The thistle and the goldfinch

Once upon a time there was a precocious young lad who wanted to know where one could find real wisdom. So the boy went to see an aging man in the neighborhood who had a reputation for being wise.

The boy asked the old Sage why wisdom was so rare and so hard to find.

The old man looked deeply into the boy’s eyes and smiled. “It is not where to look but how to look,” explained the Sage. “Wisdom can be found everywhere in God’s created world.”

“Please sir, teach me how to look for wisdom.”

The great Sage smiled again and led the boy on a short walk to a field of thistles. “What do you see?” asked the Sage of the boy.

“I see a field of worthless thistles,” responded the boy.

“Look closer,” said the Sage.

“I also see some Goldfinches eating the seeds from the dried thistle flowers.” The young boy thought about this more inclusive observation and exclaimed, “Oh, I get it.  The thistles are not worthless after all, because they provide food for the goldfinches. Is that your lesson in showing me how to see God’s wisdom?”

“This is just the beginning of my lesson. There is more to finding true wisdom than discovering that nothing in God’s creation is wasteful,” replied the Sage. “There are even deeper things to observe in this field.”

“What deeper things?” inquired the boy.

“One can observe this thistle field and discover the secrets of the human heart and mind.  All nature’s processes symbolize something of the human mind and its different qualities.”

“I don’t understand,” said the boy scratching his head.

The Sage was still looking at the boy, but his focus seemed to go inwards. “The field—or ground—represents the information we possess in our memory. The plants, which grow in this field, represent the thoughts we entertain—that are rooted within and grow out from the memory.”

“But thistles have hurtful thorns,” complained the insightful lad.

The Sage continued. “Thistles, like other weeds, are often the first plants that take over the ground. Similarly, before one acquires true wisdom, selfish ideas come forth. These ideas serve to protect our first feelings of self-importance over others and make us “prickly.”

“What do the Goldfinches teach?” asked the boy.

“Humans can possess spiritual ideals, which allow the heart and mind to soar above our selfish thoughts and gain a higher viewpoint of what is most important. Like the Goldfinches, spiritual love not only functions above earthly selfish love and its thorny disposition, but can transform those hurtful ideas into a new quality. When a Goldfinch eats a thistle seed it is transformed into the more noble structure of a beautiful bird,” said the Sage. “Nature lets us see things about ourselves that would otherwise remain invisible.”

The young boy took this all in, then asked, “Can nature teach us more than the Bible?”

“They actually teach similar lessons—if you know how to look,” volunteered the old man. “For instance, when Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise to live on a cursed ground of thorns and thistles, that same symbolic language is being applied.”

The boy’s eyes widened as his brain began to form new synapses.

“You now have a taste for how to find true wisdom,” said the delighted Sage.

http://www.innergardening.net

Do animals possess morality?

Back in March ’09 I published a post entitled “Where does morality come from?” I offered some evidence to show that morality comes from God and represents a conscious spiritual principle.

The argument against such a transcendental claim usually comes from those who embrace Darwin’s theory of evolution and a materialistic philosophy about reality. They will point out that animals display a moral genetic disposition, such as social cooperation, protecting their young with their own lives and rendering various services for the betterment of the species. These acts of “goodness” are simply explained as the strategies of genes to ensure that they will have a future.

First of all, such a genetic disposition in animals seems like an appropriate outcome from a universe created by a God of Love. However we should not confuse “service” or instinctive acts of “goodness” with ethics or morality. Morality goes much deeper. Humans can provide helpful services from opposing principles. We can be helpful to others from a spiritual principle of mutual love or from another principle, which is egocentric and values self-gain.

Humans are not moral because of outward acts. Humans have an inner and outer reality (spirit and body). This double dynamic allows for hypocrisy, deceit and hidden agendas. Animals are what they are. But humans can hide their motives from the world. For a human to act morally, he or she has to be good inside and out.

Religion addresses the special inner world of the human heart and mind. Humans are free to choose what they value most. Religion is God’s wise strategy for guiding the human race as to the best values to choose—and for a scientific reason.

It is often said that science deals with facts and religion deals with values. But human evolution is tied to value systems. What we inherit from our parents mostly determines our physical characteristics. But what we personally choose from our free will determines the characteristics of who we really are.

What do our chosen values have to do with evolution—a science that addresses the dynamical adaptation of bio-complexity? Well, what we seek most in our lives represents HOW our inner or spiritual reality is organized. Values create belief-systems, which represent our thoughts, feelings and convictions arranged into real coherent structure. This higher-level structure represents a new embodiment for the soul (spiritual body).

So the real purpose of religion is to allow humans the opportunity to evolve inwardly for a life specially adapted to a non-physical realm (called heaven). In God’s grand scheme, nature’s incessant compulsion for self-organization and bio-complexity continues into the spiritual realm through humankind’s special relationship with God.

http://www.provinggod.com

Are there one-night stands in the spiritual world?

Unfortunately yes. But God goes to great lengths to minimize this bad behavior, starting with people’s particular education on earth. To understand God’s strategy in this matter we must first grasp that there is a big difference between one-night stands on earth and those that take place in the spiritual realm.

On earth, one-night stands involve physical sex—then the departure between the two participants. In the spiritual world, a one-night stand involves a more profound type of coitus and separation. Because humans have both a physical and spiritual reality they can have one-night stands in each realm.

The human spirit consists of the qualities of one’s heart and mind. Therefore, the information that we desire most represents that which we most eagerly hop into bed with. (We instinctively know this to be true when we utter words like “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”)

However, in the spiritual world everything is oriented to God (or against God). Those on earth who listen to God’s teachings then reject them—as soon as they cramp one’s style—actually participate in spiritual one-night stands. Since this has horrible consequences for a soul’s eternal well-being, God limits the spiritual knowledge some people are exposed to for their own protection (what a person doesn’t know can’t be screwed with).

Yes, God is guilty of dumbing-down the human race—especially concerning Sacred Scripture. What is not generally known is that God’s Holy Word contains three distinct levels of meaning. On the lowest level, Scripture contains a literal level of meaning. Above this, all the narratives in Scripture contain a spiritual message embracing deeper details concerning salvation. At the highest level, every story in Scripture refers to the Lord God’s glorification and process by which He united His Divine Essence (Jehovah) with His Human nature (Son) while living in the world.

If this divine information is shared too prematurely with the world, it could lead to too many one-night stands with God’s deepest secrets of faith—and their ultimate rejection. The Holy Scriptures warn against spiritual one-night stands in the Old Testament story of King Abimelech commanding his people not to “lightly lay” with Abraham’s “woman,” then later, Isaac’s “woman.” These warnings symbolize (on a spiritual level) that God’s deeper truths are not to be adulterated and profaned, and therefore, many are withheld from learning such things and wisely spared from engaging in something that would amount to spiritual perversion.

Good grief! I hope you didn’t stumble onto this blog by mistake. If you did, please accept my apologies, and leave before I reveal more things to you!

The Magic Window

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Debbie. She was looking out of the window of her room while thinking about God and the things that she had learned in Sunday School that day. These spiritual lessons had a powerful effect on her.

Suddenly an angel appeared before her. “Why are you looking out this window?” asked the angel.

Being young and in innocence, the little girl still believed in the reality of such miraculous beings and, instead of fear, delighted in seeing this heavenly visitor.  “I am not just looking out my window, I am thinking about God and things I learned in church,” answered Debbie.

The angel smiled. “Because you are such a bright little girl and open to learning new things, I have been sent from heaven to take you to another room, even more special, and show you a magic window,” explained the angel.

“I don’t think my parents will let me leave the house,” said the good little girl.

The angel replied, “You don’t have to move for me to take you to your real home. Just take my hand.”

Debbie reached out and clasped the angel’s soft, inviting hand. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash of light and Debbie found herself in another room. This new room was completely different from her other room, yet she recognized everything in it. Debbie felt completely at home in this new room. “Where is this place?” asked the inquisitive youngster, “It all looks wonderful and familiar!”

“Before I brought you here, you had simply been indoors. Now you are in a room even more inside than indoors,” came the amazing words of the angel.

“Wow,” exclaimed Debbie, “how can I be more inside a place than indoors?”

“You are now in your spiritual home,” answered the angel. “The Lord God built this home for you from the quality of your faith.” Then the angel pointed to a window in this fantastic room. “Go there,” said the angel, “that is the magical window I promised you.”

Debbie rushed over to the window to see what it showed her. Again, she recognized everything that she saw from this window—except it all looked particularly familiar and special to her.

“You are now inside a room that is inside you,” explained the angel. Noticing that Debbie was a bit confused by how this could be so, the angel spoke further, “You are now in your spirit. Now, your outside world consists of all the things in your mind’s memory. The magical window you are looking out from reveals all the thoughts, ideas and wishes contained in the your memory.”

“That’s why everything looks so familiar to me!” marveled the excited little girl.

“You are exactly right,” answered the angel who looked obviously pleased. “Now look closer at the things the window is showing you and describe to me what you see.”

As Debbie looked more carefully outside the magical window of her spirit, she noticed things changing and being reorganized. Then Debbie made a remarkable discovery and exclaimed, “Gee, every time I think about the lessons I have heard in church it causes the things I see from this window to change.”

The angel had a wonderful explanation for what Debbie was experiencing. “Every time you learn something new in church, you can see deeper into the ideas of your memory and arrange them into a more beautiful and heavenly order. As this happens God can make your spiritual home—that is, your faith—more beautiful as well.”

Debbie then turned from the magical window and noticed that the room she was in had become more beautifully arranged and furnished.

“I must take you back now,” said the angel as she held out her hand.

A week later when Debbie was back in her Sunday School class, the teacher was reading from Scripture the passage in Genesis (26:8,9) describing King Abimelech looking out through a window. As Debbie listened carefully to the teacher reading these words she noticed the same angel again—in the back of the room. The angel gave her a quick wink and a reassuring nod.

To everyone’s shock and dismay, Debbie blurted out the words, “I know exactly what kind of window King Abimelech was looking through!”

Website: http://www.staircasepress.com

A new kind of solar energy

Solar energy is often touted as a wonderful source of sustainable energy. In our current energy crisis, which is caused by our dependency on finite fossil fuels, sustainability of energy to keep the wheels of our economy running and preserve our quality of life is a high priority.

But true sustainability and quality of life must extend to the world beyond this one. If humans do not enjoy eternal life and blessedness then sustainability is meaningless.

There is another kind of alternative and sustainable energy source that can keep the wheels of economy running and improving the quality of our lives for an eternity. To tap into this infinite source of energy requires a new type of solar panel. This new solar panel represents a new array within the human mind.

What is unknown to most theologians (not to mention scientists) is that God’s heaven has its own source of light and heat. It is called the Spiritual Sun. Rather than giving off physical light and heat, it emanates God’s Love and Wisdom. The human spirit is sustained by this energy source in the same way that one’s physical body is sustained and maintained by the astronomical sun’s thermodynamic processes.

We sense the ontological reality of this Spiritual Sun when some passion or love generates inner “warmth” in our hearts, and when we “see” mental concepts from a rational source of light that affects the mind’s eye. Human intelligence (and interiority) is different from that of other animals because our minds are constructed to be more sensitive to the influence of the Spiritual Sun. Without such a metaphysical source of heat and light we would not be able to think or feel in a human way.

But growing up in the physical world only prepares our mind to act as a “low-tech” solar panel when it comes to tapping into the inexhaustible energy of the Spiritual Sun. There are special instructions available for those who wish to upgrade the efficiency of this spiritual technology. It amounts to an upgrade in the values we choose to guide our hearts and minds.

These special instructions, mentioned above, are generally made available to us in the form of “religion.” But more specifically, these instructions represent following God’s tenets of sincere spiritual love. (Any doctrine that separates knowledge from love is a false doctrine.) When we adopt God’s tenets of Love into our lives we fine-tune our spiritual solar panels to be more sensitive to the Spiritual Sun and the sustaining influence of the warmth of God’s Love and enlightenment from God’s Truth.

Those who tap into this non-physical sun will have access to an energy source that can sustain a noble quality of life through this world and the next! The angels of heaven are simply humans who have traded their worldly behavior for an upgrade.

Website: http://www.innergardening.net

ZOMBIES

With Halloween just several days away I thought it would be appropriate to look at the phenomenon of our fascination with Zombie horror movies. Having written a screenplay myself I am well aware that the creative process often taps into the collective unconscious. There is something about Zombies (and other horror film creatures) that touches a powerful chord in us.

We instinctively sense something real and dangerous about the notion of Zombies. The human mind, which has a spiritual level of operation, perceives and distills a real and deeper horror portrayed by Zombies.

Deeper horror?

Yes, Zombies symbolize a threat to the human soul and our spiritual well-being. The terms “living dead” and “walking dead” represent soulless creatures that have a gruesome appetite for human brains. There is a theological message hidden in this symbolism.

While it is a horrific thought that a creature could munch on human brains, our souls sense something far worse. Having one’s brains eaten by a “dead” form of humanity symbolizes to our soul the horrible result of having one’s intelligence feeding a dead (false) belief system.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis actually depicts how people can become Zombies. If you are familiar with this biblical event then you know that God warned Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from a particular tree, or they would surely die. But they ate the fruit and seemingly remained alive.

But they disconnected themselves from God, which is spiritual death. This whole unfortunate event is predicated from Adam’s first being lonely and then put to “sleep.” During this sleep—in a state of diminished cognitive ability—God creates Eve from Adam’s rib. This operation cleverly symbolizes what happens when humans long to exalt self-prudence over God’s wisdom. A rib is relatively dead compared to the heart and lungs, which means that God permitted Adam to partner with something less vital (because it was longed for). Eve represents the love of self and egoism (which is like a supportive “wife” to such a false belief system). By eating the forbidden fruit, they “swallowed whole” the flawed idea that they had wisdom from self, rather than from God. As a result they became the walking dead.

A similar metaphor is expressed in horror movies showing people having their brains eaten by the living dead. Symbolically speaking, such victims represent souls who sacrifice their minds and values for a dead principle and become Zombies as well.

The real horror is that spiritual Zombies have multiplied throughout the world and take part in every aspect of human life. The only antidote is spiritual transformation and acknowledging that all LIFE comes from the Lord God in heaven.

Website: http://www.provinggod.com

Soupy Sales is Dead (part 2)

In my previous post, I commented on how Soupy Sales’ death inspired me to contemplate the deeper spiritual aspects of comedy and laughter, including how getting a pie thrown in one’s face actually could offer a valuable lesson in spiritual humility.

Soupy Sales’ death also caused me to contemplate death, itself. I grew up watching Soupy Sales in the 50s and 60s and the image of his 36 year-old rubbery face became fixed into my memory forever.  It was somewhat of a shock that this funny, vibrant and expressive face had now morphed into a grey, 83 year-old man.

His death snapped me out of my habitual mind. It was a powerful reminder of my own mortality. Things don’t last forever.

Aging and dying (other than taxes) is something we can count on. Strangely, we do not use our inevitable death as a source for inspiration in our lives. In other words, we would live quite differently if we knew the exact time of our death. The reason for this is that we would be forced to quickly cut through all the crap and nonsense in our lives and decide what was most important to us.

If most of the people in the world would act differently if they had the knowledge of the precise time of their death, then we must be living our lives separated from our true inner or core values. It is as though the various vanities and allurements of the world had us hypnotized and disconnected from our true selves.

The 20^th Century mystic, George Gurdjieff once said that we needed a special organ in our body whose function was to constantly remind us of our inevitable death. Such an organ would have the power to break through our trance-forming compulsions with an unrelenting slap to the side of the head.

When the Lord Jesus was in the world, He understood the strange psyche of men and women and the obstacles that stood in the way of true happiness and peace. He constantly warned us to “stay awake” and to “sleep not.” This divine warning (slap on the side of the head) was not to suggest that we should resist going to bed, but rather, that humankind needed to snap out of its daily and earthly trance.

Many atheists, post-modern thinkers, and relativistic theologians despise the traditional religious concepts of evil and sin.  However, if they were to exchange the term “evil” for “hypnosis” they would see the scientific side of God’s ongoing challenge to save the human race from the tyranny of time and the illusions of materialistic life. My upcoming book Proving God will address salvation and eternal happiness from a scientifically plausible theory.

Website: http://staircasepress.com

Where is information taking us?

That depends on what information we find valuable and eagerly seek. In other words, all knowledge leads to love. Why? We seek the information that most promotes our heart’s desires. (This is a psychological detail that usually escapes our cognition).

As our young minds begin to develop, we first find delight in information that we recognize as serviceable towards helping us receive honor, personal gain, or enhancing our reputation. So any information that serves such a purpose is seen as “good” and it becomes our “truth.”

During the course of our education we have the opportunity to learn about more noble concepts. That is, we can learn to look beyond our biological selves for the sake of others and worldly society, and even, beyond terrestrial life to a heavenly society.

In order to receive “greater” truth we must adopt a more inclusive and higher principle of Love (otherwise, we will not find any real value in such rarefied data). The purpose of religion is to provide information that will guide the human heart and mind to spiritual goodness.

Since the universe is unified, all true knowledge must be ultimately connected and have its origins in a fundamental unifying principle. The essence of Love is to unite.

In God’s cosmological scheme of causal process, Truth proceeds out from Love and leads us back to Love. This divine patterning principle is why all coherent process in the universe is periodic and cyclic (and performs something useful along the way – which is a derivative of goodness and love).

With humans, information can serve God’s ultimate goal. The purpose of information is to lead us to truth. And the purpose of truth is to lead us to goodness. The benefit of such a wise scheme is that this is God’s strategy to lead us to eternal happiness in heaven. In the beginning of this evolutionary process, truth evaluates love but as we evolve into angelic beings, love evaluates truth.

And here is some good news hot off the press. Besides the sensory-data that is constantly coming at us from the universe’s ocean of information, the Lord God is currently making new revelations available to the human race. Those whose hearts have a sincere spiritual disposition will be open to these new truths and seek them out.

Website: http://www.provinggod.com or http://www.innergardening.net

The soul can stumble as well as the foot

Everyone can easily comprehend what it means when God warns us not to stumble. Such a divine warning is not directed at advising us to be watchful for rocks, tree branches, or holes in the ground that can trip us up.  Instead, the human intellect easily grasps the metaphor and immediately applies the warning to deeper things that can trip up the human heart and spirit.

This makes theological sense as well. The essence of all religion is to provide us with the proper navigational means to avoid the obstacles, dangers and perils that threaten our path to eternal happiness. When we ignore God’s tenets of mutual love, our spirit indeed gets tripped up along the path to salvation.

It is not by our physical feet that we walk with God (or stumble). We walk with God by following the commandments—by living a life of sincere goodness (all God’s commandments ultimately refer to qualities of the heart).

I will not belabor this point since its truth is self-evident. But what is not generally known (even to many theologians) is that the above metaphor for “stumbling” can be applied to all the words in Holy Scripture.  Take Jeremiah 31:9 –

They shall come with weeping, and with prayers I will lead them; I will bring them to fountains of waters, in a way that is upright, wherein they shall not stumble; and I will be to Israel for a father, and Ephraim shall be My firstborn.

The biblical quote above uses the word “stumble” in a similar metaphoric fashion that refers to God’s protecting the human heart and mind from tripping up. But all the other words and phrases in this passage contribute to this higher, psycho-spiritual level of meaning.

God’s leading “weeping” people to “fountains of waters” refers to removing human sadness by quenching our thirst for truth (if we allow God to teach us what is upright). “Israel” represents a spiritual place in the heart containing spiritual love and “Ephraim” represents spiritual truth in one’s intellect. Furthermore, Ephraim represents God’s “firstborn” because religion must teach us doctrinal truths first before these truths can later be turned into actions of the heart (and come forth in spiritual living and practice).

While the word “stumble” can easily be comprehended as representing an inner state of our hearts and spirit, the other words in Scripture are more challenging to interpret metaphorically. This deeper understanding of God’s Holy Word can only be obtained through Divine revelation. At this time, these deeper things are gradually be revealed to those who are open to new Divine influence. These new revelations will change theology in the same way quantum theory, relativity and string theory have changed physics!

Website: http://www.innergardening.net

Softening of the arteries

A person’s physical health is often the causal effect of one’s spiritual health. This intimate relationship between mind and body is not earth-shaking news. Holistic medicine and healing practices treat this principle seriously. It can be summed up by the ancient phrase “As above, so below.” However, maintaining a healthy body goes beyond having a healthy attitude and cultivating positive thoughts. It ultimately involves sincere spiritual love.

Jesus’ commandments to “love God” and “love the neighbor” are more than religious dogma or heavenly arm-twisting. They represent a Divine understanding of brain science, anatomy, even physics. Salvation is not something that takes place apart from science.

What is not yet understood is that humans are recipient organic forms and vessels designed to receive life from the Lord God of heaven. The life force that flows into men and women from God (top-down causation) is from His Divine Love. However, in consequence of the fact that humans are born with hereditary traits of selfish love, and from this principle acquire actual inclinations toward evil, the human organism, brain and mind are all oriented against the inflowing life and influence from heaven.

From selfish and worldly loves, various evils and untruths cling to the human mind and its life, whereby a hardening results that affects a person’s health all the way down to the corporeal level of existence. So non-compliance and resistance to heavenly order begins the hardening process of one’s spirit, which sets the stage for a similar condition to develop (below) in the body.

One of the major maladies of modern life is the hardening of the arteries. In this condition plaque collects along an artery’s walls making it both less pliable and diminishes its ability to promote proper blood flow. Falsities and selfish intentions cling to our mind just as types of plaque adhere to the walls of our arteries and even the inner and outer membranes of our neurons (brain cells).

God’s love and truth acts as a solvent for cleaning up our spirit’s inner circulation. Why is God’s influence a solvent? Because when heavenly truth and order conflicts with our personal beliefs and behavior (like love of self, contempt for others, self-glory, hatred and revenge) a battle ensues. If God’s truth wins, and breaks down false principles, a man or women’s organic disposition becomes more yielding and compliant with heaven’s influence. This battle is sensed in our lives as various temptations, which are necessary for God to dispose our living structures into obedience. This is the only way spiritual love can be conjoined to our biological selves.

Selfish love hardens. God’s mercy softens.

Website: http://www.staircasepress.com