A change of focus, and goodbye (for now)

This morning as I was mowing the lawns I realised that it is now time for a change of focus, a change in how I’m going about my whole journey process.

These past few months I’ve been carefully studying “Conversations with God”, and realised there are many parallels between the process I an embarking on now and back when I was a christian. What I mean is that in both cases I was focussing on learning a whole heap of “truth”, but all of this would not have – at the end of the day – that great an influence on how I really lived out my life – what sort of person I was. Sure I had a head full of facts and figures about what I was studying, but on the inside, the inner man remained largely untouched. I see this all the time with christians who are all nice until they are suddenly shaken or jolted, and then you see the “real” them overflowing out for all to see.

So I have decided that I am going to stop reading “Conversations with God” for a while and veer inwards in my journey, away from being focussed around my mind that is so full of questions and theories and ideas and models and all so on, and turn my gaze inwards to my heart, because that is where my connection with God is to be found. This is the private well-spring of life where God and Man meet, and is not something appropriate for a public blog – as if anything that happens in this holy place could ever be expressed in words!

So I am going to take a break from this blog, and re-focus my journey inwardly as I seek God who is the source of all, and seek to find a better balance between heart and mind.

Thank you to everyone who has read and participated over these past few months. I have learnt a great deal from you, and I wish you all the very best as you each continue on your journeys.

The Muddle of Models

Look at the picture below, and tell me what you see. (Now I’m really hoping that everyone is going to get this right)

Yes, its a TABLE.

That was easy wasn’t it?

Now have a look at this picture below and tell me what you see:

Not quite so easy is it?

It could be a ”table with 3 legs”, or “a 3-legged table with a square top”, or “a flat rectangular piece of wood with uprights on all but one corner”, and so the list goes on.

But which of these descriptions is correct? We just don’t have a word that fully describes this particular object.

It’s no wonder we are all having so much trouble talking to each other about “God”

The right and wrong that is not

“There are no should’s and shouldn’ts, no right and wrong”

When I first read this idea in “Conversations with God” I couldn’t decide if the author was actually mad, just having a good joke, or if almost the entire view of God and Man I had inherited from christianity was completely and utterly wrong.

If this is true, that there are “no should’s and shouldn’ts, no right and wrong”, then the implications for how christianity is to be viewed are huge … just huge.

If there is no right and wrong then there is no sin; We cannot do anything wrong and therefore have no need of forgiveness or atonement. No sin means there is no seperation between us and God, and the work of Jesus on the cross becomes meaningless (at least in the “normal” christian understanding). No payment for our sins was required!

If there is no right and wrong then there is no notion of obedience to God, no notion that we should seek or even strive to do God’s will. 

If there is no right and wrong then we are neither born sinful nor become sinful, nor can ever be anything other than just as God has intended for us to be.

If there is no right and wrong then God does not “command” us to do anything, for to Him everything we do is within the bounds of natural law, and thus acceptable to Him. Indeed we cannot “not do” His will, any more than an apple can fall upwards.

If there is no right and wrong, God will never reward or punish any of us, no heaven and no hell, because we have done no right or wrong. There is no basis upon which we may be judged.

If there is no right and wrong, the entire message of the Bible is wrong, as it speaks of this distinction on almost every page.

For me, this is the crunch point where the roads diverge between the christian model of God and Man, and the “Conversations with God” model of God and Man. There is simply no way these two models can be harmonised – it’s one or the other.

Eye can change my world

“The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events – both yours and those of others – is to change the way you behold them.” (CWG, Book 1, p40)

I can’t change most of the dumb and nasty things that other people do. I just can’t.

I can’t change most of the unfortunate, inconvenient, unplanned, uncomfortable, unfair, and sometimes just plain “shitty” things that life deals out to me. I just can’t.

But I can change the way I behold them.

It’s what you say it is.

A farmer had only one horse, and one day the horse ran away. The neighbors came to condole over his terrible loss. The farmer said, “What makes you think it is so terrible?”A month later, the horse came home–this time bringing with her two beautiful wild horses. The neighbors became excited at the farmer’s good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, “What makes you think this is good fortune?”

The farmer’s son was thrown from one of the wild horses and broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, “What makes you think it is bad?”

A war came, and every able-bodied man was conscripted and sent into battle. Only the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer. “What makes you think this is good?” said the farmer.

This Taoist story contains a great big fat key to happy and healthy living:

Things that happen to us are neither good nor bad, they are just things that happen. 

When we quit labeling events as “good” or “bad”, we free ourselves to decide HOW we wish experience them.

For me, this is quite simply life-changing.

Change yourself! (or, if you prefer, stew in your own juice)

I have been going through a bit a hard time these past few weeks as several deep struggles and disappointments from my past have re-emerged (again!). I have found my “natural” inclination is to try and be heard and understood by others, in a effort to seek closure, but each time this connection has not formed.

I wonder how much of my natural inclination to be heard and understood by others whom I percieve to have wronged me is in fact a veiled attempt at passing responsibility for my hurt onto them – a way of saying “you caused me this sorrow, you must now set it right.”

So long as you entertain the notion that there is something or someone else out there “doing it” to you, you disempower yourself to do anything about it. Only when you say “I did this” can you find the power to change it.

It is much easier to change what you are doing than to change what another is doing.

The first step in changing anything is to know and accept that you have chosen it to be what it is. … Seek than to create change not because a thing is wrong, but because it no longer makes an accurate statement of Who You Are.

There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement to the universe of Who You Are. (quoted from CWG, Book 1, p39)

Why would a nice God do nasty things?

Why is the world in the shape that it is in? Why? If God was so good and loving then why does He allow so much pain and suffering and injustice? Why?

The answer we each give to this question is a deep reflection of how we view God and Man. If you use a model that teaches that God is “over there” and we are “over here”, then the question easily becomes understood in terms of “God versus Man”, to the point that certain natural events become labelled “Acts of God” with the clear implication that these things were caused by God and inflicted upon Man. Yet if your model also greatly emphasises the goodness and loving nature of God, then the difficulties of the question multiply. Why would such a nice God do such nasty things to us? 

Perhaps it is time for a new model.

The world exists the way it is because it could not be any other way and still exist in the gross realm of physicality. Earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and tornados, and events that you call natural disasters are but movements of the elements from one polarity to the other. The whole birth-death cycle is part of this movement. These are the rhythms of life, and everything in gross reality is subject to them, because life itself is a rhythm. It is a wave, a vibration, a pulsation at the very heart of All That Is. …

Your question infers that I chose these events, that it is My will and desire that they should occur. Yet I do not will these things into being, I merely observe you doing so. And I do nothing to stop them, because to do so would thwart your will. That, in turn, would deprive you of the God experience, which is the experience you and I have chosen together.

Do not condemn, therefore, all that you would call bad in the world. Rather, ask yourself, what about this have you judged bad, and what, if anything, you wish to do to change it.

Inquire within, rather than without, asking “What part of my Self do I wish to experience now in the face of this calamity? What aspect of being do I wish to call forth?” For all of life exists as a tool of your own creation, and all its events merely present themselves as opportunities for you to decide, and be, Who You Are. (quoted from CWG, Book 1, p 36)

The simple math of One-ness: 1+1=1

To help out, a few days ago I picked up the young 7 year-old daughter of a friend from school – a Catholic school. We went and had afternoon tea together and she chatted away to me about her day, this teacher who was a “growly”, another who was really nice but sometimes got angry with the boys, and how they all got dressed up at lunchtime for the annual school disco and she got a cut of hot chocolate.

She then went on to tell me about how they learn about “God and Jesus”, and have prayer times together in class. When I asked her about this, she said “Oh yes, we pray together before lunch, and if we do good prayers we get to go early.”

Whaaaaaat?

What the hell is a “good prayer?”

This child is only 7 and already the christian church is filling her head with the nonsense of the christian religion:  that we are somehow separated from God (because of our sin of course – especially all the sins a 7 year girl has committed! duh) and so we pray to Him (“God and Jesus”) who is “out there somewhere” (the worst dualism of the christian religion – the ultimate Two-Ness! which gives birth to the second worst dualism of the christian religion, that there are “christians” and “non-christians”. Not happy to just tear us apart from God, they are also determined to tear us apart from each other!), and that our prayers can somehow be displeasing or “not good.” (The christian God seems to be quite fussy about protocol and how things get done)

To all the 7 year old girls reading this, let me tell you something:

“God lives in you and you live in God. You are One, not only with God, but also with everyone else. You are made in God’s image – the most magnificent creature ever made! Choose to live your life as a reflection of Who You Really Are, and if you should choose something less than your highest, simply choose again. ”

Who do you think you are?

What impertinent oversized little brat has not heard this from their parents?

It is one of the most influential and profound statements of the reality of our being that exists.

Q: Who do you think you are?
A: That is who you are

You are who you think you are.

So … Who Do You think You Are?

The answer is the most powerful creative statement a human being can make … I AM

I AM happy
I AM sad
I AM beautiful
I AM ugly
I AM blessed
I AM cursed
I AM fucking angry over something that happened 30 years ago
I AM a christian
I AM a sinner
I AM an ex-christian

Whatever answer you give both describes your current preceived reality, but more importantly declares or creates your future reality!

 So … Who Do You think You Are?

Like a ship without an anchor …

I have been feeling quite down (read “very annoyed” to “fucking angry”) these past few days. My last post has stirred up (yet again) deep feelings of anger that I still carry from my teenage years against the church.

Over the past few months I have ranted and raved and jumped up and down about the church and christianity, and seen the title of my blog change from “Jon’s Post Church Rant” to “Jon’s Post-Church Journey” and now “Jon’s Post Christian Journey.” All of this has been part of a drawn out grief process as I try to come to terms with the difficult fact that after 25 years in the church, I no longer wish to call myself a christian or be associated with the christian church.

That, along with all the very very new ideas and models I have now been reading in the New Age book “Conversations with God” has left me not sure where I am at all. I really do feel like a ship without an anchor. I don’t want to go back into the church, and although I can see a new way forward the transition is painful. Sure, I am enjoying my new “Conversations with God” reading, but it is still painful letting go of all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever thought was the only truth. I imagine it must be a little like a divorce. You try and try to make it work, there are the bitter arguments and then moments of deep emotion, you remember all the good times,  you reconnect and want to believe so badly that it could work again. Then the decision is finally made, the split occurs, and even though on one hand it is a relief, still you grieve and hurt and feel a sense of dreadful loss.

Yes, I am moving forward, de-converting, and seeking new answers to the nature of God and Man. But don’t think for one moment that it is easy.