Science and Spirit

Devorah was blessed with visions of the future. In one she foresaw the Holocaust and in another, the restored Jerusalem of today. In the following vision she is a PH.D. student in a neuroscience lecture. Science as we understand it was unknown in Devorah’s time and she marvels at its ability to explain much of what she knew of how God worked.

“Do you know the difference between being conscious and being consciously aware,” the lecturer asked? “The human brain has a unique capacity – reflection – conscious awareness, the ability to observe and understand its own inner workings - consciousness. A neurological transformation occurs when we reflect causing the brain to grow stronger connections between its different parts. We are able to see patterns and habits and discern the fundamental differences between everyday consciousness and consciousness itself.

“We are able to connect the oldest most primitive part of our brains – the amygdala – the fear center, source of the flight or fight response, with the newest parts – the insula and anterior cingulate, source of compassion, hope, joy and creativity. With the practice of self reflection” - what I think of as going within first, prayer and mindfulness, Devorah realized – “we can actually shrink the size of the amygdala, alter the thalamus and thus change our perception of reality. We can even expand frontal lobe consciousness and with it our ability to think with concepts and abstractions and enhance intuition, compassion, creativity, and decision making skills.”

Devorah smiled. So, she thought, this is the scientific explanation of the at-one-ment, of my connection to God and spirit and my birthright as a spiritual being having an earthly experience! This is the reason our daily prayers and rituals work!

“Set aside ten to twenty minutes a day for watching but not judging the thoughts and feelings that endlessly flow through your everyday consciousness and you will become calmer, sharper and more compassionate. Stay completely relaxed and centered while doing this and insights with the power to reshape your entire life will soon erupt. That’s the difference between being conscious and being consciously aware.”

 

Miracles

“It will take a miracle for us to defeat the Canaanites,” Barak said to Devorah. “They have iron weapons, we have only copper ones. They outnumber us 5 to 1. They have 400 chariots, we have none.”

“All true my general,” Devorah said. “But if we have just a little willingness and allow spirit to shift our thinking we will have all the power we need.” Barak shook his head doubtfully. “We can’t know how the Canaanite defeat and our victory will occur, Barak. We can only know that with God all things are possible.

“We on earth have no conception of limitlessness for the world we think we live in is a world of limits. The miracle brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle itself is but a witness that we have the power of God in us. Of course, the Canaanites also have the power to witness. But if they do not believe as you and I and our people must believe, then It will not work for them. It is only as strong as our belief in It. If we believe a little, It will manifest a little. If we believe a lot, It will manifest a lot.

“Those who remember always that of themselves they can do nothing and know nothing, and who have become willing to do what is necessary and learn everything, will learn it. That is the way of miracles. Whenever we trust ourselves, ourSelves can not teach us and we will not learn. Thinking we have learned and already know destroys our motivation to learn. Whenever we think we know, even of Spirit’s love and miracles, we have abandoned the Teacher of peace. Remember, it is the ego that plans, fears and must know. Whenever we realize we know not and don’t care or worry that we know not, peace and knowing will return. Miracles come when we let go and let God.”

Forgive

“Ask not to be forgiven, for this has already been accomplished,” Devorah said to the multitude. “Ask, rather, to learn how to forgive, and to restore what always was to your unforgiving mind. At-one-ment with spirit, everyone and everything becomes real and visible to those who use it. This is your only function within the ego’s illusory nightmare. You will feel isolated, alienated and guilty till you learn this. For in the end, whatever form it takes – fear, hate, blame, disease – guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in spirit’s mind and in your own.

“Decide that spirit is right and you are wrong about yourself. Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place made of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deceit undone. Fail not yourSelf. For the little appreciation you offer It, It will give you all of Itself. Learn how to go within, seek the at-one-ment and decide with God. Give up these frantic and insane attempts at decision making that cheat you of the joy of living as yourSelf. Leave all decisions for the inner voice that speaks for spirit. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard.

“Your task is not to make reality. It is here without your making, but not without you. You who have tried to throw yourSelf away and valued your at-one-ment with spirit so little, remember that communication with spirit is life. Nothing without it is at all.”

 

Make No Decisions Alone

“Every decision you undertake alone, without going within and asking the still small voice’s counsel, signifies you would define what salvation is, and what you would be saved from.”

“But we have the Ten Commandments and all God’s other laws. Surely all we need do is follow them?” Malachizer protested.

“Those are good guidance, Malachizer, but not enough. Each of us is a center of divine wisdom, living in times Moses could not have conceived of. Be quiet in your faith in the spirit that only loves, blesses and condemns not, that sees through the illusions and insanities of the ego’s nightmare world. Madness may be your choice, but it is not your reality. All of spirit’s love is always and ever available to us, free and clear, without rules, commandments, rituals or dispensations and in spite of our imagined sins.

“Go within first, seek and heed spirit’s guidance. It always knows and is always willing to love, support and guide. Why struggle so frantically to anticipate all you cannot know, when all knowledge lies behind every decision you allow the still small voice to make for you?  How gracious it is to decide all things through the one power that loves all things equally and alike. It includes everyone and everything, judges not and excludes no one and no thing.

“In everything be led by It, and do not reconsider. Trust It to answer quickly, surely and with love for everyone and everything that will be touched in any way by the decision you are facing. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring only good to everyone and everything? Could you even know this? Unlearn isolation through spirit’s loving guidance and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.”

The Exchange

“The journey that we undertake together, beloveds,” Devorah said to the multitude. “Is the exchange of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding, of hate, blame and fear for love, joy, compassion and creativity. Nothing that you understand aright, as a spiritual being having an earthly experience, is fearful. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening and shrink away from it into deeper darkness. Only the hidden can terrify, not for what it is, but for its hiddenness.

“The obscure is frightening because you do not understand it. If you did, it would be clear and you would no longer be in the dark. Nothing can have hidden value for what is hidden cannot be shared, so its value in unknown. The hidden is kept apart, but value always lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed cannot be loved, so it must be feared.

“The quiet light within in which you dwell and which is yourSelf, is perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden and therefore nothing is fearful. Attack will always, always, yield to love if it is brought to love, not hidden from it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power.

“Why when all the love, blessings, creativity, miracles, compassion, peace and joy there is await your attention, would you turn from it, deny it and indulge in fear mongering, hate, exclusion, constriction, blame and punishment instead? Stop! Just stop and turn from darkness to light.”

Moore, OK: Punishment or Opportunity?

Malachizer, the High Priest, was a man of traditional beliefs who saw God as a rule bound judge, meeting out justice – rewards and punishment - to the humans below Him. Devorah saw God differently as a benign and loving power. Malachizer would see the devastation at Moore, OK, as God’s will, as some kind of punishment for humankind’s original sin.

“Never ask what you have done to make yourself worthy of God’s gift of life, Malachizer, or what you must do to find favor in His eyes and avoid His wrath. God is but love and life and knows you are worthy of everything. You need not decide whether or not you are deserving, God knows you are.”

Malachizer frowned. “Would you deny the truth of God’s decision and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself and humanity in place of Its calm and unswerving love?” Devorah asked. “Nothing can shake spirit’s conviction of the perfect purity of everything that It created. Do not decide against It. Peace abides in every mind that quietly goes within and accepts the at-one-ment that is its birthright. Go within first, Malachizer. Only go within! You know not of salvation, for your limited ego-bound self can not comprehend it. Make no decisions about Justice, Compassion and Peace on your own with ego, but ask the still small voice within, and leave all decisions to its gentle counsel.”

In Memorium: Moore, OK

As I watched the pictures of the devastation at Moore, OK, and thought of what my brothers and sisters were enduring there my heart broke open and I almost cried. I felt anger too, because this need not have been so fierce, that what happened in Moore, OK, was something we did and are still doing to ourselves, something that we can stop doing, but won’t. How sad!

Yes tornados and hurricanes will come, but their intensity and frequency, the destructiveness and duration we’ve seen in recent years are very likely the result of global climate change. Yet like so many other things – poverty, child and spouse abuse, drone strikes and joblessness – we deny responsibility for what is happening. Perhaps you and I as individuals are not directly responsible, but collectively we are.

Churchill said people get the government they deserve. How sad and how true! Lately what is being done and left undone in our name as Americans makes me ashamed. We do indeed seem to have the best government money can buy. Not so much at the local level, but at the state and federal levels that’s shamefully obvious. Yet we allow it. What goes on is a reflection of our beliefs. It is done unto us as we believe.

The challenge is to help one another release the beliefs and kinds of thinking that have created our present situation. We don’t want to cling to the old rugged cross, we don’t want to do more of the same - blaming, fearing and hating one another. All that’s of the ego. We’ve got to let that kind of feeling, thinking and behaving go. We’ve got to, or it will only get worse! The handwriting’s on the wall, will we heed it?

The enemy’s not out there in the form of the Chinese or al-Qaida, it’s in here, inside us. We have met the enemy and they is us, Pogo said 40 years ago. We don’t need more tanks and aircraft carriers to defend us, we need education, creativity and innovation. Global climate change can be managed. Lives and property can be saved. The billions we spend on defense can, if we have the insight, inner faith, vision and courage, be re-programmed to solve our real challenges, to defend us from what we really need to be defended against – poverty, child and spouse abuse, drone strikes and joblessness, blaming, fearing and hating one another.

The destruction of Moore, OK, can be an opportunity, not for the martyrs who died and suffered there for their and our ‘sins’, but for the rest of us. Let’s do what we can to have fewer Moores, Sandy Hooks and Katrinas. There’s lot’s we can do. Let’s stop doing what we always do - thinking, feeling and behaving with the ego’s pride and hubris, thinking we can build a sand castle that will hold back the tide. Instead, let’s do what we really haven’t given a chance, go within seek the Kingdom first – its compassion, inclusion, love and creativity and go from there. After all, if we always do what we always did, we’ll always get what we always got – Moore 1999, Moore 2013 and Moore…?

Save the Date!

Save this date: July 10 at 6:30 PM. Dr Steve and Devorah will do a reading, book signing and a presentation on Spiritual Technology at Books and Books in Coral Gables.

The Power of Decision

“Beloveds,” Devorah said to the multitude gathered in the oasis. “Each day, each hour and minute, even each second, you are deciding between ego and spirit. In spite of how it seems within the ego illusion, these are the only two choices: ego and spirit, love or hate. They are all and the power of decision is all that you have. There is no overlap between truth and illusion. They are opposites that can not be reconciled for they cannot both be true. You, me and everyone else even the Canaanites, T Partyers, Republicans and Philistines are either guilty or guiltless, bound or free, unhappy or happy.

“Everyone you offer guiltlessness, healing, freedom and happiness to you, returns it. Everyone you attack keeps it and cherishes it by holding it against you. The cost of giving is receiving. Every thought and interaction is another opportunity to replace darkness with light and fear with love. Remember, beloveds, that darkness and fear are nothing but ego illusions and will pass when you look at them clearly with spirit beside you. By giving power to nothing, we throw away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing has no power. Teach no one that they have hurt you, for if you do, you teach yourself that what is not of spirit has power over you.”

Love Is Not Special

Yael smiled, feeling the rightness and comfort of Devorah’s words. “Yes, good,” Devorah said, seeing her colleague’s awareness blossom. “In reality, you cannot beas you thought you were. Your guilt is without reason because it is part of the ego illusion that you have projected out and is no part of your true identity.

“You can not enter into real relationships with any of God’s children – even Canaanites, T Partyers and Republicans, unless you love them all equally. This is difficult and takes effort. Realizing love is not special and if you single out only part of yourSelf to love, you’re projecting guilt on all of yourSelf. Projection is not partial, it’s total. Seek not to break yourSelf apart. It is one and whole. Love as spirit loves for there is no love apart from It.

“Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea what love is like. No one who condemns a brother or sister can see himself as guiltless and in the peace of God. For in truth, no illusion you have held against yourself or another can effect their innocence or yours. Before the glorious radiance of your places in the Kingdom, guilt melts away, and transforms into kindness, never to be quite what it was.

“This is a process, Yael, an ongoing series of opportunities to go within, see yourSelf and project that instead of the ego’s version of yourself.”

Through the Cloud of Guilt

“This is easier to understand than to do, Yael” Devorah said to her colleague. “But you’ve been thru a great deal and already know the value of what I’m telling you.” Yael nodded, her long black hair flowing across her eyes. “I have done some terrible things, Devorah,” Yael said. Devorah smiled and touched her friend’s shoulder. “What you did, Yael, had to be done. As long as you believe guilt is justified in any way, in anyone, whatever they may have done, you will not look within, where you could choose differently and find your oneness with all that is. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe there’s a reason for it. If guilt were real our at-one-ment with spirit would not be. The purpose of going within first and seeking the at-one-ment is to dispel illusions such as guilt, not to establish them as real and then forgive them.

“Not being merciful to yourself and allowing guilt to fester within you, you project it out, see guilt in others and are unmerciful to them. The moment, the moment, you realize guilt is an insane ego illusion, wholly unjustified and without reason, you will not fear to look upon the at-one-ment and accept it wholly. Look through the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look past darkness to the holy place where you can see the light. Nothing, no thing, can keep you from the light that is the truth of who you are and your real identity.

“Release from guilt as you would be released. There is no other way to look within and see the light of love, shining as steadily and surely as it has always shone.”

Glimpses of the Real World

"No one,” Devorah continued, “in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world, the real world. Yet while we still value our dark projections, we will deny these glimpses, insisting that we love what we love not, and avoiding the road that love points out. Love leads so gladly! It waits but for our willingness to release the illusory world. We wait but for ourSelves. Give this sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace and love of God.

 “The peace of God passeth our understanding only when we forget who we are and identify with the ego. Yet it is here and you can understand it now! The real world is the way that leads to remembrance of the one thing that is wholly true and wholly ours. All else we have made and lent ourselves in time and will fade. Love waits on welcome, not on time. The real world is but our welcome of what always was and is now. Feel it!  Know it! The call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.”

 

The Good News

Who was Devorah and why should we listen to her?

175 years after Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt, Devorah became a prophet, mother and general - the first and only female Judge to rule ancient Israel.

Surrounded by pagan Canaanites practicing ritual sex and human sacrifice, Devorah found ways to maintain the Hebrews’ belief in the One God and overcome the Canaanites’ overwhelming military supremacy.

Given the challenges Devorah faced and overcame and the challenges facing us now, her ideas are still relevant. They apply to all aspects of being human – political, military, sexual, economic and show that success centers on being a whole person integrating spirit, head, heart and hand.

“The ego’s aching world has not the power to touch the real living world of spirit,” Devorah continued. “You could not give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from the ego world, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it into the other world.

“Yet, beloveds,” Devorah said to the multitude, “the real world has the power to touch you even here, because it is yourSelf and you love it. And what you call with love will come to you. Love always answers. All that you need to give this aching world away in glad exchange for what you really want and did not make, but was given to you as your birthright, is the willingness to learn that the one you made is false.

“This is the good news, beloveds! You have been wrong about the world because you have been wrong about yourSelf. From such a twisted reference point, what else could you see? The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied remains there but not recognized. Spirit abides in you, everyone and everything, but you deny It and know It not. Be glad that It’s being does not depend on your recognition. It lives within in the quiet present, waiting for you to leave the past behind and enter the world It holds out to you in love.”

 

Two Worlds

“Even tho my experience seems to alternate between ego and spirit when I vacillate, the truth is,” Devorah said, “I can’t see both worlds, for each world involves an entirely different kind of seeing. The sight of one is possible because I have denied the other. Both can’t be true, but the one I value most will seem realest to me.”

So being invested in the ego, having it as my default and subconsciously valuing it more, I tend to discount spirit, not take it seriously and experience the possibility of spirit’s love, inclusion, compassion, peace and creativity as unrealistic, idealistic not serious, naive and avoiding the real world.

“And yet, Barak,” Devorah continued, “and perhaps for you too, my good reader, the real attraction of the two worlds is unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Because everything we made is a projection of our inner darkness, nothing but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it.”

Vacillation

“I am often overwhelmed, Barak, as you are,” Devorah confessed. “The darkness I project is so strong and fierce the best I can do is to move between it and the light. This vacillation is the problem.”

For me too, Devorah, and perhaps for you as well.

The last few posts have focused on vacillation and seeking the light and the Kingdom within first. That’s because vacillating between spirit and ego, and not seeking the light of the Kingdom within first, are the two ‘things’ I’m working on right now. My spiritual practice is to seek the Kingdom within first and stop vacillating between spirit and ego.

My practice is to be mindful and choose spirit first, and not feel guilty when I don’t– which is most of the time. When spirit, love, inclusiveness, creativity and peace are all I want, I will experience only them. It’s the fear, the guilt and blame of looking out first and seeing the prejudice, war, hatred, inequality, and hypocrisy that causes me to forget mySelf and yourSelf.

If I came only from spirit’s inner light, its power and grandeur could only bring peace. But I vacillate, project my darkness out and become afraid, seeing something that is merely a projection and not there. Yet this need not be for in that same place I can look upon spirit and project that out. That is what I want, to look only upon spirit and know that it is all I want, that I’ve had enough fear, guilt and blame, prejudice, war, hatred, inequality, and hypocrisy. Don’t you feel the same, don’t you want only spirit, love, inclusiveness, creativity and peace?

Darkness and Light Together

“I think I understand, Devorah,” General Barak said. “Tell me, General,” she invited. “The darkness is in us, not outside us,” he said. She nodded. “But so is the light!” “Yes!” Devorah said, throwing her arms around him and hugging him.

Like General Barak and perhaps you too, I have looked for the light where it is not and therefore have not found it. My practice now is to seek the light where it is, within me, and in so doing dispel the darkness which is also within me. Trying to resolve the darkness I perceive outside me first, works only temporarily at best. Being angry, frustrated, disappointed, annoyed and fearful tells me I’m looking for the light where it is not - in a resolution of the darkness - my fear, annoyance, disappointment, frustration and anger.

 There’s a classic joke about seeking for something where it’s not. A man sees two people on their hands and knees under a light pole looking for something. He goes over to them and asks what they’re looking for. “Our car keys,” they say. The man kneels to help them. After a moment he realizes the keys are not there. “Where did you last have them?” he asks. They point to a dark place a few yards away. “Well,” the man says, “why are you looking over here?” “Because the light is better here….”

 

Controling Projection

“The ego tells us projection’s ultimate purpose is to get rid of guilt,” Devorah explained to the multitude. “But you can know that this, like all the ego’s explanations, is a lie and will never work. The best way to be rid of guilt and to have no need of projection is to let the ego go and be ourSelves. We are never upset for the reason we think.

“The ego tells us if we project guilt we can get rid of it. But the deepest split of all comes when we identify with ego and project guilt because we are actually retaining the guilt. It remains in our minds [as the movie remains in the movie projector] and by projecting it we are merely concealing it. We still experience the guilt but having no understanding of its true cause, make up explanations for our experience of it.

“Beloveds,” she said, opening her arms wide to embrace the multitude. “The guilt that arises from our belief that we have chosen the ego instead of God is nothing. For the truth is we remain asleep in God’s embrace, dreaming we are separate egos. Bring your dark mistaken belief to spirit’s light and let the light dispel it. Go within, seek the Kingdom, hear the still small voice and know the wonderful truth of your reality as a spiritual being having an earthly experience.”

Projection Makes Perception

 In The Covenant and The Scrolls, after one of his chats with Devorah, General Barak begins to understand what she is trying to help him understand and has this dialogue with himself; a dialogue we might want to have also.

 
My mind, and yours too, seems split between the ego and spirit. This is intolerable and so the seeming split, not the mind’s reality as spirit, is projected out. Thus everything I perceive as the outside world is merely my attempt to maintain my ego identification, which as an ego I believe to be salvation. Consider what this means….

I, and you, have become at odds with the world as we perceive it, because we think it is antagonistic to us. This is a necessary consequence of what we have done - projecting out what is antagonistic to what is our true identity, and therefore would have to perceive things antagonistically.

This projection is why I must realize that my hatred is in my mind and not outside it before I can stop projecting it and get rid of it – stop going to the screen to fix the out of focus picture and going to the projection booth instead; and why I must get rid of it before I can perceive the world as it really is. This is also why the world I perceive is totally chaotic and without meaning of any kind. It is made of what I did not want and projected from my mind because I was afraid of it.

Yet this projected world is only in my mind, the mind of its maker, along with my real salvation. Salvation is a choice. The more invested I am in the world, believing it outside me, the less control over it I have. Only be recognizing it where it is will I gain control over it.