"Spiritual Welfare"

First and foremost I would like to dedicate this piece to an awesome new found friend. John this is dedicated you. Thank you for inspiring me on a daily basis and for inspiring this piece.



It's Sunday Morning and I'm doing my morning rituals. No, I'm not bustling around the house, like a chicken with it's head cut off, searching for the perfect Sunday dress that will be sure to impress all ~ I mean God. I am sitting quietly in my living room, drinking a cup of coffee, and I am surrounded by a plethora of books. What books you might ask? Well let's see, I have "Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire by Deepak Chopra, Living the Wisdom of the Tao by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer , In the Frame Helen Mirren "My life in Words and Pictures", Conversations with God, and the Bible, yes, the Bible. Excuse me for just a moment, while I light an incense in the lap of my Buddha ~ yes, Buddha is here also. I also have beside me, and I might wear it later, my Tallit, which is a Jewish prayer shawl, which was given to me by a Rabbi.

I am telling you all of this just to bring you into my world this morning ~ just a glimpse. I am sharing myself with you ~ a true gift. Okay, back to why I am sitting here and writing to you. Last week over a cup of coffee, with a new found friend, the subject, among many others, of salvation came up. It brought to my mind a Scripture from the Bible that comes from Philippian 2:12. In this scripture, it has a line in it that reads, "continue to work out your salvation", it goes on to say in doing this, do it with "fear and trembling". My friend and I were discussing how we believe everybody is responsible for their own journey, their path to enlightenment (which just means to lighten up), their salvation. I studied the Bible for years, I mean really tore it apart, read many translations, investigated each word straight to the root. I never knew why I did this or why it was such a passion for me at the time ~ now I know and that's a whole other story I will tell you some other time.

Getting back to this subject of "working out our own salvation". Let me share what the concordance at the bottom of the page of the N.I.V. Bible translated this scripture to mean. For those of you who don't know what the hell a concordance is ~ I will sum it up for you like this ~ it's an explanation written by a bunch of smart people, we will call them scholars, for those of us, myself included, who cannot, for the life of us, figure out what the heck these people were trying to impart to us! That was maybe the longest sentence I've ever written! It reads; "work out your salvation" meaning; Work it out to finish; not a reference to the attempt to earn one's salvation by works, but to the expression of one's salvation in spiritual growth and development. Salvation is not merely a gift received once and for all; it expresses itself in an ongoing process in which the believer is strenuously involved in the process of perseverance, spiritual growth, and maturation. Whew!

Now, as far as the "fear and trembling" part, it just mean "with reverence". You can relax now. So in a nutshell, you are responsible for Your-Self! Unfortunately, religion, especially Christianity, has become "Spiritual Welfare". Let me explain. Every Sunday, we all get "gussied up", thinking we are so "suchie much", and go to a building called a church, and we wait patiently, some more patient than others, for our "leader" to instruct us on how we should live. We wait for our "leader" to give us his or her translation of the Bible, and then put it into a message, that leaves us feeling either condemned or all gooey inside. It's either to one extreme or the other, never balanced. Then we leave, often we've given them our 10% (our moola) and feel good about ourselves for the rest of the week until we all meet again. What's wrong with this? Nothing, if that is all you require. I myself do not want someone to hand feed me my sustenance. I want to work ~ no welfare for me! Because, now listen to me, when we work out our own salvation ~ it is ours ~ your journey ~ my journey!

Happy Trails!

"Around the Mountain"

During my morning readings I came across a notion, a thought, an idea that I want to share with you. I was reading "Conversations with God" Book 1, which I've already read, but occasionally like to go back and read as I would the bible. The section I was reading was talking about fear and love. God is saying, that every decision we make comes from one of two emotions, either fear or love. This book, among others, has actually opened up a better understanding of the bible for me. That statement alone will usually buy me eternal damnation in the eyes of many Christians, because they believe, as I did once in my life, that the bible is the only definitive book and information highway on God. Well, as I am reading about the journey from fear to love I am beckoned back to the story of the Israelites journey out of a life of bondage in Egypt, to the land of milk and honey promised by God. If you've ever read the story you know that these hooligans spent the good part of 40 years wandering in the desert and going around the same mountain, when in reality, whatever that is, the journey to the land of milk and honey was a short distance. So, I started thinking, God help us all, who said that? What if the mountain represented Fear and the land of milk and honey really represented Love? Do you really believe that these people were so inept that they could not navigate this short distance across the desert? I believe this story has a much deeper meaning. I believe that the Israelites spent those 40 years in the desert by choice, and that choice was fear. What did they fear? Well first of all, they feared something new. They had been comfortable slaves, eating their leeks and onions in Egypt, for years. They feared the unknown. What was this land of milk and honey? Certainly, God did not love them enough to give them such a place. They had grown lazy and complacent. So, they begrudgedly start out on this journey that from the get go most of them don't even want to go on and the one's that do have the job of being "cheerleader" to the ones that don't! A sure recipe for disaster! They leave Egypt and then spend the next 40 years complaining, going around in circles, lost, and most of them die there. Do you believe that most people, due to their fear and insecurities, and lack of love, go around the same mountain all of their lives and usually die on that mountain of fear? I do! I believe some die clinging to their mountain of disappointments, resentments, jealousy, anger, and regret! When all the while, the land of "milk and honey" was just a short distance beyond that desert, that mountain, they just had to believe it existed and change direction and go!

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Lao-Tzu

Spiritual Vertigo?

I woke up yesterday morning about 3am and the room was spinning! No, I was not drunk or drugged out. I was experiencing Vertigo. If you've never experienced Vertigo, good for you, it's horrible and very scary. Vertigo is characterized by the sensation of motion initiated by sudden head movements or moving the head in a certain direction, usually caused by an imbalance in the inner ear. Now going into my second day of the vertigo experience or should I call it the "vertigo experiment", I decided to look into this condition a little deeper. As I read about the symtoms and causes of vertigo I immediately started linking it to the condition of our soul, as all things are linked to our soul. So, when we get this condition "vertigo" it is usually because of a physical imbalance in our inner ear, and it causes extreme dizziness, not-so-clear thinking, blurred vision, and sometime nausea. When I relate this physical condition to a soul condition, I see that the same symtoms occur on the soul level when we get an "inner imbalance". For example, when we focus too much on "things", we get out of touch with our spirit, our soul, and we start feeling "dizzy", like something is wrong but we just can't put our finger on it! I personally think God let's us experience physical ailments, sometimes, to show us a picture of the conditions of our souls. Sometimes ailments slow us down, and we think and see things much more clearly. I know this sounds a little paradoxical, being that my ailment causes what would seem, the opposite of clarity. But even with vertigo, I am seeing something on the spiritual realm that maybe I was over looking before. Simply this, we are made up of Mind, Body, & Spirit, and when we neglect one of these components we are out of balance. We find it difficult to navigate through life, just like I find it difficult to walk to the bathroom right now without holding onto the walls in the hallway. So, I embrace the "Vertigo Experience" and know that it will pass, as all things do, but I will hold onto the lesson I found within it, like a treasure dug up from the dirt. It is mine, and now .......it is yours!