak ill of anyone's way to the one Life, of how the Beloved draws him or her to the feast of Joy. Let us only welcome kindness into ourselves. In drawing close to the One, we begin to see through the One, and we begin to love everyone equally - for we no longer love as a self, but the Light loves through us, our being a means of supernal Grace. Amen.
* * *
With a single act or thought of lovingkindness, you are participating in creating an environment of love. This is not merely a metaphysical reality. Such is a transformation biologically-chemically of the body and the electromagnetic ecology we live and breathe within together. In the future, we will see how the teachings of the great faiths are actually integral to all living beings' functioning and health, including the bodies we call Earth and Sky. Therefore, each day, let us act in kindness toward all whom we meet and choose to offer some act intentionally that brings blessing to someone else. Above all, let us return to Love daily, so we can be the means of Love to all, a healer in our world. We all need time alone daily, for quiet worship of the One, to keep ourselves a welcoming presence of the Light, a clear stream of the Effulgence of Life into lives who move about us, our kin in Spirit.
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
|
