Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 01:17:58 -0400
From: jeff.gordon@wellnow.com

It is in my heart to draw apart from the busy-ness that is intensifying in the world. Recent concerns and arguments about events in Kosovo; the wars and frightening rumors of wars; the calls to join in efforts to establish peace; the loud and earnest voices of those who would seek to achieve one good goal or another, are 'old news', I feel. All have been tried before in one shape or another; all have been found wanting.

It is as though every unresolved thing in human history has come forward to be with us in consciousness now, at last to be handled fitly and at last left behind.

For this to occur, our nourishing energies must be withdrawn from all failed approaches. For our energies to be withdrawn, they must be allowed to flow someplace else, someplace higher than the events and the imaginings that would draw upon our energies by calling out loudly for our attention.

I find myself lately in the path of the information stream that is now become a torrent and is still increasing. I have partaken of enough of it to say, "Yes, I am aware of these things yet choose to turn in a different direction."

As the light increases, we see the distortions and difficulties that are present in the world human beings have made. Seeing them, we feel impelled to take some action with regard to them. For some this is physical action; let us gather together and form communities, for example. For some this is mental action; let us analyze the circumstances, and make certain blame is laid at the appropriate feet. For some this is emotional/spiritual action; regardless of blame, let us see to it that peace shall appear.

To the degree these ideas are being driven by and orient to events already appearing in the world, they will not succeed in making anything new; the orientation itself is the reason.

The truth of Being must be known before any Achieving will succeed to make things new. Spirit precedes form. The new heaven precedes the new earth. New people make possible the new civilization, if there is to be one; people-not-made-new cannot do it -- such are the ones who have made, and continue to make, the world we find around us now.

While not made new, human beings imagine there is no God -- or, if there is, that he must be that fellow represented to us by the established religions, not a very nice entity, really, and one who's left as alone and comfortless to be tested for some reason and to learn lessons and discipline before his Love will be re-bestowed upon us. "We must strive harder to be good, so our harsh god will restore the Garden for us!" I think that's only an 'evil imagination', and not the truth of the matter at all; little different from imagining, "We must suffer while we live, so God will reward us when we die." Neither notion makes any sense.

We are not being tested; neither are we being punished. But a question is being put to us, by the very circumstances themselves: "What is it that is worthy of you? To what will you turn the face of your response?" The living answer to the questions also answer this one: "What shall be your god?" What shall we say, by our living, has worth, has worthy-ship, has our awareness and living acknowledgment of worth, do we thereby worship by that attitude of acknowledgment?

The formula for peace has already been given to us: "Glory to God in the highest; and then peace on earth, goodwill toward men."

Human beings are drawn together in friendship by one thing: shared response to the same something-higher. We recognize that a shared interest in, say, bowling will do this to some slight degree g, so we have experience of the principle itself and know something of how it works. But a friendship based in love of bowling doesn't prove very sturdy or long-lasting, does it? Not if it's the only love in common. Something more is required if the truth of friendship is to be known.

In the end, only shared heart-response to something very much higher succeeds in drawing all human beings together. That something very much higher would prove to be "the limitless divine source and ground of all being", as good a definition of God as we're likely to find.

It is in my heart this day that there can be no dissipation of the events in the world that beset us now, no ending of them, no laying them at last to rest, except as this reality begins to come clear in the consciousness of human beings -- in my consciousness; each one may say this for him- or herself; none can say it for another.

"Glory to God in the highest." Viewed in reverse, the formula implies that whatever we give our highest level of response to will occupy the place of god for us in our experience. We are choosing now what that shall be. Let us take care, then, that what has our response, and thus is as god in our experience, is God indeed.

-- Jeff -- http://www.wellnow.com

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