Table of Contents
Principles of Sacred
Consciousness
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First Principle of
Personal Transformation
In
searching for wholeness, to acknowledge our powerlessness in creating
meaning and purpose in our lives without a deep knowing of God's love.
God's Love
God's love is real. God's
blessing has touched
all of mankind from
the beginning. We were created out of love and in the name of
love to share in the Divine essence.
Our longing to know the
Living God has deepened over eons of experiencing ourselves as
wandering and lost in time and space. We have longed for God,
and have felt alone, attempting always to survive and prosper without
full awareness of Divine love.
Our history reflects
our many individual and collective attempts to find peace and security
through religion, philosophy, political identification, material
wealth, and romantic love. We have used all kinds of rational and
logical explanations to comfort ourselves while we experienced the
absence of connection with a greater whole.
We
looked to our families and communities for
love and identity, but the void continued to permeate our souls and
intensified the desire to return home. Our forgetting of the
oneness
has led us down many paths of suffering, while we sought the way home,
again and again.
Lesson
after lesson taught us where to look and
where not to look for answers, and time after time, in great distress,
we asked for help and upliftment. These lessons were not wasted, for in
God's universe there are no wasted experiences.
As
we were ready for new teachings, the
experiences we needed came to us unbidden. It was up to us to recognize
the grace present within each event. Sometimes we did, and sometimes we
were unable to.
In this present
moment, we
recognize the nature
of our own seeking, as well as the nature of mankind's seeking for
wholeness and a return to divinity. Many of us are conscious of this
quest. Many are ready or are becoming ready to celebrate and open to
the reality of God's presence. As each of us opens to the
grace present in our lives, we grow in light and progressively join in
the creation of an enlightened planet.
Remembering our Divine
essence is possible
The remembering of our
Divine essence is
part of God's plan for the Earth.
Recognition of the limiting
nature of
old beliefs and identities, roles imposed on us or those
we have chosen, and labels we have assigned ourselves or those we have
placed on
others, serves to bring what is more true of ourselves into
greater focus.
When we genuinely look for
the truth at the core of our beings, we
begin the journey home in a deeper way. For the remembrance of the way
home has always been within us. The remembrance of our Divine essence
has always been within us. It is a matter of seeking it with a whole
heart, and trusting that the seeking itself will reveal to us the
layers of limiting ideas with which we have encircled ourselves.
Doubt and trust
In seeking the way of
return that is within, we are compelled to confront our willingness or
unwillingness to trust life itself as our primary teacher.
There are many doubts about
life and God that we carry that
will be revealed to us as we seek. These doubts are based on our soul's
history - the ongoing experience of separation from the oneness.
We have lived in and with
doubt in the reality of God's presence, in
and with the sense of abandonment. What we feel now as separation
within us is the legacy of this history.
Many individual patterns of
hurtful behavior toward others are based on
this legacy; many planetary patterns are based on this legacy as well.
Patterns of war, oppression, cruelty, misuse of planetary resources,
disrespect of the animal kingdom, as well as other abuses of power run
through the entirety of human history. Doubt in the perfection of
ourselves, of others, and of all that is, has been with us for a very
long time.
Yet, we are each being
called to face this doubt within us, and to face it with the
confidence that seeks faith in the midst of it. For doubt is not
opposed to faith; it is the precursor of faith -
that which creates the
longing out of which faith itself can grow.
We are being called, each
and every one of us, to allow doubt to become
an internal experience of healing whose outcome is trust. When doubt
assumes its higher purpose as the stepping stone, through longing, into
faith, the inner experience of Divine presence becomes more accessible.
The calling out to God receives an answer.
Our healing into wholeness
is based on this transformation of doubt into faith. As we
move through whatever dark night of the soul lies before us, we are
brought through the darkness into a new way of relating to love and to
life.
Light and darkness
The experience of doubt
that God is real occurs primarily on the mental level, but is often
associated with powerful emotions such as despair, hopelessness,
withdrawal, or anger.
Doubt itself is produced by
a mind that is vulnerable to energies of
darkness, as well as to the experience of density resulting from being
in a human form.
Within the human body, the
separated intellect observes and tells
itself that only that which it can see and touch is real. If God cannot
be seen or touched in this way, it deduces, then God is not real.
Energies of darkness, when
present, fuel those tendencies within the individual that are
anti-growth, anti-light, and anti-life. They are the energies of
choosing to be closed down, isolated, and mistrustful, and also of
wanting power or control for the ego or separated self. These energies
create fear and mistrust when 'letting go' is contemplated, and they
create fear and mistrust when a relationship with God is pursued. They
are energies within the individual that are inherited from the soul's
past, that operate to sabotage or postpone forward movement into light
and truth.
What we know as 'addictive
process' is fueled by these energies of darkness and their bi-product,
doubt. Addictive process is based on the experience of separation from
God. It is a response to the need which this experience produces, and
is an attempt to respond to this need in a fragmented and ultimately
self-destructive way.
Energies of doubt, despair,
and fear are opposed to those of trust, hope, and faith. The first
three are life-denying; the second three are life-enhancing. The first
three create a frantic need to be in control; the second three create a
path of healing and growth.
We are often brought into
greater awareness of the first three within us when we are challenged
by an opportunity to heal in depth. At
such times, when energies of darkness prevail, we hold on to separation
and isolation. Because of our doubting God, we become self-righteous
and comfort ourselves by justifying rage and blame toward others and
toward life generally. These emotional patterns are self-destructive
and self-perpetuating, and they lead to further attempts to control and
deny the reality of our primary experience of loneliness and
separation. They also lead to the continuation of clinging to illusion
and addictive patterns.
These patterns perpetuate
the suffering inherent in this state for as
long as the dark energies are empowered. Until the dilemma of
loneliness and separation is recognized for what it is, new light
will have difficulty entering the emotional situation to reveal the
falseness of the paths habitually taken.
Longing
Darkness and doubt within
us give rise to the perpetuation of addictive process. Yet, in the
midst
of this, and especially with the support of others, a longing can
develop to change directions. Then, for many of us, a struggle begins
between the desire for growth and a way out, and the persistence of
negative behavior patterns. This struggle represents the battleground
between light and dark forces within us that will continue until more
complete alignment with the forces of light becomes possible.
For those who continue to
struggle with surrender and seek to create
meaning without God, there is a great need to attend to the removal of
unconsciousness and denial which are part of our history of separating
from the Divine. For what is not conscious cannot be fundamentally
changed. What is not conscious remains unhealed.
It is often through sharing
with others that we are helped to move
beyond denial and to leave behind a life that has been founded on
self-will. With the help of others, we can more easily examine the
motives in our hearts at all levels, and avoid bypassing areas of
unconsciousness that need to be brought to the light. This common
tendency is based on our difficulty facing ourselves honestly and in
surrendering control.
Honesty with ourselves,
however, must extend beyond the acknowledgment
of our difficulty in managing addiction and releasing control, into a
broader acceptance of the spiritual nature of addictive process. This
fundamental and core motive which fuels addiction relates to the hunger
we have felt in the course of our human journey to remember our Divine
identity and to feel and receive God's love.
Recognizing and accepting
helplessness in our often misguided attempts
to reconnect with our divinity, brings us to another level of humility
as we see and feel the strength of our desire to return Home. As we
move forward, we open the door of healing wider, embracing our
powerlessness and limitation, while at the same time finding a new and
legitimate sense of spiritual empowerment.
For many, this new
understanding speaks to the unanswered question of why, despite our
best efforts, we have endlessly encountered the same or new forms of
addiction. Certain psychological blocks or negative behavior patterns
have persisted, regardless of our attempts to follow guidelines for
healing and spiritual living. Perhaps most troubling has been the
growing dissatisfaction with our secular lives which often contain a
haunting sadness or yearning that cannot be assuaged for long, even by
the pleasures and joys of daily living.
Whether our longing stems
from fear or desperation, or the more
conscious seeking that is based on love, it must be embraced
wholeheartedly as the magnetic force that draws us to seek to know God.
When we can embrace our longing fully, it can become a powerful tool
for transformation, a motivation for sanctifying our lives and for
opening to the deeper truth of who we are. This longing can then become
the way of return to the oneness.
The return
Our part in the waking up
process is to continue to loosen our grip on
control, a little at a time, allowing space for God's grace to enter
every thread of our human lives.
The experience of God's
Love, when it occurs, answers all questions of
trust and allays all doubts, which fall away like a skin we have
outgrown and can shed.
With growing faith, we are
able to allow all of
life to be in God. This shift prepares the way for becoming witnesses
to the miraculous - the birth of the new within ourselves. We emerge as
human beings illumined by the inner perception of the Divine within, no
longer diminished by our clouded and false perceptions of ourselves.
Holding the image of being
childlike serves the transformative process with gentleness. With this
focus, we offer to ourselves and to each other the love and compassion
that childhood invites, and as little children, we explore a bright new
world. In a state of simplicity and innocence, our hearts can
now progressively open to the unveiling of God's sacred vision for
humanity and for ourselves.
§
§ §
"This is what must be understood
about
doubt: that it is the fertile ground for the creation of faith. That
those who struggle with doubt are struggling to find truth and God
within themselves at a deeper level than many who, on the surface, seem
to have been given a gift of faith."
Teaching the Heart to Sing