Loving involvement from without

Jesus maintained that we must be in the world but not of the world.  Yet, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son."  Is it not the case that to truly love the world one must be in it but not of it?  When I am "of it" I expect it to 'love' me.  When I am in it but not of it, it's not that I don't appreciate love but I don't expect it to make me love, feel or be in or of the nature of love.

INVOKING TIME

Dreaming is the mind outside of time; wakefulness is the mind inside time.

NOT ENOUGH OF A GOOD THING?

It was once noted that there seems to be enough religion in the world to make us hate one another but not enough to make us love one another.

ORIGINATING INNER REALITY

What is it that arises from the authentic being of my Source? Or should I be asking what does it feel like to be the flow of authentic experience from the Heart? … This ‘withinness’/‘withoutness’ continues to bother me. After all where does this flow of self come from? Yes, “from within” may well be an adequate expression. But the notion that “if I remain still the world will come to me” seems to ring true in so far as it means that this “authenticity” also comes from without. It’s like an inflated tire, or “inner tube,” that is rolling round within itself. What is at any give time on the outside may as well have been on the inside and at one time was. So I am always within the without and “without” the within. That is the only way I can be within.

Experiencing Without the Ego

I saw what it was like to be present not as "me" but just present. It was that space of realizing that nothing is about me. I was actually experiencing but I wasn't there, just experiencing. The "withinness" was experiencing and I wasn't trying to make anything of it. It wasn't an intellectual 'insight.' I had nothing to say about this presence because it wasn't mine. I didn't have it. I was it. I realized what it meant to "stop the search." It's not lost unless I try to put it in a space to understand it, thus trying to convince my ego that "I got it." If I'm searching for "it" then it becomes impossible to "see." It can't be objectified, thought, perceived. No "it." No "me." To try to "grasp" it in any way with the mind is like gouging your eyes out and then trying to see. All in the empty, infinite moment of the timeless now. There is the only place I can be without me.

Toward the End

How it all seems to be coming together in this thing called 'getting older.' It might in fact even be the blessing I sometimes hear it is. Certainly more a visitor than a permanent resident here, even though I've always only looked for permanent residency. Nothing left but to merge with God, with Self, which Ramana asserts is one and the same. It seems all my teaching must blend with this goal for myself. How to do?

Endless Love

The metaphor of Jesus as God's Son has struck me in a new way. Why would God have a son? Well he wouldn't except in the sense that we are all creations of God, all God's sons and daughters. But also it apparently is Jesus who claims so intimate a connection as to be One with the Father. As far as I know Jesus never claimed that he was God's Son, as we understand it, though he refers to God as Father. Actually we could all declare ourselves sons and daughters of God if we knew his love as deeply as Jesus did. Of course in Jesus' time the son is more important than the daughter for a lot of cultural, historical and probably religious reasons.

But as I think of the metaphor in terms of what my own sons mean to me, I know that I would give my life rather than have theirs taken. God would too, except that God "so loved the world" that his love is possibly best understood in terms of a love so great that a father would even give his son to the task of demonstrating that love. Jesus makes God vulnerable in his suffering and death. God suffers in seeing this death. But God suffers in seeing the pain and suffering and unnecessary deaths we all cause one another. We love desperately as if there is not enough love to go around. We love as if God's love is not infinite. We love in small boxes and tight places. We love forgetting that Jesus asked us to love one another as he loved us. He obviously had the faith if not knowledge that such divine love is possible even for you and me.