Now, see, those words can awaken us. From what? Our self-created drama that we are alone, lost, and uncared for – separate from God. Even our religion or spirituality can put us to sleep, or keep us from waking up.

“Religion resists progress,” writes Bishop Carlton Pearson. “It is a form of witchcraft with which man has become familiar. We know the rites, rituals, doctrines, and disciplines, and we have become dependent on them. They have become a manipulative, fear-based force that holds millions of people hostage.” Ironically, Pearson is a clergyperson in the Christian faith, and, so, his assessment is the more powerful – even if his point is over-stated.

*The Gospel of Inclusion: Reaching beyond Religious Fundamentalism to the True Love of God and Self.

We get in a prison, self-made, other-made, and we can forget how we got there. We may even come to believe there is no way out, and we resign ourselves to a prison life. Religion or any form of spirituality can become another box to hide in, to allow others to tell us what we must do, and not do, what we must believe, or not believe. We can huddle together in that sweaty, hot place, and think we are obeying God. Well, we all just end up asleep – a collective delusional state. The path, and our giving over our conscience, mind, and heart to others who enjoy the power of being “representatives” of God, well, is a narcotic to make us defenseless slaves to systems.

What is the dream – the delusion? The ultimate delusion is the belief that we find God by seeking God, when we cannot find God by seeking God. Seeking is to exhaust our dream, the dream that God must be found. So, seeking is essential, but only until we wake up to Whom holds us, already. We cannot discover God in seeking God; rather, God is before, in, and beyond the seeking. God is the seeking and the sought, and God is the oneness of both. Love makes possible your very aspiration for Love, so, how can you not know the presence of Love?

Often people will use an odd logic of seeking to avoid Love by seeking Love. Odd, is it not? After all, to return to the poem, if I am afraid of the self-giving that Love will ask of me, I might choose to stay in my dream of seeking Love, while all the time It holds me and only wants to express Itself to me.

So, insight leads us to see that to drop our seeking means to realize the dream is a subtle avoidance. Do you want this Love, or God, then, realize you are already in Its arms. You walk among It. You breathe It. It breathes you. How can you miss it, unless you are asleep in a dream of seeking it? Ultimately, there is no separation between the Divine and any creature; Nature is soaked in Divinity, in Grace. The whole world is a sacrament for us, when we are awake and open to It.

Look through the words, through your life, and listen to the Truth, then, you will see. Once we see, then, the search has ended, we can relax, and we can trust the direct experience that is incommunicable but from spirit to spirit. Otherwise, our seeking, our complaining, our fussing are simply mechanisms of our small selves to keep us in the futile dreaming. Until we wake up, we will only push away what we most long for – odd. As long as we give our power of union with God to an institution, to a Teacher, a Guru, a religion, …, we will miss the intimacy we long for with the Absolute.

Which do you want? Do you want to keep seeking? Or, are you ready to wake up from the futile search? If you want to wake up, you must be honest and earnest. That is the Work of waking up. And you do not have to do spiritual practice many years, or many lifetimes to wake up. Wake Up!