Woe to him who cannot tell the difference between the fear of objective truth—a truth which exposes us to our lies in order to show us the fundamental love at the heart of reality—and the fear of the false universe which our world injects into us. Jacob Needleman
Gravity is an objective reality – it exists whether we are conscious of it or not. And gravity not only exists. It exerts. Its force acts upon us at all times. And as such, we construct our world in order to accommodate it – even when we aren’t conscious of it. At crucial times, to not have a keen awareness of the presence and power of gravity is to risk harm or death.
It is one thing to read in a book that the gravitational force exerted on a free-falling body results in an acceleration of that body of 9.8 m/s/s. It is quite another to thing to lose your footing on the precipice of a steep cliff and realize that if you don’t regain your balance immediately, you will be that free-falling body.
Our modern way of thinking has created a false dichotomy between truth and experience. We have become obsessed with the reduction of truth into facts: atomic sentences and numbers and equations that we can use as a periodic table of elements.
But this obsession holds no real power. No matter how well you know that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen combine to form water, this fact will not help you when you are on your knees in the desert and dying of thirst.
Water is life, and your experience of consuming it is vital.
Spiritual truths exemplify this need for active participation even more deeply. A sacred text is not sacred because it reveals truth in written form. It is sacred when and only when the truth in the text connects the spirits of both reader and writer and the experience of sacred communion takes place.
Facts stripped of truth and immersive experience are lifeless at best and oppressive at worst. But when spirit meets truth – yours and the divine – you lose your mind and find your soul.
So if you’re stuck in your head and dying of thirst in a land of facts, it’s time to strike out on a new adventure.
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For Meditation
“The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy.” Psalms 65:8 NIV
Nature has so formed his human features as to portray therein the character that lies hidden deep within him; for not only do the eyes declare with exceeding clarity the innermost feelings of our hearts, but also the countenance, as we Romans call it, which can be found in no other living being, save man, reveals the character. Cicero
The eyes are the window to the soul. And with that simple metaphor, we tend to imagine the human soul as a stationary house that others may peer into and catch a glimpse of who we really are.
And yet, who we really are is anything but stationary. We are on the move. Our eyes are not just the window through which others see who we are, they are the lenses through which the light within us flashes outward, serving as an illuminating guide. Or, in simplest terms, a lamp.
When our inner being is filled with divine light, our eyes emanate that light, and help us navigate this life in truth and love. But when our inner being is full of darkness, our eyes will be equally dark, and everything we do will will be nothing more than stumbling in that darkness.
Today we focus on the connection between being and doing, and keeping the inner fire burning so that we see clearly to light the world.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:22-23; Luke 11:33-36
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Paradise Now – Tim Mackie of The Bible Project
The unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates
The unintended by-product of the scientific revolution is most of us rarely if ever engage in the scientific method. We are merely consumers of the results of their investigation.
We no longer know how to search. We only know how to google.
This long-term consumerism produces atrophy in our ability and even desire to search for truth. We simply assume we can summon it on demand with keystrokes, as if consuming mere morsels of truth will produce transformation.
The end result is a two-sided fallacy, especially as it pertains to the development of our true selves: we believe that consuming truth is all we need, which means we also believe that the search for truth is no longer necessary when we can google it.
But is is the search for truth that transforms the soul. The consumption of truth offers only a two-dimensional glimpse of that three-dimensional transformation. The search is like a lengthy vacation in a foreign land. Mere consumption is like reading the brochure for a trip never taken.
Just as muscles will not develop by reading exercise plans, spiritual transformation will never take place by consuming doctrine, especially that which is delivered in the inevitable banal language suited to consumerism.
Today, we are going to take a 3-day journey in search of truth through the art of questioning. And our guide is a twelve-year old boy.
Source Scripture
The Search is On: Luke 2:41-52
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There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes. Percy Bysshe Shelley
The subject on which you choose to focus gives birth to the predicate that composes each sentence of your life’s narrative.
Focus on the oft-overlooked treasures pulsing in nature and your soul may stir, leaving you rapt and composing the poetry of the ages.
Focus on the money not present in your bank account and your ego will be in agitation, producing frustration within and self-centered wrecklessness without.
The subject of our focus is our choice. Which means the predicate we live is our choice as well.
Today – we will focus on the hidden treasures all around us that offer themselves as the subject of our focus. To find them, we just need to dig.
Source Scripture
Treasuring: Luke 2:8-20
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Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. Albert Schweitzer
Kindness is a divine force that moves people. Grace, a radical form of kindness, transforms.
Formally defined, kindness is intentional goodwill freely offered to another without an expectation of reciprocity. Grace is the demonstration of unmerited kindness, often in such a way that it involves great risk or is offered to someone undeserving.
The ego-centered life wrestles with kindness. It is cautious, determined to seek a return on its investment – if not from the recipient, then from a tax deduction or boost in reputation or the like.
The ego even has trouble with receiving kindness, because it lives in suspicion of its obligations to return the favor. Each ego fears the expectations of the other.
And if kindness is rare, grace is impossible to the ego, because it sees no opportunity for return at all. To the ego, grace is nonsensical madness.
The soul-centered life thrives on grace because it is a natural tributary of the river of divine presence that flows from the God of the Universe through us and outward to others.
Today we will see multiple examples of amazing grace that invite us not only to observe, but to participate.
Source Scripture
The Birth of Grace: Luke 2:1-7
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A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. [One] experiences [oneself] . . . as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of [one’s] consciousness. . . . Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. —Albert Einstein
Presence is what happens when we choose to bring the full attention of our soul to the soul of another – and the other does the same. In that moment, the two souls come together, creating presence: a tangible flow of spiritual intimacy.
Creating and maintaining presence is not easy. It requires the full attention of our soul, – not our ego or any of its attachments.
The ego is full of self-promotion, self-defense, hidden agendas, hideous masks – and a host of other things only break presence. But the soul is raw, authentic, vulnerable, full of love and acceptance. You might say presence is what is birthed when two or more souls come before each other in only naked truth in the naked now.
The goal of today’s podcast is to help us open our presence to others, and, taking it a step further, to assist others in unfolding their own potential to open their presence as well.
Source Scripture
Preserving Presence: Matthew 1:18-25
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He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. – Albert Einstein
Wonder is a quality of attention that rises above and outside normal rational thought. And once we have wonder flowing through us, we find ourselves with access to its tributaries: love, joy, peace, gratitude, and many others.
Today, in wide-eyed wonder, the goal is to get us through the wilderness of ego-driven attachments to that river. There, we can not only experience wonder in the present and future, but we can also reframe our past in a way that lets us reinterpret even the most painful moments through new lenses.
Source Scripture
Newborn Wonder: Luke 1:57-79
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Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. – Joseph Campbell
Joy. We all want it. We chase it. We devise formulas to reproduce it. We do our best to seize hold of it.
But where is it?
Ask the wrong question and you will never find the right answer.
Joy is not something we chase, or concoct, or grasp. It is something to which we yield. In order to experience it, we must let go of what thwarts it.
You don’t find joy. You yield to it and it flows through you.
Source Scripture
Joy Flows When Souls Connect: Luke 1:39-56
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