Choose

I would have to say that in my experience, the hardest vocation one can take upon himself or herself in this world is that of loving God completely.  Of course, I tell myself that I love God and God’s ways.  Daily, I crucify (figuratively) myself in my mind in an effort to see just where I stand.    I go forward in faith believing that I am doing my best to surrender to God’s One True will for my life–what many of us now call, living authentically, but the truth is I have no idea.  I could find that I have gone the wrong way just as easily as anyone.  Often I have to say these words, “But for the grace of God, there go I.”  I ask God to show me that I am going the right Way, but often I receive Silence at best and doubt from myself and others at the worst.  But it wouldn’t be faith if I knew for sure, so I keep going.

Many people teach that loving God, or Holy Spirit, or the Law of Attraction or whatever will guarantee an outward showing of your internal awareness of Truth.  But the Truth is, conscious or not, we are all governed by the Creative Laws of the Universe in perpetuity.  That is the Word that was, is, and always will be and no matter how many religions, dogmas, or rituals we come up with to describe it or contest it this will remain the same.  I think that was the essence of Jesus’ Good News—there’s nothing we can do to change the world because it is what it is.  Loving God completely is the acceptance of this.  If we love God completely, we can dare to live as One even as Jesus lives as One with God and all of Creation.  We won’t change the world by what we do, but rather we will see the beauty of the world as it Truly is when we surrender our vision and see with the vision that God* has no matter what the our “I”s (eyes) tell us.

This is how I make sense of this.  I tell myself that there are at least two types of people in the world.  There always is when you think of anything the world has to offer.  There are:

1. Those who believe the world consists of at least two types of people and
2. Those who believe that we are all One. (The paradox is that those who know we are One can still see that there are others who seem to believe that we are divided.  Yet, by God’s grace, they maintain their belief in Oneness and work on themselves to heal the false appearance of division among us.

With the first group, there is always an enemy—an Us and a Them.  It is always our goal to win.  They have to win at all costs because if they don’t win then they think something is wrong with the world.  Though some of us with this mindset claim to want to improve the world around us to make it a better place, subconsciously we know that if we succeed, we are out of a job.  We need an enemy so that we can have something to do.  Despite our good intentions, we will find what’s wrong with the world, because we find our meaning in fixing what we see as God’s mistakes (even if we won’t admit it).  I mean no offense in saying this.  In fact I am sometimes that person myself.  Those of us like this would be crying in the streets if we encountered a world that matched our idea of perfection and we’d probably be bored.

The other group—those who believe that we are all One—will not be crying in the streets unless it was for joy.  But what you will likely see us doing is pretty much whatever we were always doing.  That is because we never thought the world was unfair before.  Our world view will be as consistent as it ever was.  This is because our world view was never based on an outward showing, but rather an inner knowing.  Whenever we perceived an injustice, we did not go out trying to change others.  What they did was adjust their perception.  They always aligned themselves with the governance of God’s Laws, which are higher than our own.  They rarely tried to work against the Laws or go around them in any way.  People like this are few and far between.  But that’s okay.  There’s a Law that works with them that we all can benefit from.

Jesus’ talked a lot about leaven or yeast.  The thing about yeast is that it takes a relatively small amount to expand a comparatively large mixture of dough.  A little goes a long way.  And the longer it sits, the more it expands. When we live from Oneness, we are the leaven God has provided for the world.  And don’t worry, even though we may appear to switch sides from time to time, like a coin, the two are truly One.  The only division is in our perception and it is temporary.  Only what is eternal is actually True, because God is eternal.  Hopefully what I mean by this will get clearer.

Earlier I said that loving God completely meant accepting that there is nothing you can do to change the world.  I will now try to make sense out of that statement.  I think that the best way to open up to understanding this idea, is to ask yourself the question: If the world is what is, then what am I?  The quickest and most complete answer to this question is: If the world is what it is, then I am what I am.  Any answer other than this complicates things.  For example, if you broke yourself down into a thousand ideas of what makes you who you are, then in order to understand how you relate to the world, you would have to break it down as well.  You would also have to break down every person you encounter or try to relate to.  This can be very hard to keep up with.

Here are the benefits of acceptance.  Things happen faster when you accept them for what they are. Ok.  Let’s say you want cookies right now.  You accept this.  There are none in the house.  You accept this.  You have all the ingredients to make them yourself.  You accept this.  The total baking time is 45 minutes.  You accept this.  You have to be at work in 45 minutes.  You accept this.  You can’t be late again.  You accept this.  Your job is 30 minutes away.  You accept this. It will take you 5 minutes to pick up cookies from the store on your way in to work.  You accept this.  Now given this information, what would be the most harmonious decision to make?  Of course you should get ready for work and pick up the cookies on the way in. It’s a simple decision.  Or is it?

Now here is what many of us will do in the same situation.  You want cookies.  You accept this.  There are none in the house.  You don’t want to accept this.  You spend five minutes looking for cookie alternatives but can’t find any so you accept it.  You have all the ingredients to make them yourself.  You don’t want to accept this.  You start complaining about how long it will take to make the cookies.  You have to be at work in 40 minutes.  You don’t want to accept this.  You start wishing you worked later or won the lottery.  You can’t be late again.  You don’t want to accept this.  It was never your fault that you were late before.  Those other times shouldn’t count. Your job is 30 minutes away.  You don’t want to accept this.  You get angry that you have to drive so far.  You think about quitting and getting a closer job.  It will take you 5 minutes to pick up cookies from the store on your way in to work.  You don’t want to accept this.  You hate stopping once you’re on the road.  You just want to get there and get it over with.  Besides you can probably make cookies better than the ones at the store.  What do you do now?

What would make sense would be to give up the cookies at this point.  Given the above information you should go to work and then make the cookies when you get home.  But many of us given the same information will make a choice like this.  They will calculate that they still have 35 minutes to get to work.  If they hurry, they can make the dough and then jump in the shower.  If they make the cookies a little smaller and turn the heat up, they should get done a little faster.  Sometimes it only takes about 25 minutes to get to work, which gives them a little more time.  Besides, they usually drive the speed limit.  If they go a little faster, they’ll get there a little quicker.  Also they’ll only be about 5-10 minutes late anyway and because everybody usually is just settling in around that time, no one will notice if they go straight to their desk.  To top it off, if they bring in some cookies, everyone will be so happy about the cookies that they’ll forget about everything else.  Proud of themselves for their calculations, they will go forward with this plan.

Some people will laugh when they read this, because everyone either knows someone like this or they are this person at one time or another.  The way I see it, this is a free world.  And all things being equal, I cannot say that the first logical decision is the best one.  I can say it is the best one for me, but who knows what’s in store for the person that makes the more creative decision.  I can tell you what I’ve seen so far though.  Most of the time the results of making the latter decision will yield this kind of outcome:

The shortcuts that the person took in the preparation of the cookies will result in a product that is less than desirable.  They will be far worse than the store cookies.  They will dig through trying to find one decent looking one to justify the entire project.  That cookie in hand, they will rush to the car with wet hair and a wrinkled shirt.  As they drive they will get crumbs all over themselves.  To top it off they will bite into a chunk of flour or an eggshell from the ill-prepared mixture.  Stressed out that they are at least 25 minutes from work with only 17 minutes to get there, they will nearly scream when they run into traffic.  They don’t want to call to tell their boss about the traffic because then it will be obvious that they left late or at least draw attention to them when they get in.  Frustrated, they decide to get off at the next exit and take the streets.  This will probably add 5-10 minutes to their tardiness, but it is better than the 30 minutes that the traffic will probably add.  They drive all around town to only get ahead by about 2 exits.  When they do, they see that the traffic is still there.  They move forward by about 300 yards to see that traffic has miraculously broken up and they are moving at normal speed.  They may as well have stayed on the interstate in the first place.  They finally get to work 25 minutes late.  It looks like no one is around so they sneak to their desk only to see on their calendar that there was a meeting that started 15 minutes ago that they were supposed to attend.  All this trouble for a nasty cookie.  Life isn’t fair.

Some of you are still laughing, but the sad thing is that this occurs everyday in some form or fashion.  But that isn’t the saddest part.  No, this is actually pretty funny.  What’s sad is that given the chance, this person will likely do the same thing again.  Why?  Because they will not be able to accept that their decision was the main ingredient in this recipe for disaster.  Their brain will search and search for the culprit.  “How did this happen?” they will ask.  Ironically, this little incident is filled with treasures for success.  If they could just find it in their heart to love God completely, they would see His Laws at work.  They would see what is and find their place in it.  And when they find that place it will be just right for the person they are.

You just have to accept things as they are in the space that you are in.  If you can do that, you will be able to align yourself and then work with what is in order to go where everything is going—toward God.  This can only be done by letting go of what you want things to be and building on the eternal foundation of what has always been.  The bottom line is, you can’t have two masters.  According to the Bible, Jesus taught if you love one you will despise the other.  Knowing him, I don’t think he would mind me rephrasing that to say, if you truly love One completely, there is no other.

*Genesis 1:31 New King James Version (NKJV)  it says, “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. ”  If God really sees and knows everything and is not bound by our limitations of time and space, isn’t it safe to assume that the way that God sees the creation is a little more accurate than ours, given our limited context?