Wherever You Are, God IS!!!

In this post, I want to talk a little about one of my very favorite subjects– God.

Ever since I was little, I’ve always loved God and Church. Even before I was old enough to got to school, I went to Sunday school. And then on Sunday afternoons, at home with my dad and grandmother, I would have Sunday school with them, teaching them the lessons I had at church.

And the God I learned about way back then was the one that created the world and everything in it. He was said to love the people he created.

This God was usually portrayed as a very old man, the Ancient of Days and he was white and had a great long white beard and hair. In fact, as I think about that image, he was just a really big jolly green giant sized version of my dad or Santa Claus.

As I grew up, this picture was enlarged to include the side of God that loved some people who followed all the rules and also judged sinners who broke the rules. The good people were promised heaven when they died and the sinners, well they just got to roast in hell for all eternity.

This version of the story just never really made a lot of sense to me but since this was what I was told the Bible said and meant, I believed that it was the truth.

Now I have come to the place where I question both that version of God and also the idea that just because the Bible says it does not necessarily make it true. (But I will tell you more about that journey another time.)

Charles Fillmore, the co-founder of Unity says

 The starting place of spiritual attainment is the right understanding of that one that we designate as the ‘Almighty.’

So let me share some of who God is for me today.

God Is Omnipresent

There is a wonderful verse in the Christian scriptures that says, “in whom (God) we live and move and have our being.”

Now I used to think this was just one of those nice saying put in there to fill up space or it was one of those “mysteries” that we just were not supposed to understand.

But now I believe that it’s a statement of truth and really just means what it says and says what it means. It shares with us the fact that God is all there is and that everything that exists, exists in God.

David, in the Psalms, says that if we go to the highest heights or to the lowest depths, that there is no place that we can go where God is not. (Now what does that say about hell?)

God is omnipresent — present everywhere.

God Is Love

Another wonderful truth about God is that God is love and love is God.

This love is unconditional and eternal. It’s not some on again, off again type of love. The “I love you when you love me and do what I want” type of love.

God is love.

And God’s love extend to and includes all of God’s children. No one is excluded.

You see, I let go of the old idea of a God that was just waiting for me to slip-up and do something wrong so he could just whack me good and punish me. I have some to realize that we are not punished for our mistakes in life but we are punished by our mistakes. What we sow, we reap.

God set in place the wonderful law of cause and effect. And we are offered every provision to correct anything that we deem a mistake so they can be changed from chains that bind and enslave us into steps that lead us higher and higher as we are transformed.

I guess one of the most important things I have learned on my journey of spiritual attainment is to trust my own heart and my own experience.

I have experiences the presence of God and I have felt my heart warmed and enlightened by this presence.

I have taken the time to look at my beliefs about God, to examine them and to see which ones ring true with what my heart says. And this has caused my love for god to grow and increase as endeavor to see and sense God’s presence everywhere I go and in each person I encounter.

Final Thoughts

As I close, I want to share with you something I came across recently in my reading. It is called The Golden Key written by Emmet Fox.. The basis of this key is to practice the presence of God. Fox says that too often we spend our time focusing on our problems and what is wrong with our lives and our world. He then says that the golden key to changing things in our life is to instead focus on the goodness of God.

Look for Good!

Look for love.

Look for beauty.

And as you do, you will find more Good, more love and more beauty. You will find more God.

For you see my friends, wherever you are, God is. A friend of mine told me once, there is only God or not paying attention.

Try paying more attention this week and see where you find God.

Who Do You Listen To?

Everyday there are a myriad of voices clamoring and seeking our attention. There are the voice in our own mind. Voices come to us from the television and radio, newspapers and magazines. And then there are the voices of our family, friends, and even strangers that we encounter daily on our journey through life. All of these voices have a message or messages which they’re seeking to impart to our lives. And each of these messages maybe be valid or true.

But they maybe not or at least maybe not the whole truth.

There’s another source or voice that seeks to speak to us and this voice is always valid and true. But this is the voice that so many of us neither access or listen to frequently.

This is the voice of our own heart.

It’s the voice we can only access as we enter the silence.

“Be Still and know” scripture reminds us.

All of the spiritual teachers and leaders have come to know the value of the silence.

Jesus left the crowds and went to the mountains alone to pray and meditate.

Buddha remained under the Bodhi tree meditating until he was enlightened — till his heart lit up.

My Meditation Adventure

I’ve been engaging in a 21 day meditation adventure using various mantras. Each day as I meditated and chanted the mantra for the day, I felt my mind quieting and my heart opening up. Fear and worry were released and peace and love filled my being. And I was guided to right action during my day.

But unfortunately, like so many others, I often feel just too busy to take even five minutes out of my day to just sit quietly and listen to this still inner voice.

It is on days like that when I try to remind myself that Gandhi said that he usually meditated for an hour each morning (an hour and not just the five or 10 minutes I try to do). But when he knew that he was going to be really busy and had much work to accomplish in the day, he then increased his meditation time to 2 hours. He knew that if he took time and listened in silence that he’d be guided, not by his own thoughts and ideas but by that Mind or Presence that see and knows all.

This week, I encourage you to give yourself permission to spend just 10 or 15 minutes in silence, even before you begin the tasks of the day. And while there, if thoughts present themselves clambering for your attention, just offer them love, set them aside for now and listen to the stillness. And as you do, you’ll become aware of a Presence — the presence of God, Spirit — and this presence will speak to you in a still small voice — and it’ll offer guidance and direction that will enable you to achieve great things.

Listen to your heart.

Follow what it says and you won’t be sorry you did.

In my last few posts I shared with you 4 other suggestions for creating a tremendous life.

Choose happiness.

Change you words, change your world.

Dare to be who you really are.

Live to give.

Now I’ve given you my last suggestions — listen to your heart.

Listen to your heart for it is here that God will speak to you and help to guide and direct you. As you listen, this will make each moment count and your life will be tremendous.

If you missed any of these suggestions, stop right now and click on each link above and read the posts.

Also, think of a friend that you think would benefit from any or all of these suggestions and share these post with them and also encourage them to subscribe so they’ll not miss any future posts.

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Epiphany — A White Stone, A Piece Of Paper, A New Beginning

January 6 was the Sunday in the Christian calendar that is celebrated as Epiphany Sunday. This celebrates the visit of the Wise Ones to the baby Jesus.

While that is an interesting story and one I have loved since childhood, the question needs to be asked, “what does that have to do with us and our lives?”

To answer this question, I am going to ask a few more questions.

First, what is an epiphany?

Second, how do a piece of paper and a white stone relate to Epiphany or a visit from Wise Ones?

And last, how does all of this contribute to a new beginning?

So let’s answer these question and see what message and inspiration we can get for our lives today.

What is an epiphany?

The dictionary says that an epiphany is “an unveiling, a revealing or a manifestation.”

I was taught that the visit from the Wise Ones signified God’s revelation to those who were not Jews and was to indicate that God’s was available to and inclusive of all of humanity.

You know, many times we need an unveiling in our own lives. We allow the truth that we are a child of God and loved deeply by God to become covered over by thoughts and beliefs such as fear, worry and unworthiness. We forget who we really are and this causes all the things we see in life that we call problems.

So now you are wondering what does this forgetting and the unveiling and to do with a piece of paper and a white stone. I can only tell you how they relate in my life and hope that you can find an epiphany in your own life.

On Christmas Eve, we went to a candle light service at church. Each candle had wrapped around it a piece of paper with an affirmation. As I unwrapped my candle, I read the following affirmation, I rest in the knowledge that God is in control.”

This was the perfect affirmation for me as lots of things in my life had gotten out of my control and I needed to be reminded that even when I appear to be “out of control”, God never is. And maybe even more importantly, I need to remember that even the out of control areas are working together to create and be the good in my life.

Then the next epiphany happened on Sunday, January 6, which was Epiphany Sunday. This time instead of a candle, we were offered a white stone and the minister read Revelation 2: 17. “Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches. I’ll give the sacred manna to every conqueror; I’ll also give a white, smooth stone inscribed with your new word, your secret new word.”

He then said that as we each listen to Spirit, we would be given a “new word” that would give us inspiration, direction and guidance for our lives.

So what word was I given? I am going to tell you in my next post where I will also share some about the story of Moses and the burning bush and the name of God that Moses was told. I will also tell you the step that I am taking at present to live my word.

Until then, begin looking for the epiphanies that are happening in your own life and feel free to share them with us. And also, check out Charles Fillmore’s Metaphysical Bible Dictionary for more information on the ‘white stone’. It is found under the article on Pergamus because this was the church in Asia Minor that spirit was speakingto in the verse from Revelations.

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What If God Offered You A Present?

People are always pondering the question “where is God?” This question is as old as time and has engaged the mind and heart of humanity for as long as we have existed.

Most systems of theology seek to answer this question in one of two ways. They either offer a god that is seated somewhere in a heavenly realm and so far removed from the material creation or they see a god that is in every rock, tree, animal or human.

Old Viewpoint

In this blog, I love sharing with you my journey of seeking on purpose.

For many years, I believed in this far distance and removed God. To me, he (and yes, I believed that God was an old white man with a long white beard that was seated on a throne somewhere in heaven. This God was always on the lookout watching for people to stump their toe or do something that he did not approve of so he could strike them with sickness, poverty, bad fortune or ultimately with death and hell.

But for all of those years, yes, while I thought I believed in this God, in my heart, I knew that this was not who God really was.

New Viewpoint

There was a phrase from the Bible that I had read many times that kept coming back to me. But like so many other verses, I just thought and was taught that this was just a nice poetic phrase that was put there and that we could never really fathom the meaning. The verse I refer to is “In God we live and move and have our being.”

After much reflection and contemplation, I feel I now have some understanding of this verse. To me, it now means that everything that exists only exists as a part and an emanation of God. It says that there is no where that we can go that is not a part of God. As the Psalmist says, “if we go to the highest or if we plummet to the depths, there is God.”

Yes, wherever we are, God is!!

Maybe all that is really needed in order to answer the question “where is God?” is just a new sense of awareness. We just need to allow ourselves to become aware of the fact that God is right where we are.

For me, I readily become aware of this wonderful presence as I sit in silence in my office or as I walk about in nature. Stilling my thoughts, I sense a presence, an energy that permeates all the space around and within me. I breath deeply and feel life and peace and joy entering and filling my body.

And as do, I am enabled to look  behind all the seeming temporary effects of life and to see the wholeness and perfection from which all of life springs. I take my gaze away from the effects and I look at the cause and as I do, I have to acknowledge that “all is well.”

I find while in this new awareness a greater knowing that the universe in which I live and move and experience my being is a good one that moves in divine order. It is a universe that seeks to conspire and work with me to bring to pass in my life experience the perfection and wholeness that is our true nature.

Today, begin to court the presence of God in this way in your own life. Allow yourself to sense and focus on the goodness of life, on the love which God has for you. And as you do, you can come to realize that a greater life is just waiting to find expression though and as you as you begin to allow it to be. And you will say with me “wherever I am, God is and all is well!”

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Meditation – A Good Step Towards A Greater You

KIn my last post I talked about the next greatest version of the greatest vision that you have ever had about yourself. This is a phrase used by one of my favorite authors, Neale Donald Walsch, in Conversations With God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1). If you have not made the acquaintance of this author or his books, then maybe this year, 2012, is the year for you to get one of the books and read it.

Creating the next greatest version of yourself – the 2012 version – is really one way to follow the words of that great Teacher and Master Jesus. He said words that nearly everyone has heard – “the works that I do you can do also and even greater works will you do.”

We have all heard these words at one time or another and many people believe that they apply to Jesus and maybe even to people we call saints. But unfortunately, most of us don’t really believe that they actually apply to our lives, yours and mine.

But what if they do?

What if he really said what he meant and meant what he said? I believe he did just that!

So what is a good way to begin creating this life?

After you let yourself imagine what this new you might be like, you have to give yourself permission to believe that you really can create it. Realize your own power to create.

Know that you can create and you will.

Know that you are creating at this moment and you are.

After you realize your own power, then you need to take the next step and do something in order to create it. But how do you know what that next step might be?

One of the most powerful way to hear and know what to do next is to meditate – to allow yourself to enter the silent chamber of your own heart and there to commune with that still small voice that speaks out of the silence.

Here you will receive the inspiration and insight of what step you need to take now. It might be just a little one like calling or emailing an old friend or acquaintance that you have lost touch with. They might have just the information or action that you need to have or do. Or it could be a big step like something you need to buy or sell. But whatever the step remember you have to do it in prder to get yourself moving.

You are a unique manifestation of universal creative energy – Spirit – that has incarnated on the earth to experience a physical reality that this particular moment in time.

You are a wonderful, high, spiritual being who only deserves the best.

In 2012, all of the universe is seeking to conspire with you to create a wonderful new reality. But the choice is up to you. There is no question that this new reality is being created. The question and choice you have to make is whether or no you will be a part of it. This is the choice you get to make in 2012. So what’s your choice?

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