The Parts Can Communicate with the Whole

 

“Lord, I feel you want me to do more of the mystical stuff, ‘entering’ You and so forth.”

Yes, and you can remove the scare quotes.  There is nothing strange about it.  That is how the universe is.  The parts can communicate with the whole.  It is no more mystical or mysterious than your ability to move your arm. 

Actually, since Descartes introduced a sharp mind-body distinction, how the mind moves the body has been a philosophical mystery.  But, in actual life, it is not.  The parts can communicate with the whole and vice versa.  But I had never thought of the universe that way.

I continued to have experiences of divine indwelling and partial union with God.  Now that I am used to them, they do seem similar to getting lost in an experience.  God mentioned music as one example, and we all know that feeling.  Sometimes you are not something separate, standing back and noting the music—you are immersed in it with your whole frame, without reserve.  However, the more radical, “dissolution of self” mystical experiences—I may have had them two or three times—make me uneasy and I avoid them.

Einstein’s theory is child’s play.

Einstein’s theory is child’s play.

My nature, the true nature of the universe, of Being, and My relation to human beings, to their role and destiny, is complex.  Einstein’s theory of relativity is child’s play by comparison.  An adequate understanding cuts across some of the categories human beings find most natural, though they are really profoundly “unnatural” (and I mean that in the eerie sense).  They are warped; they often represent disorders of the soul, distortions of Being.

I Too Can Only Grow Through Suffering

 Karma is the Hindu idea that actions, both good and bad, have consequences for a person’s character and fate.

Human beings must learn a lesson.  They are not in this life to sit in the lap of luxury.  It is a challenge, a test.  They can only grow through sufferingI too can only grow through suffering.  The main suffering is through the consequences of their own actions.  That is the most intense suffering, the kind of suffering that leads to suicide.

There Can Be No Love Without Difference

“Lord, Pherecydes also says the world was composed of opposites.”

There can be no love without difference, no harmony or balance without opposing items or forces, no magnetism without the magnet and its object, and so on.

Mystic merging is not quite right.  You (people) need to live out your lives in relation to, in concert with Me, but it would serve no purpose, karmic or otherwise, for you to get lost in Me, like a drop of water in the sea.

I knew that I wanted to love Abigail, not to merge into her, or to have her merge into me.  There is not just unity, but creative tension as well.

“The Eternal Already had the Potential to be a Person.”

“Lord, what was there before?  What motivates the act of creation?”

I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.

“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person.  Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces.  ‘Who am I?  What am I?  Am I an I?  What is an I?’  A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”

“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way?  Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”

I received the sense:  “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete.  The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”

And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.

 

If It Weren’t For the Honor of the Thing …

I remembered Abraham Lincoln’s story about the man who was tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.  “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” the man said, “I would rather have walked.”  And I had seen the war movies, “You will have the honor of leading the assault.”  Some honors aren’t worth it.

I did feel the honor.  God was about to put His seal on this role for me, a role more suitable for a real Elijah.  I felt a swell of pride, as I was being told this, and immediately the line went dead.  Ego had broken the connection.

 

I Draw Man Forward . . .

 

What I had been told about Creation still bothered me and I was relieved when God started talking about the process of evolution.

“Lord, do You have to will creatures to evolve into homo sapiens or does it just happen by natural processes?”

That’s not a well-conceived question.  It rests on a false dichotomy.  Remember that nature is itself teleological, except it is much more complicated than that apparently simple statement.  I provide—I am—the telos or purpose, and I follow the telos as well.  However, I draw man forward to greater development in the very process of interacting with men (people).  At the time of early man, I am not yet sure what is missing.  I am not fully developed Myself yet, since I have not encountered beings who can call forth My full latent nature.  For the moment, call it a dialectical evolution responding to My need for development.

Here and elsewhere, “man” has the older sense inclusive of both women and men.

Tell My Story As I Tell It To You

 

“So I should read the scriptures of the major religions?”

Yes, I want you to read the early spiritual history of mankind.  I will lead you to which readings.  I would like you to pray as you read them and take notes as directed.

I grew up at a time when “man” and “mankind” referred to both men and women, and God spoke to me in my own vernacular.

“Lord, You said I was to tell Your story ‘from the inside out.’  But reading the scriptures is ‘from the outside in.’”

Yes, tell My story as I tell it to you.  The only purpose for reading is to give you reference points for understanding My story.