Change the prevailing mode of consciousness and you change the world. Theodore Roszak
The prevailing mode of consciousness today might be captured in the word materialism. Philosophical materialism suggests that all that matters is matter, and everything that occurs does so strictly within the material world.
Practical materialism, which flows from its philosophical wellspring, focuses on the acquisition, manipulation, and removal of material objects based on their usefulness.
A better term for this prevailing mode of consciousness that is rooted in philosophical materialism might be objective consciousness.
In layman’s terms: Where’s my stuff? I want stuff. I need stuff. But not that stuff.
Objective consciousness limits us to see, live, and act only within the physical world of stuff. Of things.
Beyond the stuff of earth, however, is a realm of awe and wonder. The spiritual world. The plane of existence where we experience love, joy, peace, gratitude, hope, and communion with the divine.
The membrane that separates these two worlds can only be permeated by shedding the entirety of the material world, including and especially the center of it all – the self.
To the self, this appears as a mythical fantasy at best or suicidal mission at worst. And so, any invitation to cross the threshold is met with dismissal or attack.
So how does anyone trapped in the prevailing consciousness of the material, objective world ever see the truth of what lies beyond?
There is one – and only one – spiritual substance that can penetrate the physical world and shine light that illuminates the path between these two world
And that substance is the focus of today’s episode.
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People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung
One of the most harmful and yet least examined impulses of human nature is that of judgement. In silent milliseconds, we can observe a fellow human being and decide if he is worthy or unworthy, right or wrong, good or bad.
And with that judgement, just as quietly but more deadly, we condemn. We From our judge’s chair while draped in our robes of black, we pass one of the many sentences available to us in our play book.
Rather than turn the other cheek, we turn our back. Rather than go the extra mile, we force them to. We hurl insults. We raise our hands in obscene gestures. We steal back what is supposedly ours. We open the floodgates of rage into our hearts and with our minds we justify the mental, verbal, emotional, and physical abuse that we heap on our accused.
And as we pass judgement and condemnation on the other, we silently and often unknowingly hold up our get-out-of-jail-free card – the one we earned by being right, righteous, good, better. We choose to be our own judge, and we always find ourselves innocent.
At stake here is not who is right and who is wrong. What is at stake is you – your state of being. The desire to set the world right is a God-given desire implanted in us. It is etched in the imago dei of our souls.
But the fulfillment of that holy desire does not and cannot come from judgement. Judgement arises from egoistic pride, arrogance, entitlement, and a withering connection to the sacred.
It is time to bring the oft-overlooked act of judgement into the light and let it be judged for what it is. It is time to acknowledge and take the beam out of our own eye. The good news is that we have a Judge who is willing to both forgive us and to teach us his way of forgiveness – freeing us to walk this earth in peace and love.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
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Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength. Corrie Ten Boom
We worry when we direct our focus to something we want beyond our current grasp of control. We cannot abide the uncertainty of achieving our goal, and this state of consciousness produces anxiety.
We then believe that to overcome anxiety and find peace, we must create methods and procure resources that provide us with the right amount of power and control.
The curious state we now find ourselves in is one of double anxiety. To get what we want, we must first get something else, and we worry about the prospect of obtaining both.
If we do not question this default approach to living, we will succumb to its relentless grip on our soul and live in either the anxiety of either acquiring control or preserving it. The present moment will remain elusive as future concerns usurp it.
Worry is the enemy of peace. Of shalom. Of bliss. Worry aspires to be hope, but falls far short because it has no one to hope in beyond the self-centered ego.
When we are free of worry, we experience the bliss of of what really matters: the present moment. The naked now. We find ourselves trusting in God’s providence, resting in his promises, and able to experience the joy of His presence and the presence of others.
The present moment is a most auspicious occasion, and with it today we will pursue the ruthless elimination of worry.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-32
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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
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. St. Augustine
Created things pull us outside ourselves. We fix our attention on objects, and so our mode of consciousness becomes objective. We assume that the pursuit of the external will, in return, bring us reward as the objects of our attention come to us.
And yet, no matter how hard we try, the external cannot cross the threshold into our inner being and satisfy our real need. Possessions can go no further than an ephemeral caress of the ego. And this maddening tease drives us to toss aside one failed object for the next, leading us on an endless and fruitless pursuit.
Saint Augustine awakened from objective consciousness, from his madding pursuit of created things, to discover that looking outside himself for meaning only drew him away from himself. And the way back to himself was to yield to the divine call that comes only from within.
Today, we turn our attention away from created things out there– letting go of objective consciousness – and look toward the treasure that lie within, where the Creator of all things calls to us.
Source Scripture
Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:33-34
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Paradise Now – Tim Mackie of The Bible Project
We are not running our lives at all. We are being run by our flesh. Fasting is about freedom. Starve the flesh and feed the spirit. John Mark Comer
To fast is to return our attention to ourselves – our spiritual center – our souls.
Its easy to lose touch with our center when we allow the outside world to seize our attention with its sensory, sensational, sensual offerings. And when we focus on these things that couple only with our physical selves, we become self-centered. Egocentric.
And, let’s not forget, we have real physical needs: hunger, thirst, human connection, and much more. We are not bifurcated creatures whose physical and spiritual sides can be separated – not until death, anyway. We are whole beings. Each of us has a soul and a body, woven inextricably together in the Imago Dei.
Even the Lord’s Prayer, as we saw in the previous episode, has a line devoted to asking God to provide our daily bread. So why would we ever spend one or more days shunning that divinely created need?
Fasting has many benefits, but today we will focus on one in particular: that of re-centering – living from the soul. Fasting is a discipline that in the moment may seem pointless, but in the end is a training exercise that yields spiritual strength.
So let’s slow down, and fast.
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The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. Soren Kierkegaard
Our modern ears interpret the word pray as ask God to give me something I want or need.
But the word pray used in the Greek text of the Bible means, literally, to move towards the will of God – so that our will might be exchanged for his.
We see this meaning in play as Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done.
This is, perhaps, the most enchanting possibility available to those of us with free will – to choose to to relinquish our will in exchange for his.
This is the purpose of prayer.
Today, we will see the purpose of prayer unfold before us in The Lord’s Prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples – and to us. And the walk through that prayer is awe striking.
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Scripture Meditation Guide for the Lord’s Prayer
Father of us in the heavens – Psalm 139
Hallowed by the name of you – Exodus 3
Come the kingdom of you – Matthew 13:44-46
Be done the will of you as in heaven so also in earth – Luke 22:39-44
The bread of us daily, grant us today – Exodus 16
And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil – Daniel 3
For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen. – Psalm 23
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Creation is an act of generosity. Generosity is an act of creation. To create is to gather the resources available to us and shape them into something new and wondrous for others to experience. To be generous is quite literally the same thing.
And yet, how many times do we cheapen and pollute our works of creation by scribbling our name all over it?
Rather than create for the purpose of inducing wonder, we hastily mix a stew of popular and unhealthy ingredients and tempt others with the result. And our only motive is payback through attention or money.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, wisely explains to us that altruism is creative and permeated with light, while selfishness is destructive and lives in darkness. Generosity is a creative force that moves outward from the self. Selfishness is a destructive force that collapses in on itself. And any attempt at mixing the two so that the self – the ego – gets the credit, only destroys that creation.
Is it any wonder that God’s first known words in history are let there be light as he creates all that is, generously giving us all a place to live, and move, and have our being.
Today, we explore DMLK’s definition of generosity as creation in contrast to selfishness as destruction, emphasizing Jesus’ words when he said, It is more blissful to give than to receive.
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Narcissists are consumed with maintaining a shallow false self to others. They’re emotionally crippled souls that are addicted to attention. Because of this they use a multitude of games, in order to receive adoration. Shannon L. Alder
The ego longs to be seen and admired, and all those who fall under its narcissistic spell see the world as their stage. Abandoning their true selves for the sake of thunderous applause, they live their lives in performance.
But, as with all performances, the script has an ending. The actors take their bows. The audience goes home. The stage falls silent, and the performers go back to the dressing rooms, remove their costumes, masks, and makeup, and go home as themselves.
The Greek word for such a stage actor is hypokrites. In English, we transliterate that word as hypocrite, and we use it to refer to a person who acts as if he is one thing on the public stage, but lives as if he is another thing entirely in private.
None of us wants to be known as a hypocrite. None of us wants to be seen as a narcissist. We just want to be seen. Noticed. Accepted. Loved.
The problem is that we are afraid that people will not accept us for who we really are, and so we fashion costumes that hide our true selves in hopes that we will be seen as the performer‘s persona and receive the requisite rounds of applause that go with it.
And the longer we play a role, regardless of how much recognition we receive, our true selves will continue to grow restless until we are seen and known for who we really are.
Today, we will wrestle together with the natural tendencies to fall into narcissism and hypocrisy and discover the rewards of being true to ourselves.
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But I say to you, the Lord says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you. Why did he command these things? So that he might free you from hatred, sadness, anger and grudges, and might grant you the greatest possession of all, perfect love, which is impossible to possess except by the one who loves all equally in imitation of God. Maximus the Confessor
Imagine a reverse wedding ceremony, where the climax occurs as two people stare into each other’s eyes and declare for all to hear, I don’t.
The bride’s wedding dress is blackened with soot. Thorns are strewn in place of flowers. Writhing snakes replace candles. On either side of the aisle there are opposing forces who shout at each other.
And leading the ceremony is zombie-like creature, who says, “Dearly be-hated, we are fractured here today to part these two by breaking the bonds of love and fueling the fires of fury.”
There is a reason why we do not see such ceremonies – they are devoid of beauty.
Weddings are filled with beauty, and set the stage of hope that love will forever bind two people.
Reverse weddings, where two people decide that they are enemies – whether husband and wife, or father and son, two former friends, or perfect strangers who meet on conflicting terms, are filled with darkness. And yet, such ceremonies occur in the privacy of our hearts.
We decide that someone in our lives, whether the crazy neighbor next door or the ruthless dictator of another country, is our enemy. We know that they have no good will toward us specifically or humanity in general, and so we feel justified in assuming the same posture toward them – precisely because we are right and they are wrong. And right must prevail.
Yet perhaps the real reason that we declare war on this enemy of ours is because they have robbed us of beauty and love. And so, wounded by this loss, we exacerbate the issue by living in hate, robbing ourselves – and the world around us – of beauty and love.
We become that which we hate in an effort to extinguish it and hope that beauty returns when the smoke clears.
If we truly wish lost beauty to return, then we must stoke its fire – both within and without.
Source Scripture
Matthew
Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-28,32-36
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Extras
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For Further Contemplation
Recommended Reading
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom